Xavier REGNAUT, Partner VISCONTI, today welcomes William Eldin CEO of XXII, a company expert in computer vision

What is the story of William Eldin?

The entrepreneurial story began at the age of sixteen when he set up his own music label. A sound comes out: Disco Bitch — Bourgeoisie is beautiful.

After that, following a license withdrawn the day after getting it, he told himself that this would never happen again, and... he opened a store that sold radar alarms!

One thing led to another William met Fabien Pierlot, the creator of Coyote, and joined forces with him. William quickly became his right-hand man, and as part of this activity, he discovered computer vision technology.

After the sale of Coyote and launched XXII, today the European leader in computer vision (this consists in putting algorithms behind cameras!).

That is to say, create algorithms that will analyze video streams in real time or afterwards.

At the beginning, this technology was mainly used in security use cases, but now it is used on logistics platforms, in customer experience studies, in shops...

It is used to add value where the human who manages his business does not have time to look.

Today, what are XXII's real job and ambitions in the age of artificial intelligence?

XXII is: one of the six companies selected by the State for France 2030; the European leader in computer vision;

A company of eighty people conquering the world since they distribute in France, Spain, Latam and the United States;

A company making specific use cases in security (intrusion, fight detection or other) but also in more analytical uses in shops (fast foods, gas stations, shops). The XXII system observes reality and allows us to have strong insides of it.

Expressed in this way, AI seems extremely simple...

William simply translated it because it was translated simply for him. The key for any CEO is to know how to explain your business. Artificial intelligence is easy to explain because it mimics human vision.

What are XXII's ambitions?

Their current ambition is to exceed ten million euros in ARR before the end of the year. William would also like to pass the hundred million mark by the age of forty.

Another major ambition: to value XXII in excess of one billion.

What is William's vision on everything that is being done today on Artificial Intelligence?

William believes that humans must accept that their progress is not exponential and agree to be helped. On the other hand, he must remain the decision-maker.

AI should be a tool. He illustrates this with a simple metaphor: yesterday's luggage was a hammer, a nail and a knife, today's luggage is a smartphone, tomorrow's is a digital tool that allows us to analyze what is around us and to predict.

Future digital tools are going to be the best way to increase our intelligence.

But what does “increasing our intelligence” mean?

It means having access to information quickly and in a targeted manner.

William's philosophical vision on AI is that it is only a tool, but it is useful to make people want to surpass themselves and give new impetus to humanity. The job of AI over the next hundred years is to integrate into the real world without distorting it.

As a business manager and founder of XXII, for eight years now, what has been William's main challenge as a manager?

Not being a “bottleneck”: that is, delegating little by little and giving responsibility to others.

The manager represents a bit of the image of the company but cannot be everywhere at the same time.

For William there are three pillars:

1. Strong DNA pillar

First of all, values must be shared and applied. Second, the methodology is very important in the execution of tasks.

2. Way of doing things and speed of execution

William cultivates “turnover.” As the company is evolving, he considers that employees must also evolve and change. William is also very careful to execute the product with quality indicators.

3. Long ambition

Never stop having an extraordinary ambition and a long-term vision.

How does William organize himself to implement all his challenges, all his ambitions and all his challenges?

He talks a lot, outside of formal meetings, in a restaurant, at an event or even while traveling. He also does a lot of Q&A in which everyone talks.

Also, he is surrounded by people who share the same values as him.

Everyone is talking about Artificial Intelligence, what is William's vision of what is being said today?

Artificial intelligence is a term that brings together multiple software techniques to be able to do things that simple software could not do until now, with much more information about how we see the world.

There are several AIs. William combines them into four categories:

• The big data
• The NLP (Natural Language Processing) which triggered the LLM (Large Language Model). These are the sources of ChatGPT or Openai.
• Computer vision, which is the computer's ability to recognize images or video streams
• Robotics, which adds a physical aspect to all these sensors

For the moment it is the rise of LLM but soon it will be the turn of Computer Vision and robotics.

Everyone has their fashion, however everyone finds these tools incredible but no one understands how it happens.

The AI ecosystem is growing. It does a lot of the things that humans do.

This will lead to questions about what we are doing and what we want to do tomorrow. We must take this wave to its advantage and twist human knowledge.