ai-PULSE is back, and so are our three pillars.
This year, we tried to be smart and come up with only two themes instead of three. Cleaner. Simpler. Oh boy, what a disaster.
You cannot fight the perfection of the number three, nor centuries of dialectic. So after many conversations with the Scaleway marketing and product teams, we went back to three themes. And we really love how geeky they sound:
ENTER ⏎. SHIFT ⇧. CTRL ⌃.
Three keys that tell a complete story about where AI is today and where it is heading. It has never been easier to enter a market. And the landscape keeps shifting beneath our feet as a result. But as everything accelerates, staying in control becomes more important than ever.
To bring each theme to life, we also picked a movie that captures something of its spirit. Are the references entirely scientific? No. Did we enjoy choosing them? Very much so!
AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to entering a new market. A small team can now prototype a product, write software, and test demand at a speed that would have seemed absurd only a few years ago.
It is not just about startups. Existing companies also use AI to move into adjacent markets, adding capabilities that previously required entirely new teams.
Of course, building a demo is not the same as building a company. Distribution, trust, and execution still matter, but the walls are getting lower. Sometimes, it feels as if there is no moat left besides compute: everyone has access to increasingly capable models, everyone can build faster, everyone can try.
That is ENTER.
Associated movie: The Matrix.
Entering a new world is easy. Understanding its rules and realizing they can be rewritten is where things get interesting.
The cards are being redrawn faster than ever before. Remember when one consumer AI company seemed untouchable? Then, a few months later, attention moved to another one. The same thing is happening with models, hardware, and entire product categories.
A benchmark changes. A new model drops. An apparently unbeatable advantage disappears. Things have always changed, of course, but the current pace feels different.
Roadmaps that once covered several quarters can become outdated in weeks. Entire categories emerge, evolve, and collide before we even agree on what to call them.
That is SHIFT.
Associated movie: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
When you think you understand the universe you are in, someone opens a portal to three more.
A world filled with new players and constantly evolving threats inevitably casts a shadow. The same tools that make it easier to build also make it easier to attack. The same agents that can complete tasks on our behalf can make decisions at a scale that becomes difficult to supervise.
The more powerful AI becomes, the more important the question of control becomes. Who operates the model? Where does the data go? What can an agent access? How do you understand what it has done?
Companies want to make sure they remain in command of the systems they’ve built. They want an infrastructure they understand, and technology they are free to choose.
That is CTRL.
Associated movie: Ex Machina.
The question is not whether the machine is intelligent, but who is controlling whom.
These three themes are not separate predictions, but three parts of the same movement.
AI makes it easier for new companies, products, and ideas to ENTER. Their arrival causes markets, technologies, and competitive positions to SHIFT. And the faster everything moves, the more important it becomes to retain CTRL.
Three keys, three tensions, and a very particular moment in the history of technology. This is what we will explore at ai-PULSE this year. See you there!
Register for ai-PULSE 2026 / STATION F, PARIS / October 13
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