Some AI-era founders are choosing in-person work for trust, peer learning, and access to relationships that are harder to build online—but the comments from Station F and Anthropic do not show that startups generally are returning to offices. They describe a possible advantage of proximity, alongside the flexibility of remote work.
Why some AI founders still value being together
At the “The Power of Proximity” panel at Wave by Vento in Turin, Station F director Roxanne Varza said the campus was seeing more people come in since the AI boom, and that many teams were embracing physical presence. Anthropic head of startup sales for EMEA Aiden Blake offered a reason: building products and reaching prospective customers online has become easier, he said, while “the real trust” happens in person. These are the speakers’ observations, reported by The Next Web on October 8, 2026, not results from a workforce survey.
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Proximity can mean people, information, and chance encounters
Varza described proximity as access to people, information, and serendipity. Repeat founders may bring networks that open doors, she said, but relationships can be influenced rather than engineered. The implication is practical: a campus can create more occasions to meet peers and useful contacts, but attendance cannot guarantee a partnership, customer, or investment.
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Blake said founders who attend Anthropic events want to meet builders working through similar problems, hear from people with more experience, and access capital. He cited ElevenLabs as an example of a company that began fully remote and opened offices as it grew. He also said go-to-market staff may benefit from being near colleagues so they can learn from one another. These examples illustrate reasons a team might change its approach; they do not establish that the same choice works for every company.
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What Station F’s program requires
Hybrid participation is possible in Station F’s F/ai AI-startup program, according to Varza, but teams must attend certain program moments. She said teams that miss them lose needed momentum. That is a program expectation, not proof that every startup needs a campus or an office. Founders considering such a program should check which sessions require attendance, how often they occur, and whether the travel commitment fits the team.
Station F has also built programming around AI-company connections. Its June 2026 retrospective described F/ai as bringing together 16 AI leaders and eight Tier-1 funds. In January 2026, it announced an OpenAI partnership involving on-campus sessions, regular discussions, and access to tools and credits. Anthropic’s Claude Founder House event page documents a Paris event on July 22, 2026, with founder and builder cohorts, panels, office hours, and hands-on building. These are examples of structured in-person programming, not evidence that such events caused a wider shift in where startups work.
What Station F’s numbers do—and do not—show
Station F’s figures help explain why the campus is a useful place to observe AI startups, but they describe its own community rather than the startup sector as a whole. Varza explicitly cautioned in a June 2026 retrospective that Station F “is in no way representative of the entire ecosystem.”
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|---|---|
| About 80% of campus companies were AI companies in 2025 | Station F’s December 2025 account; campus-specific, not a sector-wide share. Source. |
| €1.5 billion raised across 136 funding rounds in 2025 | Station F reported this as a record for its campus companies; not a measure of funding across all startups. Source. |
| Average founder age: 36 in 2026, 33 in 2025, and 31 in 2018 | Station F’s figures for its community. The organization also noted more technical and research backgrounds, which Varza linked partly to AI and deep tech. Source. |
| 77% said AI reduced their hiring needs | Station F’s 2026 campus figure; it does not show whether those companies work remotely or in person. Source. |
| More than 90% used Anthropic models | Station F’s 2026 campus figure, which it noted could change quickly as model preferences shift. Source. |
| 70 nationalities represented | Station F’s campus figure for 2025. Source. |
None of these figures measures office attendance or compares the performance of remote and in-person teams. They offer context about Station F’s unusually AI-focused community, not evidence of a general return to the office.
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How founders can decide whether an in-person setting is useful
The choice need not be all-or-nothing. A team can compare a remote baseline with targeted visits, event attendance, a hybrid program, or regular campus time against the work it expects to get from being together.
- Peer access: Will the setting make it easier to meet founders facing similar technical or business problems?
- Structured introductions: Are there specific mentor, expert, or investor sessions, or only a general promise of networking?
- Travel and attendance: Which sessions are compulsory, how much time and expense will travel add, and who on the team must attend?
- Flexibility: Can the team retain remote work outside key moments, and does that fit its hiring and operating needs?
These questions help assess what a campus or event actually offers without assuming that proximity alone produces better outcomes. The available accounts describe potential mechanisms and examples; they do not rank remote, hybrid, or campus-based work by results.
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What can be concluded about an AI-era return to the office?
Station F and Anthropic’s comments make a credible case for why some founders may seek more in-person contact as AI tools make online building and customer engagement easier. Their examples point to trust, peer learning, information, and access to networks as possible benefits. But the reporting contains no broad survey, office-occupancy data, headcount trend, or remote-versus-office performance comparison. It supports a story about reported preferences and reasons—not a claim that AI startups as a group are returning to offices.
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