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At just 26 years old, Thibaut DE LA GRAND’RIVE has founded and leads one of the most closely watched French companies in the field of generative AI: Delos. Alongside his brother Pierre, an engineer graduated from École Polytechnique, he created a platform that aims to be nothing less than the global alternative to Copilot. A graduate of IÉSEG (Grande École Program), Thibaut tells us about the journey that made him develop the confidence necessary to start early and dare to create “something big” in a field where young entrepreneurs are rarely expected. 

We’ve met with Thibault, who claims audacity, lucidity, and hard work as his main driving forces. 

You were a student at IÉSEG when you launched Delos. How did you get this idea?

The inspiration came in several ways. First, thanks to IÉSEG, I realized that starting a business wasn’t only for an elite. Around me, two or three friends were launching startups during their studies, and that ignited my own curiosity.

For me, founding a company symbolized freedom—a deeply cherished value. My brother has a profile very complementary to mine, as he has an engineering background (graduated from École Polytechnique), he is more experienced and had a strong mastery of generative AI. Before Delos, we had already tested many ideas together, ranging from reselling second-hand products to early website development systems. Just before, we had even almost launched a ready-to-wear brand powered by generative AI, through an extension we would have added to MidJourney and all image creation software.   

My entrepreneurial journey did not come out of nowhere. We had failed six or seven times before launching Delos. And that’s precisely what made this launch less frightening: we already knew what it meant to try, we knew how to work together with my brother, so taking action did not scare us.

Was the initial idea behind Delos similar to what it is now?

Not at all. At first, Delos was supposed to be a new generation of media: an autonomous newspaper, fully personalized and capable of being automatically generated based on sources, themes, and language defined by the user. It was somewhat the ancestor of our app “Actu.”
But we quickly ran into copyright issues that were not at all straightforward, and above all, we weren’t really passionate about that sector. So we created a consulting firm; this allowed us to spend six months doing a lot of research and understanding the real needs of large companies in terms of generative AI. It was during this period that our vision became clear and we said to ourselves: “There’s no doubt anymore. We have to rebuild all office software from scratch. We need to integrate generative AI into the daily lives of companies for real, with a truly useful solution.” That’s how we wanted to stand out in the market: by making AI concrete, adapted to the daily reality of professionals.

When did you feel that your approach was the right one?

We started working in January 2023, just a few weeks after the release of ChatGPT 3.5. We immediately sensed that this technology would fundamentally reshape the service sector. This is not a passing trend, but a revolution that happens roughly every 25 years. It was the perfect signal to launch, given the opportunities available. The question we wanted to ask was: “Where can we put a useful AI?” And the answer is easy: in 90% of our tasks. We had to get started.

Growth was not immediate. Before the first line of code and the first project, six and a half months passed. The models were still very imperfect, I was still half in school, and neither my brother nor I had a professional network or – more importantly – any legitimacy yet.
But once the technical maturity was reached on Delos, everything took off: in just seven months, we went up to 15 full-time employees, without any fundraising but thanks to all the contracts we signed one after another. Quite naturally, after the product design and stabilization phase, investment funds arrived less than a year later. That’s when our exponential growth began.

How would you define Delos today?

In the simplest way possible: Delos is the only global alternative to Copilot. And we go beyond that. Imagine Notebook LM, Perplexity, Firefly, DeepL, ChatGPT, Superhuman—in short, all these applications that excel in their fields—coming together in a single office suite that is also 100% sovereign… That’s Delos. Delos is a complete office workspace born from generative AI, by and for generative AI. Document research, translation, meeting summaries, web analysis, email management, calendar… We have rebuilt all these applications that we need on a daily basis to integrate a powerful AI, easy to use, and whose benefits are felt with every task.
Our difference? While many focus on one vertical, we tackle ten. Because with generative AI, speed changes everything. From the start, we surrounded ourselves with engineers of exceptional caliber and curiosity, allowing us to combine their expertise with a true vision.

So essentially, Delos brings together the best of AI into a single platform?

Delos is not about aggregation; it’s about orchestration. Aggregation means placing several models within a single interface. With Delos, we chose to go further. We engineered a system we call the Superbrain, which autonomously selects the optimal model for each query—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, and many others—based on the task, speed, efficiency, and multimodality. Built atop this Superbrain, we rebuilt all applications.

