The Story Behind Aeteos

At Aeteos, we believe technology must help, serve, and protect people first. That’s why we build human-centered cognitive solutions to empower the heroes on the front lines defending our freedoms and way of life, so that people can live good, meaningful lives in a safer and more resilient Europe.

Helping people has always been at the heart of everything we do for over 30 years.

Béatrice and Mark’s commitment began early. From studying psychology in 1991 to better understand and support others, to creating free software with Beamak in 1994, and dedicating time to digital education through CyberEcoles in 1998. Over the years, we have supported many causes: bringing clean water to communities with 1001 Fontaines, distributing food to those in need, educating young people on social networks and online safety, supporting parents’ associations, and helping underprivileged youth find employment through “Nos Quartiers ont des Talents”.

As cognitive psychologists, Béatrice and Mark collaborated with the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and the artificial intelligence research laboratory LAFORIA, before embarking on a career spanning more than 20 years in digital transformation consulting. They have led more than 200 projects for major European groups such as AG2R, Airbus, Areva, ASML, Bouygues Telecom, Europcar, France Télécom, Generali, Groupama, La Banque Postale, Orange, Pôle Emploi, Renault Nissan, SFR, Société Générale, Thales, Total and Vodafone, within companies such as Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), Capgemini and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Helping people inside organizations has always been equally important to us. Many critical business processes still rely on human intelligence because traditional technologies fall short. Reading documents, understanding context, detecting intent, tone, and subtle signals remains time-consuming, subjective, and prone to errors due to fatigue or oversight, all of which slow down decision-making. HR teams spend countless hours analyzing employee feedback to detect low morale and psychosocial risks. Marketing and sales teams monitor brand reputation and competitive signals in real time. Customer support teams decode emotions and dissatisfaction to prevent churn. In all these situations, we saw a clear opportunity: by combining human capabilities with the right technology, these processes could become far more efficient and insightful.

At the time, we believed Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing could provide the solution. But after years working at the intersection of cognitive psychology and computer science, we made a powerful observation: most AI was heading in the wrong direction. It was becoming more powerful, yet less understandable, less trustworthy, and completely disconnected from how humans actually process information. We saw tools that could analyze massive amounts of data but consistently failed to grasp human intent, context, and weak signals the way humans do.

That’s when our mission became clear: create technology that truly understands humans, not by imitating statistics and probabilities, but by faithfully reproducing the way the human mind processes symbolic information.

In 2016, we founded Aeteos, a French family-owned company dedicated to third-generation symbolic cognitive computing. Drawing from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, we developed Percipion™, a sovereign, secure, explainable, and deeply human-centered cognitive platform designed to assist and empower those who help others, never to replace them.

The success of Percipion in the enterprise world led us in 2023 to be approached by the association #IWAS, which was looking for a solution capable of fighting crimes against children. We adapted and extended Percipion to this critical use case. This opened the door to a new world, one of serious crime, digital threats, and the protection of the most vulnerable.

Since then, our commitment has deepened. We took the presidency of “Point de Contact”, a historic French NGO fighting cyber violence. Mark joined the Gendarmerie Nationale as Lieutenant Colonel in the Cyber Reserve (ComCyber-MI). Together with Béatrice, he chairs research on pedocriminal strategies at the Gendarmerie’s research center and actively participates in coalitions such as ChildSafetyOn to better protect children online.

By the end of 2025, we made the decision to fully dedicate our efforts to supporting those who protect others by providing them with a sovereign threat intelligence platform.

Today, we continue this journey at Aeteos: building ethical, eco-responsible, and fully sovereign “Made in France” technology that law enforcement, defense, forensics, and critical organizations can trust when it matters most. We don’t just develop software. We create tools that help protectors protect, so that all of us can live in a safer and more resilient Europe.

Head of the research program dedicated to combating child sexual abuse within the Digital Humanities (HuNum) chair at the National Gendarmerie Research Centre.

Our brand names perfectly reflect our mission: to create sovereign, ethical, and deeply human-centered cognitive solutions that bring clarity where it matters most, empowering those who protect and serve people.