Building France invites French entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into applications

In many companies, ideas for tools first arise from a very concrete problem, orders still followed manually, commercial reminders to be better structured, a lack of visibility on teams or suppliers, validations to be organized, or simply a recurring process that wastes time every week.

With Building France, Emergent invites French managers, founders, small business owners, operational staff and professionals to start from precisely this type of problem to build an application or site capable of responding to it.

Organized from August 10 to 25, 2026, the competition involves a prize of more than 40,000 euros distributed among 100 winners. To participate, you don’t need to be a developer: the objective is above all to clearly understand a business problem and to imagine the solution that you would like to use in your activity.

From business problem to software.

Emergent is an AI-powered app and website creation tool. Its principle consists of allowing the user to describe their needs in their own words, without writing a line of code or having a development team.

The platform then generates a functional application or website with a real URL. It supports frontend and backend development as well as deployment.

This way of creating software is part of what we call “vibe coding”: starting from an idea or problem and describing it in natural language in order to transform it into a functional product.

The use cases can be very concrete: a business manager wanting to stop tracking their orders manually, a founder looking for a better commercial recovery system, an operational person needing visibility into their teams, suppliers or validations, or even a creator wishing to manage their prospects, partnerships or content flows.

Building France: starting from a real problem.

It is around this logic that Emergent designed Building France.

The principle is simple: choose a problem that slows down your business, develop software on Emergent to solve it, use it in your business then submit your creation to the competition.

The challenge is aimed at business leaders, founders, professionals, operational staff, agencies, consultants, creators running an activity and teams faced with real operational problems.

The best applications are not necessarily the most sophisticated applications. The goal is to create specific tools built around a real-world workflow.

Once their application has been developed and deployed, the participant must apply separately to Building France. This can be submitted until August 25, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. CEST.

Each submitted project then appears in the Building France gallery and has its own public page. Participants can share the link to their application to collect votes, which are also open until August 25.

100 projects rewarded!

The selection takes place in several stages.

1. All applications are first ranked based on votes. The 200 most voted projects then go before a jury, which selects the Top 100 and establishes its ranking.
2. The 100 projects selected all receive a reward. The top ten are also invited to participate in the virtual final organized on September 19, 2026, during which they present their project to a final jury responsible for designating the Top 3.
3. The Top 100 and Top 10 will be announced on September 12, 2026.

In total, Emergent plans an allocation of approximately 40,625 euros, made up of financial rewards and credits corresponding to its Standard package.

The first prize represents a total value of 10,210 euros, including 10,000 euros in cash and twelve months’ package. The second reaches 5,210 euros, including 5,000 euros in cash, and the third 3,710 euros, including 3,500 euros in cash.

Participants ranked from fourth to hundredth place also receive a reward.

The “D system” applied to software creation.

Through Building France, Emergent also intends to rely on a notion familiar to French entrepreneurs: the “D system”, this ability to find a solution and advance a project with the available means.

The initiative aims to challenge the idea that technical creation is reserved for developers. For Emergent, creating software must be able to start with an idea and the ability to express it.

During Building France, independent traders, artisans, entrepreneurs and professionals are invited to transform their ideas into real and functional products, without writing code, then present them to a community and a jury.

Emergent wants to democratize the creation of applications.

Emergent was launched by an Indian-born tech unicorn. The platform presents itself as an AI-assisted development partner capable of transforming an idea or business problem into software ready to be put into production.

It has already enabled the development of various applications, including CV management tools in the United Kingdom, a marketing audit application in Germany and a directory of AI use cases intended to facilitate the operational adoption of emerging technologies.

In France, comedian Clovis Henriot (Le Télétravailleur) notably used Emergent to develop cordialement.ai, an application that transforms a message into an acceptable professional response.

In July 2026, Emergent closed a $130 million Series C round, at a post-funding valuation of $1.5 billion, reaching unicorn status just one year after its public launch.

With Building France, the company now wants to invite French entrepreneurs and professionals to apply this approach to their own business issues.

BUILDING FRANCE – PARTICIPATE:

To participate:

1. 1. Choose a problem that is slowing down your business.
   2. Develop software on Emergent that addresses this problem.
   3. Deploy your application.
   4. Submit your application before August 25.
   5. Share your application to collect votes.