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WALLIX and Inria partner to develop trusted AI for identity and access cybersecurity
WALLIX and Inria partnered to build sovereign cybersecurity AI across five research areas. This is Inria's first framework contract with a French SME.
WALLIX and Inria signed a strategic partnership at VivaTech 2026 on June 18 to accelerate development of trusted artificial intelligence for identity and access cybersecurity. The agreement marks Inria's first framework contract with a French SME and its first strategic partnership in the cybersecurity sector, directly responding to rising sovereignty concerns after recent shutdowns of major non-European AI models at the request of foreign governments.
The collaboration, initiated through the Étincelles program led by France's Directorate General for Enterprise, brings together public research and industrial expertise to produce sovereign AI solutions. It builds on existing work between the two organizations, particularly around Malizen, a startup whose technology originated from Inria research and has since been integrated into WALLIX's platform.
What the research will target
The partnership is structured around research projects, technological challenges, demonstrators, and joint innovation initiatives. Five core areas will receive focus:
- Behavioral analysis of human and non-human identities to detect anomalies and early indicators of compromise
- Intelligent access governance and automated reduction of excessive privileges
- Securing non-human identities, including technical accounts, APIs, services, automation systems, and workloads
- Continuous and automated compliance mechanisms with real-time audit evidence generation
- Trusted AI models that are explainable, resource-efficient, and built for sensitive or constrained environments
Teams will also develop decision-support systems incorporating trusted AI principles, aiming to improve cybersecurity team effectiveness while reducing operational workloads. For professionals building expertise in these areas, the AI Learning Path for Cybersecurity Analysts offers structured training aligned with the same detection and response disciplines the partnership is advancing.
The sovereignty calculation
Jean-Noël de Galzain, Chairman and CEO of WALLIX, framed the partnership against a specific recent event. "The recent shutdown of Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Anthropic's two most advanced AI models, at the sole request of a foreign power, serves as a stark reminder of our dependence on non-European technologies and the urgent need to build strong European alternatives," he said.
De Galzain added: "We firmly believe that digital freedom rests on two inseparable pillars: security and independence. By combining Inria's scientific excellence with WALLIX's industrial expertise, we are helping to build the cybersecurity solutions that European organizations need to operate freely and confidently in a safer digital world."
Public research meets industrial deployment
Bruno Sportisse, CEO of Inria, described the partnership as a direct expression of the institute's core mission. "This partnership perfectly illustrates Inria's mission: transforming scientific excellence into innovations with strong economic and societal impact," Sportisse said. "By bringing public research and industrial expertise closer together around strategic challenges such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, we are helping strengthen French and European digital sovereignty."
The Malizen trajectory serves as a proof point. Technology that began as Inria research now operates inside WALLIX products, demonstrating a path from lab to commercial deployment that both organizations intend to replicate across the new initiatives.
Why this matters for IT and development professionals
The partnership's technical agenda maps directly onto problems IT teams face daily: excessive user privileges that go unaddressed, non-human identities multiplying through APIs and automation pipelines, and compliance audits that demand real-time evidence rather than periodic reports. When identity behavioral analytics and automated access governance tools improve, the operational burden on IT and development staff decreases - fewer manual reviews, faster anomaly detection, and audit trails that generate themselves. Professionals working at the intersection of infrastructure, security, and AI for IT and development will encounter the outputs of this research as it moves into production tools over the coming years.