Thales/Atos JV Secures Phase 3 Deal

ATHEA, a Thales and Atos joint venture formed in 2021, has won a contract from France’s DGA for the third phase of the ARTEMIS.IA programme.

The project – the acronym stands for the French equivalent of Architecture for Processing and Massive Exploitation of Multi-Source Information and Artificial Intelligence – is intended “to offer scalable capabilities for massive data processing and AI that meet the different business needs of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces,” according to Thales.

ATHEA’s platform – a completely French design – will allow the Ministry to develop new AI applications that can exploit information from sensitive data in a variety of different use cases. The first phase involved developing a proof of concept, while the second phase included evaluated demonstrations. The development/demonstration platform is already in use by some parts of the Ministry, and this third phase will see the capability scaled up and also involves “industrialization of the platform,” according to Thales.

“This first major contract illustrates the confidence that the French Defense Procurement Agency and the armed forces have in ATHEA’s teams to develop a high-level technological solution, specifically adapted to the defense world,” Philippe Gasc, the joint venture’s president, noted. “Data exploitation represents a major challenge to maintain the operational superiority of the armed forces. We are proud to develop a sovereign solution that will enable France to act autonomously in the areas of intelligence, operations command and in the digital space.“