AI assessment for SMEs: public funding and what you can do for free
Before you pay a consultant to tell you where AI fits, check what is already funded. There is public money for this in France. And a good part of the work can be done alone, without spending a cent.
Published on 4 November 2026
What an AI assessment should tell you
A good assessment gives you a short list: the tasks AI can take over in your company, and the data it needs to do them. If it ends with a forty-page roadmap and not one example from your actual week, it has not done its job.
The good sign is when you recognise your own files in the recommendations. That is also where things often get stuck: AI works on your data. If that data lives in ten spreadsheets that contradict each other, the assessment will say so, and that is where you will have to start.
Public schemes that fund an assessment
We do not give amounts here: funding rates and conditions change often, sometimes mid-year. The figures that count are on each scheme's official page.
- Bpifrance, Diagnostic Data IA: several days of work with an expert approved by Bpifrance, which funds part of it. It is aimed at SMEs and mid-sized companies above a minimum size and revenue. Thresholds, price and what is left to pay are on diag.bpifrance.fr, where you also apply.
- Région Sud, Mon assistant IA: a consultant chosen and funded by the Region, from awareness through to setting up a first use case. For SMEs based in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. The detailed conditions are on the Region's website.
- Elsewhere, ask your chamber of commerce (CCI) and your region's economic development agency. Several regions fund digital assessments that also cover AI, under names that change from one year to the next.
What you can assess alone, for free
If your company is too small for Diagnostic Data IA, or before you commit, start on your own. Take an hour to list the tasks that come back every week and that nobody enjoys: copying information out of PDFs, pulling the monthly figures. Write down how long they take. That list will be the basis for everything else, questionnaires included.
- Our free AI assessment: six questions, two minutes, no email until you see the result. You get your level and the three uses to start with. The detailed PDF report is optional.
- Bpifrance's Autodiag IA, also free, measures your overall maturity. You need to create a Bpifrance account.
- France Num's practical sheets on generative AI, free, to understand what these tools can and cannot do.
When do you need paid support?
A self-assessment is enough to know where to start. It stops being enough when AI has to plug into your software, read your internal documents or prepare a decision that commits the company. At that point you need someone to look at your actual data.
With us, that step starts with a free 30-minute call. If a tool is worth building, you get a fixed price before anything starts. For what comes next, see how to bring AI into your SME without turning it into a separate project.
Questions we get asked
Want to look at your own case?
Show us the file and the process around it. In 30 minutes, we will tell you what is worth keeping, connecting or replacing.