LightOn SA is a French company specializing in generative artificial intelligence, developing solutions for enterprises. Its primary product is Paradigm, an on-premises, secure enterprise generative AI platform designed for organizations that require data privacy and control. The company was established in 2016 and has evolved from an optical computing hardware startup into a provider of large language models and AI infrastructure.
LightOn is notable for being Europe's first listed generative AI startup, having launched an initial public offering (IPO) on Euronext Growth Paris in November 2024. The company has also contributed to open-source AI research, releasing models such as ModernBERT and the Ettin Suite, and has partnered with major institutions and corporations across France and internationally.
History
Early development (2016–2021)
LightOn was founded in 2016 in Paris by French engineers and entrepreneurs Igor Carron, Laurent Daudet, Florent Krzakala, and Sylvain Gigan. The founders brought backgrounds in optics and artificial intelligence, aiming to develop hardware that could accelerate AI computations using optical processing. Their first product, the Optical Processing Unit (OPU), launched in 2018, was designed to increase the efficiency of massive parallel processing for tasks involving large-scale data, such as training and inference of large language models.
In 2021, an OPU was integrated into the Jean Zay supercomputer, operated by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). This integration made Jean Zay the first of the TOP500 world's most powerful computers to use such optical hardware, marking a milestone for LightOn's technology.
Enterprise AI platform (2020–present)
Starting in 2020, LightOn shifted focus toward training large language models and released several as open source, running on various supercomputers. The company's main product became Paradigm, an on-premises, secure enterprise generative AI platform that allows organizations to deploy AI without relying on external cloud services.
In 2024, LightOn launched its IPO, becoming Europe's first listed generative AI startup. Since the end of 2024, its solutions have been adopted by entities including the ÃŽle-de-France region, Safran, Groupama, and the French Space Agency (CNES). The company also partnered with Orange Business and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to integrate its AI software with their cloud and other offerings.
Language Models
LightOn has trained more than 12 large language models between 2020 and 2025. Among its releases, MonoQwen-Vision stands out as the first visual document reranker, designed to improve retrieval in multimodal contexts. In collaboration with AnswerAI, LightOn released ModernBERT, a model that has been downloaded more than 20 million times, indicating significant adoption in the AI community.
In 2025, LightOn's engineering team released several state-of-the-art models, including Reason-ModernColBERT, GTE-ModernColBERT, and BioClinical ModernBERT. BioClinical ModernBERT was developed in collaboration with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, with researchers from Harvard University, MIT, McGill University, Albany Medical College, and Microsoft Research. The company also open-sourced the Ettin Suite, the first state-of-the-art paired encoder-decoder models, developed with Johns Hopkins University.
Advanced Retrieval Technology
To support production deployment of its models, LightOn developed a suite of open-source tools for multi-vector retrieval, enabling real-time, updatable search systems. PyLate simplifies the training of multi-vector models, while FastPlaid provides a 554% performance improvement over Stanford PLAID, making it suitable for enterprise retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and recommendation systems. PyLate-rs extends this capability to browser-based applications through WebAssembly compilation. These tools transform multi-vector retrieval from a research concept into production-ready technology for dynamic enterprise search and AI agents.
Partnerships and Adoption
LightOn's enterprise platform has been implemented by various public and private organizations. The ÃŽle-de-France regional government, aerospace company Safran, insurance group Groupama, and the French Space Agency (CNES) have adopted LightOn's solutions. The partnership with Orange Business and Hewlett Packard Enterprise aims to integrate LightOn's AI software into their cloud offerings, expanding its reach.
Research and Open Source Contributions
LightOn has positioned itself as a contributor to open-source AI, releasing models and tools that are freely available. Its collaborations with academic institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, highlight its engagement with the broader research community. The release of models like ModernBERT and the Ettin Suite demonstrates a commitment to advancing the field beyond proprietary applications.
See Also
References
- LightOn SA company information and history (as per provided sources).
- IPO announcement on Euronext Growth Paris, November 2024.
- Model releases and partnerships as documented in LightOn's public communications.
External Links
- Official website (not included per guidelines)