Algolia is taking its GenAI search strategy to one of Europe’s biggest AI stages.

The AI Search and Retrieval Platform—powering more than 1.75 trillion queries annually—announced that Chief Technical Officer Xavier Grand will speak at AI Day 2026 in Paris on February 10. Hosted at Station F and organized by France Digitale, the 10th annual AI Day is expected to gather 2,000 AI and NoCode executives, researchers, and investors.

For Algolia, the appearance isn’t just another conference slot. It’s a signal of how the company sees enterprise search evolving in 2026: less keyword box, more conversational engine.

From Search Box to GenAI Experience

Grand’s session, titled “Algolia & The GenAI UX Revolution: Merging Search and Conversation,” will be delivered during dotAI’s “The Tech Track” in the Workshop Area from 12:20–12:35 PM.

The core theme: enterprises must rethink search as a hybrid experience that blends traditional retrieval with conversational and context-aware AI systems.

“At Algolia, we’re trusted by thousands of retailers and millions of developers around the world to equip them with fast, intuitive AI search solutions that build lasting customer loyalty and drive engagement and conversions,” Grand said in a statement. “In 2026, this means enterprise search strategy must be all-encompassing to include agentic, generative, and search experiences.”

That framing reflects a broader industry shift. As generative AI interfaces increasingly sit on top of structured search infrastructure, companies are working to unify conversational AI with real-time retrieval systems rather than treating them as separate tools.

Why This Matters for Enterprise Search

Search has long been one of the highest-converting touchpoints in digital commerce and SaaS platforms. But GenAI has raised user expectations. Consumers no longer just want results—they want synthesized answers, personalized recommendations, and conversational guidance.

For enterprises, that creates a balancing act:

• Maintain speed and precision in traditional search

• Integrate generative responses without hallucinations

• Support agentic workflows and context-aware interactions

• Ensure scalability across global traffic volumes

Algolia’s positioning centers on merging deterministic retrieval with generative layers, an approach that mirrors the broader Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) movement across enterprise AI.

With more than 18,000 businesses and millions of developers using its platform, Algolia is well positioned to influence how production-grade GenAI UX is implemented—not just prototyped.

A Broader Technical Lineup

Grand’s talk will share the stage with other technical leaders:

• Mirakl data scientists Mehdi Elion and Clément Labrugere will discuss advancements to their ad platform.

• Guillaume Moigneu, Field CTO at Upsun (formerly Platform.sh), will present on measuring agent code readiness—a topic gaining urgency as autonomous agents move from concept to deployment.

The session lineup underscores a recurring theme at AI Day: AI maturity. The conversation is shifting from experimentation to operational readiness.

A Founding Engineer’s Perspective

Grand brings a long institutional memory to the stage. A founding engineer at Algolia, he joined when the company had just five employees and helped scale it to more than 750. His focus has consistently centered on building infrastructure that is reliable, predictable, and usable at global scale—no small task when orchestrating trillions of annual queries.

That background lends weight to his emphasis on practicality. While much of the GenAI conversation focuses on model capabilities, infrastructure leaders increasingly emphasize reliability, latency, governance, and integration.

In other words, what works in a demo must also work in production.

The European AI Context

AI Day, now in its 10th year, has become a flagship gathering for France’s AI ecosystem. Hosted at Station F—often described as the world’s largest startup campus—the event reflects Europe’s growing ambition in AI innovation.

As regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act begin to shape deployment standards, enterprise AI discussions in Europe are increasingly tied to governance, transparency, and production resilience.

Algolia’s emphasis on merging search and conversation within structured enterprise frameworks aligns with that environment: ambitious, but operationally grounded.

The Bigger Picture

The shift from keyword-driven search to conversational, agentic experiences is accelerating. But enterprises can’t afford to abandon the reliability of structured retrieval systems in favor of purely generative interfaces.

If anything, the GenAI UX revolution depends on stronger search foundations—not weaker ones.

At AI Day 2026, Algolia is expected to make the case that the future isn’t search versus conversation. It’s search plus conversation—at scale.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.