Christoph Siegelin, VP Thales Digital Factory

Trust My Tech is Thales Digital Factory’s new open innovation programme which aims to enable and accelerate collaboration between innovative technology players. Trust My Tech connects startups, scale-ups, SMEs, and software editors with the experts, infrastructure and the customer footprint of Thales.

Christoph Siegelin, VP Thales Digital Factory, explains the programme's objectives, unique strengths, and its role in the development of trusted technologies.

 

 

This year, the Cyber@StationF and AI@Centech start-up programmes merged to create Trust My Tech. What is the mission of this new open innovation programme?

The new programme aims to deliver innovative digital solutions to drive market adoption, and create revenue opportunities, for both Thales and its partners.

Structured across three strategic hubs—Paris, Montreal, and Singapore—Trust My Tech provides an international framework that enables innovators to develop and test their solutions in environments closely mirroring operational reality while facilitating interconnections between European, North American, and Asian markets.

One of the other benefits is the direct alignment between selected projects and the operational demands of Thales' Business Lines. This close link ensures that each chosen project addresses a specific market pain point, backed by Thales' recognised infrastructure and expertise. 

Thanks to this, Trust My Tech helps bring new innovation to Thales as well as its customers.

What sets Trust My Tech apart, and why is it the right entry point for those wanting to collaborate with Thales?

Trust My Tech is distinguished by its integrated and targeted platform approach that places industrial needs at the heart of the collaboration, and connects various players. 

The programme goes beyond merely testing innovations; it follows a "Business before Tech" logic that ensures each solution offers a unique value proposition in the market. 

Additionally, Trust My Tech offers partners privileged access to Thales' assets, such as for example our secure Cloud platforms such as TrustNest, to complement their solutions. 

What are the major milestones and events for 2025?

2025 promises to be full of opportunities for Trust My Tech, with a globally synchronised programme. 

The newly launched programme inaugurated the first cohort of startups and SMEs in March. They  will now embark on their journey, accompanied by Thales coaches and domain experts, to help align their solutions to the real-world challenges identified by Thales's Business Lines and create joint value. 

This year, Thales Korea launched its first Trust My Tech franchise in partnership with the South Korean Ministry of Startups where we will accelerate a dozen Korean startups, reinforcing synergies with a highly dynamic tech ecosystem. This will be focussed particularly on technologies in cybersecurity, sovereign cloud, and quantum, thus harnessing new opportunities in rapidly growing markets.

The first successes of these collaborations will be showcased in October to our clients and institutional partners.