Suqaba, the deeptech startup born at ENS Paris-Saclay

Clément Vella and Hugo Ginestet, graduates of the Mechanical Engineering Department of ENS Paris-Saclay in 2020, embody the spirit of innovation of the normaliens. Their startup, Suqaba, recently founded in May 2025, offers a new approach to improving the reliability of industrial numerical simulations. Their startup has already been awarded both the Jury Prize and the Audience Prize at the Entrepreneur Challenge 2025. A look back at a trajectory born on the benches of the École and propelled onto the international deeptech stage.

An idea born at the ENS — and in a very specific room

The Suqaba project takes shape at ENS Paris-Saclay, at the heart of the Mechanical Engineering Department. It all begins in Ludovic Chamoin’s finite element course, a lecturer-researcher at the École. It is there that Clément and Hugo discover a fundamental truth: even the best simulations contain errors, and the gap between digital design and the real behavior of a part can be considerable.

Very quickly, they take hold of this issue. The computer-aided design (CAD) room becomes their preferred workspace, almost an improvised laboratory. It is in this room, between two projects and many lines of code, that they write the first technical building blocks of what will become Suqaba.

A conviction imposes itself on the two normaliens: engineers need tools capable not only of predicting, but also of measuring and adjusting the reliability of their simulations. Suqaba will be the answer.

From student to entrepreneur: turning scientific expertise into a business vision

If the technical mastery acquired at ENS Paris-Saclay provides them with a solid foundation, Clément and Hugo quickly discover that entrepreneurship requires much more: business models, pitching, networking, investor relations… “Our strength is that we learned how to learn fast. Critical thinking, the ability to question our knowledge: these are reflexes we developed at ENS Paris-Saclay. To move forward, you have to accept being wrong.”

Their time at the École shaped their way of innovating. They emphasize the importance of a demanding pedagogy, carried by lecturer-researchers at the forefront of their field.

“ENS Paris-Saclay excels in the questions we are dealing with today. Our teachers, researchers and recognized experts, were at the cutting edge of the latest scientific topics, while taking the time to show us where methods reach their limits. We are grateful to have been exposed to these challenges so early on.”

Training at the École is also multidisciplinary and has become a key asset in their startup: mathematics to model, physics to understand, computer science and high-performance computing to solve problems… A systemic approach that directly feeds into Suqaba.

Suqaba: a deeptech serving the reliability of simulations

Suqaba, a deliberate nod to the famous Abaqus software, is a new-generation simulation software. The objective is to give engineers precise control over the accuracy of their simulations; it is based on so-called “quality-informed” AI:

• From a prediction, Suqaba calculates its degree of reliability.

• Once the error is identified, the AI can propose corrections.

• These methods adapt to a multitude of physical domains: civil aviation, space exploration, medical devices, consumer electronics…

“Today, we are focusing on verification, one of the fundamental steps of the scientific approach. The industrial stakes are immense.”

Suqaba is currently running pilot programs on its beta version within several engineering offices. At the same time, a fundraising round is planned for 2026 in order to accelerate the industrialization of their technology and open the way to a new generation of simulation tools that are more reliable and more efficient.

Clément Vella sums up his journey as follows: “Our journey is nothing more than proof that an idea born in a classroom can become a technology that matters.” Together with Hugo, he continues the Suqaba adventure, driven by the ambition to strengthen the reliability of tomorrow’s technologies and by the spirit of rigor and creativity passed on by ENS Paris-Saclay.