Yann Lechelle

Yann Lechelle is a repeat French tech entrepreneur, operator and angel investor. Over roughly two decades he has founded, grown and exited multiple tech startups — commonly cited as five to six — including the mobile app-discovery company Appsfire and, most notably, Snips.ai, a privacy-by-design voice and AI deeptech where he served as COO, taking it from seed to a trade-sale exit to Nasdaq-listed Sonos in November 2019.

In February 2020 he became CEO of Scaleway, the Paris-based cloud infrastructure provider (part of the Iliad group). Over three years he roughly tripled the workforce to 600+ employees, delivered double-digit growth three years running, and positioned Scaleway as a credible European alternative to the major hyperscalers, before departing in January 2023. He briefly ran a public "crowdsourcing" exercise ("Future Proof Inc.") to choose his next mission — the same method he'd used before joining Snips.

Since 2023 he has been co-founder and CEO of Probabl, an INRIA spin-off and the official steward/operator of scikit-learn (the widely used open-source machine-learning library with billions of downloads), co-founded alongside core scikit-learn contributors including Gaël Varoquaux and Camille Troillard. He holds a Bachelor of Computer Science (summa cum laude) from the American University of Paris and an MBA from INSEAD, where he has also served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

Beyond his operating roles, Lechelle is a co-founding member of France Digitale, a board member / VP of Ecosystem at HUB France AI, has been involved in Gaia-X, and has acted as a digital expert to the French government's France 2030 investment initiative. He is a frequent voice on European tech sovereignty, deeptech and open source.

• Invests as an angel in early-stage/seed startups, and participates as a Limited Partner in venture funds — specifically Daphni (Daphni Yellow) and Diaspora Ventures.
• Themes reflect his operator background: deeptech and AI/ML, cloud/software, and "technology for good," with a strong bias toward European tech sovereignty and open source.
• Via his LP position in Diaspora Ventures, he backs the thesis of investing in French/European founders with a global (especially US) mindset.
• Combines capital with hands-on help — he describes himself as a founder mentor and Entrepreneur-in-Residence, so his "yes" tends to favor founders he can coach through the seed-to-scale journey he has lived himself.