Interview with Antoine DUBOSCQ - Co-founder and President of WIMI
/SDBR News: Why did you found WIMI* in 2010?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: Shortly before, we had together with Lionel Roux a mission to provide strategic advice to Caisse des Dépôts on their digital investment doctrine. The massive success of Dropbox and other North American platforms would inevitably require security and digital sovereignty. But there was no real European answer. As part of our structure, adVentures Studio, we have therefore explored the possibility of creating an innovative company in this digital collaboration market.
At the time, collaboration leaders included content-specific software such as Box for document sharing, Slack for instant messages, and Skype for video conferencing. However, companies do not organize themselves according to data formats, but by projects... We concluded that the fragmentation of the tools would eventually lead to the demand for integrated tools, simpler to manage access rights and better adapted to the reality of collaboration in project mode. Lionel’s “product” vision has given us a head start. So instead of trying to copy Box or Slack to make a European competitor, we went straight to the next generation.
As for the business vision, our line is unchanged: building a future industrial leader, independent and competitive, by investing in talent and technology. This is why we reinvest more than 30% of our turnover in R&D and security every year. Over the years we have built, in contact with customers, a sovereign software and hardware platform, a complete collaborative suite.
In 2019, we won the contract launched by the French National Assembly to equip Members of Parliament and parliamentary assistants. Digital sovereignty issues have gradually entered the political realm, and the phrase has even been integrated as Finance Minister since 2022. It is possible to reduce the degree of dependency. We have contributed to the awareness on this subject through forums, surveys and media statements.
In 2025, geopolitical news is shining a spotlight on these issues and confirming our vision, based on three pillars: cybersecurity, sovereignty, and team collaboration.
SDBR News: Can you tell us what a collaborative suite is?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: A collaborative suite is an integrated set of tools that enable team collaboration on projects. In a large project, people plan the project, divide up task lists, produce documents, validate decisions, exchange e-mails, talk to each other via videoconferencing or instant messages, etc. A collaborative digital suite allows them to work seamlessly and securely on all these activities, unlike specialized tools that impose a fragmented use that is less productive, more expensive and causes security breaches.
In practice, a collaborative suite is a complex engineering system, the equivalent of dozens of interconnected software packages. That is why, while there are many specialized tools, only a few players offer a true collaborative suite.
SDBR News: How does WIMI stand out in this market?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: WIMI is a sovereign collaborative suite, an alternative to the North American leader and the most complete on the market. Included in the current V7 version for example are document sharing and drive, videoconferencing, instant messages, emails, task and project management, diaries, electronic signature - or AI agent in partnership with Mistral. At the heart of WIMI’s innovation is constant interaction with our customers to optimize usage and harmoniously integrate functionality. Cybersecurity is also an area of continual innovation to anticipate and protect, in close coordination with authorities including ANSSI.
SDBR News: Did the arrival of Teams slow you down in your development?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: No, quite the contrary. Teams’ rollout has confirmed our vision of an integrated platform, facilitated market education about digital collaboration, and, paradoxically, because of its success, brought digital sovereignty to the fore. We have gained access to new markets and established strategic partnerships such as those announced a few weeks ago with the “La Poste” group (via its subsidiary Docaposte) or with Thales for Defense. For the construction sector, at the end of 2024 we created, together with the CSTB, a joint venture called “Kroqi" and the solution is already deployed to tens of thousands of construction professionals.
WIMI is now the market leader sovereign collaborative suite. We are proud of the trust of 2,000 client organizations and more than 140,000 professionals use the WIMI suite to manage their projects and protect their sensitive data. In the public sphere we could mention, in addition to the National Assembly already mentioned, several ministries including Finance, for their exchanges with public companies, or even communities, research laboratories... Within companies, WIMI is generally deployed as the main platform and sometimes as a ‘back-up’ of the North American leader, making active immediately ‘in case of a glitch’ through our WIMI Resilience offer...
SDBR News: What is your development focus today?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: Today our priority is to respond to the requests of organizations for which data is vital in the face of current risks: cyber threats, malicious attacks, legal risks, digital dependency... The field is vast, in the civil as in the defense.
Thus, for the defense and space industry there was no European platform offering an integrated and modern collaboration suite, with a "Restricted" security level (DR.). But France is the world’s second-largest arms exporter and Europe’s leader. The BITD sector represents 2,500 companies, a myriad of SMEs and midcaps nested around large manufacturers and assemblers. That is why the Thales Group wanted to establish a strategic partnership with WIMI, to build together a software and hardware platform that would meet this challenge. The common goal is to "revolutionize collaboration for French and European defense and space programs". For two years, we worked quietly to combine our technologies, lock and validate security. A few weeks ago, Thales unveiled, on the occasion of the FIC in Lille, the imminent opening of the “WIMI Restricted” platform, the official launch of which is scheduled to take place in June on the occasion of the Paris Air Show. At the technical level, the WIMI Restricted offer is integrated into the Thales Trust R-Nest platform, with the ambition to offer France and Europe a strategic tool for digital sovereignty for the defense industry.
SDBR News: Does the collaborative suite invite participants from outside the WIMI subscriber company?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: Yes, of course. An SME works on average on its projects with a multiple of 2 to 6 external employees on the number of internal employees. Succeeding in a project today requires the consideration of many stakeholders, both internal and external. The WIMI platform plays a key role in accelerating these exchanges, smoothing everyday work and boosting productivity. The project manager and his or her hierarchy have a range of monitoring and access control tools. At WIMI, CEO Lionel Roux leads the product design, as close as possible to customers; he is committed to combining the user-friendliness of the tools with a high level of security.
SDBR News: What type of hosting is offered to your customers?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: WIMI offers customers the choice: Saas, hybrid or On-Premise. We chose to invest in our own hardware infrastructure to ensure data sovereignty, optimize hardware-to-software integration, and manage end-to-end security - much like Apple. This choice offers a decisive advantage for both safety and performance of uses. But in WIMI’s case, customers can choose the hosting strategy that best suits their needs. Most often, they opt for Saas mode on our infrastructure, sometimes on an alternative, such as the “private cloud” or on “on-premise” servers. The launch of WIMI Restricted with Thales will further expand the possibilities for customers with a very high level of security accreditation, as this offer is hosted on the Thales Trust R-Nest infrastructure.
SDBR News: What is the goal for WIMI?
Antoine DUBOSCQ: The future of WIMI is to become the European leader of sovereign collaboration. But before investing in Europe, we must consolidate our position as a French leader, succeed with our partners and clients in the development phase that is underway over the next 2 to 3 years, and reach a critical size. We currently have an extremely tight and efficient team of 50 internal employees. Then, when we reach almost 30 million sales figures, we will launch serious export initiatives.
*For more information go to https://www.WIMI-teamwork.com/fr
** Mistral : https://mistral.ai/fr
