TLDR: French deep tech startup Chat3D, founded by Félix Balmonet and Glenn Avezoux, has successfully raised €3 million in funding and forged a strategic partnership with Nvidia. The Lyon-based company is leveraging generative AI to drastically simplify and accelerate 3D model creation, aiming to transform industrial design, manufacturing, and virtual training.
Lyon, France – Chat3D, a burgeoning French deep tech startup, is rapidly making waves in the 3D modeling landscape, barely a year after its inception. Founded by two visionary engineering students, Félix Balmonet and Glenn Avezoux, the company has announced a significant milestone: a successful €3 million funding round and a strategic partnership with semiconductor giant Nvidia. This dual achievement positions Chat3D as a key innovator in the application of generative AI to 3D design.
The €3 million investment was secured from prominent French investment funds, including Mesh Ventures, Innov’Alpes, and Campus Fund, alongside a consortium of specialized business angels. This capital injection is earmarked to accelerate the development of Chat3D’s groundbreaking generative AI technology, which promises to reinvent the traditionally complex and time-consuming process of 3D modeling.
Chat3D’s core innovation lies at the intersection of Computer-Aided Design (CAD), digital twins, and artificial intelligence. Their technology enables the generation of highly accurate 3D models—with precision ranging from 5 to 10 millimeters—from simple 2D inputs such as scans or photographs, or even textual descriptions. This capability dramatically reduces the time required for 3D asset creation, transforming processes that once took days into mere minutes.
The startup has already demonstrated strong traction, particularly within industrial sectors. It has earned both the ‘DeepTech’ and ‘Young Innovative Research Company (JEIR)’ labels, underscoring its technological prowess and innovative potential. A notable partnership has been established with 3DVERSE, a company closely associated with Siemens and specializing in digital twin creation. This collaboration integrates Chat3D’s engine into existing industrial software platforms, allowing operators to quickly generate virtual replicas of factory equipment for diverse applications like augmented reality, training simulations, and maintenance.
Félix Balmonet, co-founder of Chat3D, highlighted the practical impact of their solution in industrial training. He noted, “Many companies now prefer to train workers in virtual environments for safety reasons. With Chat3D, they can photograph real workspaces and recreate them virtually in minutes — where it used to take days.” This exemplifies the company’s focus on bringing AI-driven speed and accessibility to industrial workflows.
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Balmonet emphasized that Chat3D aims to complement, rather than replace, established CAD giants like Catia or Autodesk. “We’re complementary,” he stated. “Traditional software excels at precision engineering, but lacks automation. Chat3D fills that gap by bringing AI-driven speed and accessibility into the workflow.” The long-term vision for Chat3D is to evolve beyond a 2D-to-3D generator into a comprehensive 3D modeling assistant, where users can interact with the software as intuitively as they would with conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT.
