Shake’Up and Les Echos partner to launch the “Women Entrepreneurs in Tech” Prize
March 12, 2025 · News
Women Entrepreneurs in Tech 2025: a first edition dedicated to Cyber
Conceived and run jointly by Wavestone and the French newspaper Les Echos, the award for Women Entrepreneurs in tech aims to spotlight one of the women actively shaping or contributing to Europe’s technology landscape (see criteria in our dedicated article). For this first edition, a female founder/director of a startup or scale-up was awarded the prize. The winner in the world of Cyber receives personalized support from Shake ‘Up for one year, as well as a profile in Charlie Perreau’s column in Les Echos newspaper.;
“In launching this ‘Women Entrepreneurs in Tech’ prize, the Shake’Up teams wanted to highlight the firm’s technological DNA and contribute to its CSR commitment to gender equality” explains Mathilde Peyret, co-head of the firm’s Shake’Up asset.
Our jury, made up of Gérôme Billois (Partner in charge of Cybersecurity at Wavestone), Florian Debes (Tech journalist at Les Echos), Noémie Honore (Head of Wavestone’s Belgian office, very committed to the theme of “Women in Cyber “) and Charlie Perreau (Head of the Tech-Media startup department at Les Echos), selected five finalists from the shortlist. On March 5th, presented their projects to the jury and an audience of the finalists, as well as Wavestone partners (Tech industry associations, investors, Cyber Campus members, etc.).
In particular, the jury assessed the quality of the project, the relevance of the solution to market needs, and the suitability of the startup/scale-up in terms of the support it could receive from Shake’ Up.
Five players in the running, an acclaimed winner
To ensure the best possible sourcing, in addition to the start-ups and scale-ups in Wavestone’s database (from its Radars, various calls for projects and Vivatech Screening), we relied on the recommendations of our various partners (BPI, France Digitale…) as well as the vast network of Les Echos newspaper. A call for applications was also posted on LinkedIn.
Of all the startups identified, five were selected by our jury, and came to present their projects on March 5, 2025, at Wavestone’s offices in La Défense:
- Skyld – Marie Paindavoine
- Lux Quantum – Samira
- Iliadata – Julia Chaulet
- BreezyAI – Sarah Sellier
- Astran – Yosra Jarraya
A few words about Marie Paindavoine, CEO of Skyld, our first finalist
Founder and CEO of Skyld, Marie Paindavoine is a cybersecurity expert with a PhD in cryptography. Based in Rennes, France, Skyld secures the artificial intelligence algorithms embedded in telephones and other connected objects. The startup designs innovative methods for masking the source code of deep learning models, as well as obfuscation during execution by the processor.
After a year of maturation in Inria’s Startup Studio, the project was selected in 2023 by SkyDeck, the accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley, one of the most selective of its kind in the USA. And Marie was also one of 18 exceptional women honored by the CEFCYS (Cercle des Femmes de la CyberSécurité) last December. An impressive career.
“In a world where artificial intelligence is used in all sectors, especially critical ones (energy, healthcare, defense, mobility, industry, etc.)” explains Marie Paindavoine, “we think it’s essential that AI algorithms are secure. That’s why we created Skyld“.
A notion to which our jury was very receptive.
For Charlie Perreau, Head of Tech-Médias startup at Les Echos, “The five finalists were real contenders, and we had a hard time choosing between them!”. “We’re delighted to award this first prize to Marie” says Noémie Honoré (Wavestone Sponsor of this 1st edition, who is very committed to the subject of Women in Technology). “Her solution in innovative tech that protects the theft of AI models addresses a key issue for our customers.”
Marie Paindavoine, meanwhile, is delighted to have won the award in 2025. “The visibility provided by Les Echos, and the support of Wavestone – which has been combining cyber and AI subjects for many years – are going to be a real boost for Skyld in 2025.”
The first edition of 2025 was a great success, and we’re looking forward to doing it again next year!