Why does your startup need an AI Champion?
- 115K
- Dec 19, 2025
- 2 min read
In many startups, the use of AI is progressing in a piecemeal fashion. Experiments are emerging here and there, but are struggling to establish a clear trajectory. The problem is not so much a lack of ideas as a lack of coordination between teams.
This observation is reflected in the figures: only 26% of organizations have succeeded in deploying AI on a large scale, according to a BearingPoint study .
In startups, the role of the AI Champion becomes key: it structures the adoption of AI, promotes its appropriation by teams and helps to identify use cases that truly create value.
The cornerstone for implementing AI effectively
The AI Champion acts as a convergence point between strategic vision, business understanding, and execution capabilities. In a context of limited resources and rapid decision-making, this role helps prevent opportunistic, fragmented, and misaligned AI adoption.
A key initial challenge is AI acculturation. The AI Champion helps to spread a shared understanding of the real capabilities of AI, by aligning product, tech and business teams around the same level of understanding.
He also plays a central role in identifying relevant AI use cases. By working closely with operational teams, he identifies areas for improvement in processes and where AI can truly create value.
Finally, the AI Champion helps to structure the AI strategy over the long term. It ensures continuity between the experimentation phases, product trade-offs, and industrialization decisions.
What benefits can be expected?
The impact of an AI Champion quickly materializes on several levels:
A more coherent and cross-cutting adoption of AI, thanks to better coordination of initiatives and a reduction in the dispersion of efforts.
Use cases that are better prioritized and more sustainable, because they are better aligned with business challenges and designed from the outset to scale.
A shared AI culture, where AI is increasingly viewed as a structured strategic asset, and not as a series of isolated experiments.
115K is the venture capital fund of La Banque Postale. It invests in fintech, insurtech, cyber, data and AI startups in the European Union, from Seed to Series B.