So, even if you have no knowledge of language models and their specifics, our Delos Superbrain will analyze your request, whatever its nature, and put it into perspective with the full multimodality of generative AI (voice processing, text processing, image processing…), in order to offer you the best response.   

Today, AI exhibits certain shortcomings: hallucinations during documentary or internet research, ambiguous and insufficiently personalized answers, and challenges in maximizing utility. Delos was conceived precisely to overcome these limitations. We wanted to get back to the basics of use: something that is quickly understandable, quickly useful. Our innovative technology allows us to avoid the current pitfalls of AI. 

Who are your clients?

Today, Delos has tens of thousands of users, a little over 350 mid-sized companies, members of the CAC 40, and a rapidly growing SME clientele. Delos is already very present in luxury, retail, and industry. And we are entering the public sector: our plug and play architecture allows the deployment of sovereign models in ultra-secure environments, compatible with ministerial standards.

You managed to raise funds in front of highly experienced investors. How do you handle that at 23 or 24 years old?

The most important thing, regardless of experience, is to understand the rules of the game. For fundraising, it means understanding what the people sitting around the table expect, and therefore asking the right questions: how to smartly put together a pitch, how to share a vision very simply. 

The line between being visionary and crazy is very thin in our market, and it’s true that when you step forward claiming to be the only alternative to Copilot, one of the biggest tech giants in the world, you have to know how to explain many things very precisely to convince people to follow young entrepreneurs like us.

Ultimately, tangible results speak louder than rhetoric. And here, we are confident in our approach: our biggest asset is our success rate—the number of people who leave after signing is incredibly low—less than one percent. In this surreal world of generative AI, where everyone criticizes generative AI for being at the bottom of the Gartner curve, meaning after the initial enthusiasm and where products are viewed with much more caution, being able to say that we have endured these last three years with very few client departures is extremely rare and therefore highly valued.

What did IÉSEG teach you that you still use today?

IÉSEG provided me with five completely different professional experiences that have shaped my growth. From my first very hands-on internship, putting fruits and vegetables on markets in the South of France, to a global purchasing manager position at Stellantis, I learned a great deal in the field. This balance between practical and theoretical that the school offers brings a lot to students. 

The second strength is the experience abroad. Going far away, really far, changes a person. I spent almost two years between Mexico and Brazil. It gave me autonomy, courage, and a real detachment from others’ opinions. There are few paths where you can have such a formative experience so young. 

And then there’s that famous management course through theater in the first year. We had no choice but to go through ridicule to get rid of any notion of fear and free our communication. It truly transformed me. 

You recently formalized a partnership with IÉSEG. What kind of relationship do you envision with the school?

The power of a network is something magical. I experienced it by relying on the IÉSEG network and that of my brother’s school, and it is a major factor, especially for us entrepreneurs. I believe IÉSEG has everything to further strengthen this solidarity. Many alumni hold prestigious positions in companies, and having felt the importance and immediate impact of this, I would be happy to contribute in my own way to continue structuring the alumni network. 

Obviously, when signing this partnership, an emotional dimension was immediately felt: returning to my school, presenting a project that, in a way, was also shaped by the experiences I had there, is something powerful. With generative AI, we can help the teachers and administrative staff of the school become more efficient so they can focus on what truly matters: supporting the students. It’s an incredibly beautiful story, and if Delos can help, I would be delighted.

Finally, I want to champion the courage to dare. During a recent TEDx organized by IÉSEG, I spoke a lot about audacity. More than ever, generative AI can enable us to achieve concrete results very quickly. The gap between concept and tangible has never been so narrow. The IÉSEG student profile– blending rationality, intellectual openness, and practical sense – has enormous potential in business and is ideal for this new technological era. 

To conclude: what advice would you give to a student aspiring to entrepreneurship?

I would say, unfortunately (or fortunately!), there is no magic formula. But if there is one thing to remember, it’s that you must be absolutely passionate – if not a little bit crazy! Be ready to work day and night. The ecosystem moves very fast: what used to take two months now takes two days. And you have to accept the idea of failure. We failed six or seven projects before reaching Delos, which is a clear sign that the maturity of an idea is not only gained through failures! But if you work harder than others, understand your market better than anyone else, and truly believe in it… then  one day it will work out. You have to dare and take the plunge!