VivaTech Day 3: Must-See Sessions for Friday 19 June

Friday is the day VivaTech 2026 gets tactical. After two days of big visions and bold announcements, Day 3 delivers the sessions that answer the questions founders and investors actually showed up to Paris to get answered: How do I build faster with AI? Where is the smart money going? And what happens when machines get a body? If you only have five hours of floor time left, this is exactly how to spend them.

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**11:00 CET | VivaTech Theater — Keeping Humans in Control: Trust, Security & Ownership in the AI Era** As AI embeds itself into every layer of a startup's stack, the question of who owns the data and who controls the keys is no longer a legal footnote; it is a product decision. Pascal Gauthier of Ledger and Melissa Bell of CNN bring two very different lenses to the same problem: one from the hardware security world, one from mass media. Expect a pointed conversation on regulatory pressure, digital sovereignty, and why "trust by default" is not a strategy. Investors scouting the cybersecurity and AI governance space should not miss this one. Full session details. **12:00 CET | VivaTech Theater — AI Gets a Body: The Age of Humanoid Robots** Humanoid robotics went from science project to billion-dollar investment category in under 24 months, and William Shi of Agibot Europe is on the frontline of that shift. This session is a rare chance to hear from an operator building the physical layer of the AI economy, not just the software. For founders thinking about manufacturing, logistics, or hardware, this is the session that will force you to rethink your five-year roadmap. Full session details.

**12:30 CET | VivaTech Theater — Second Order AI** Tony Fadell of Build Collective is one of the few people alive who has shipped transformative hardware at Apple, built Nest from scratch, and now invests in the next wave of deep technology. Alongside Ian Rogers of Ledger, this session goes beyond first-order AI hype to examine the downstream effects: what breaks, what gets rebuilt, and where the real value compounds over time. If you are raising a Series A or deploying a fund in the next 12 months, the frameworks discussed here will be worth more than any pitch meeting today. Full session details. **14:05 CET | VivaTech Theater — A Conversation With Alexis Ohanian** Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit and then built Seven Seven Six into one of the most founder-first funds in the game. He does not do diplomatic answers. This conversation will likely surface his unfiltered take on the current VC climate, what he is actually writing checks for in 2026, and why most startup advice aged badly once AI arrived. For any founder still deciding whether to bootstrap or raise, this is the session that might make up your mind. Full session details.

**17:00 CET | Red Stage — From Idea to Launch** Save this one for last and you will leave VivaTech with something actionable. Romain Huet leads developer experience at OpenAI and understands better than almost anyone how builders are actually using the tools, not how they are marketed. This session is aimed squarely at the founder staring at a blank canvas, and it will compress what used to be a six-month build cycle into a conversation about what is possible in a weekend. Watch for any product announcements or API updates teased from the stage; Huet has a track record of dropping practical news in live settings. Full session details.

Today's schedule rewards the founder or investor who moves with intention. Block the sessions above, skip the panels that rehash yesterday's headlines, and use the breaks to corner the speakers in the networking areas around the VivaTech Theater. Follow FutureFeed for live coverage throughout the day.