VivaTech Day 3: Must-See Sessions for Friday 19 June
- Partner At Future
- 1 minute ago
- 3 min read
Friday is the day VivaTech stops warming up and starts delivering. Day 3 traditionally brings the sharpest founder conversations, the boldest technology bets, and the sessions that get screenshot-shared across Slack channels for weeks. With AI ownership, humanoid robotics, venture capital strategy, and a live product launch all on the card before 5pm, today is the day you cannot afford to spend in the networking lounge. Here is your minute-by-minute guide to making Friday count.
**11:00 CET | Keeping Humans in Control: Trust, Security & Ownership in the AI Era — VivaTech Theater**
The question every founder building on top of AI models quietly fears is who actually owns the output, the data, and the liability. Pascal Gauthier of Ledger and Melissa Bell of CNN bring radically different vantage points to this debate, one from the hardware security world and one from the frontline of AI-generated media. Expect a frank conversation about trust infrastructure that every investor writing checks into AI startups needs to hear before the afternoon sessions. Then at **12:00 CET**, William Shi of Agibot Europe takes the same stage for "AI Gets a Body: The Age of Humanoid Robots." This is not a concept demo. Agibot is shipping hardware, and Shi is expected to speak to European deployment timelines. If you are tracking the physical-AI supply chain or scouting deep tech deals, this thirty-minute window is non-negotiable. Both sessions are at the VivaTech Theater.
**12:30 CET | Second Order AI — VivaTech Theater**
After you have absorbed the robotics session, stay in your seat. Tony Fadell of Build Collective and Ian Rogers of Ledger are tackling the effects that ripple out once AI becomes ambient infrastructure, the second and third order consequences that most founders are not yet pricing into their roadmaps. Fadell designed the iPod and the Nest thermostat, which means he has lived through two platform shifts and watched most startups miss the second wave. This session will likely surface where the real value accrues once the model layer commoditises. Then at **14:05 CET**, the spotlight shifts to venture capital with Alexis Ohanian of Seven Seven Six taking the stage for a headline conversation at the VivaTech Theater. Ohanian has been unusually vocal lately about where founders go wrong when raising and where VCs are still sleeping on European talent. Come with a question. The founders who get face time with him today will be the ones who came prepared. Full session details at vivatech.com/sessions.
**17:00 CET | From Idea to Launch — Red Stage**
Save the best for last. Romain Huet is one of the most practically minded voices at OpenAI, and this session is the closest thing on the schedule to a live founder masterclass. The title is not metaphorical: expect a compressed, tactical breakdown of how AI-native products go from whiteboard to live users in 2026. For founders who have been wondering whether to rebuild their stack around the latest OpenAI primitives, this is the session that will help them decide. For investors, it is a benchmark for what a credible AI-native founding team should know by heart. The Red Stage traditionally draws a standing crowd for closing sessions, so position yourself early. The implications are clear: the bar for launching an AI product is rising fast, and what Huet outlines tonight will likely reframe how the room thinks about product-market fit for the next twelve months.
Today's lineup is one of the strongest single days VivaTech has put together across any edition, and the sessions above will be discussed in deal rooms long after the conference closes. Follow FutureFeed for live coverage throughout the day.
