Station F and Anthropic say the AI boom is drawing startups back in person

AI makes it possible to build a company from anywhere, but founders are still choosing to sit together, Station F director Roxanne Varza and Anthropic’s Aiden Blake said. They spoke on a panel at Wave by Vento in Turin on Thursday.

“What’s really interesting is we’re seeing more and more people coming since the ‘AI boom’. I think actually a lot of teams are really embracing physical presence,” Varza said.

Station F, in Paris, always has 1,000 early-stage companies on site, Varza said. Blake is head of startup sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Anthropic. Charlie Perreau of Les Echos moderated the session, titled “The Power of Proximity”.

“The ability to build a product and to engage with prospective customers online has never been easier. What that actually means for people is that the real trust, I think, happens in person,” Blake said.

Station F launched F/ai , its programme for AI startups, in February. Its partners include Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral AI and Meta. Teams can be hybrid, Varza said, but they must come to Station F for certain moments of the programme. Without that, she said, they do not get the momentum they need.

About two-thirds of the current batch is not French, Varza said. It includes teams from Asia, Stockholm, the UK and Poland.

Blake said Anthropic joined because it wants to be present in the startup community. Google, Notion and Anthropic, his last three employers, have all been Station F partners, he said.

Asked whether proximity is about people, information or serendipity, Varza said it was all three. Many founders today are repeat founders with large networks, she said, and being in the room with them opens doors. She said relationships cannot be engineered, only influenced, and much is best left to chance.

Blake said founders at Anthropic’s events want to meet other builders with the same problems. They also want to hear from people further along. He named access to capital as part of proximity too, and pointed to Stockholm and Warsaw as cities where new companies are emerging. At the same event, Bending Spoons’ Luca Ferrari said capital is no longer Europe’s big barrier.

Anthropic supports startups across Europe, the Middle East and Africa from Dublin, where 150 people work across several teams, Blake said. He said the city offers talent and a time zone that covers markets from South Africa to France and Germany.

Varza said a great company can now be built from anywhere, but coming together physically still matters. Blake said ElevenLabs started fully remote and opened offices as it grew. Last month it opened one in Brussels .

Many people who have worked remotely want to be back around teammates, Blake said, especially in go-to-market roles, where they learn from each other. Not every company agrees. In August, Dropbox’s new co-CEO said remote work is staying at the company.

Asked what will give a startup its edge in five years, Varza said the tech stack matters. So will how fast founders build relationships, she said. Blake said he finds it hard to predict even five days ahead. The startups that succeed, he said, will be clear about the problem they solve and keep listening to what customers care about.