Case study ·
ITER relies on Microsoft AI to accelerate nuclear fusion
Original title, in French: “ITER mise sur l'IA de Microsoft pour accélérer la fusion nucléaire”
- Publication
- Journal du Net (France)
- Author
- Xavier Biseul
- Published on
- 17 September 2026 · read in the page structured data
Summary
The international ITER project, which is building an experimental nuclear fusion reactor in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, entered into a partnership with Microsoft in March 2025 to deploy its AI solutions, according to Jean-Daniel Delaplagne, head of the IT Project Tools Section. A chatbot named Lucy, based on Azure OpenAI, searches a document base of more than 1.5 million documents. 400 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences have been allocated, or around 15% of users, covering procurement, HR, logistics and IT support, which handles 50,000 requests a year. Around 300 agents have also been created in-house by experienced users via Copilot Studio. By default, Copilot is preferred over custom development, and technological sovereignty is considered a lesser concern given ITER's status as an international organisation.
Summary based on the full text of the article.
Read the article on Journal du Net →Figures cited
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50,000 requests
IT support requests per year
ITER, IT department
« Nous recevons environ 50 000 demandes d’assistance IT par an, avance Jean-Daniel Delaplagne. »
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1.5 million documents
number of documents accumulated by ITER
ITER, 30 years of knowledge
« Nous avons accumulé plus de 30 ans de connaissances, soit plus de 1,5 million de documents, aussi bien des textes que des images »
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400 licences
Microsoft 365 Copilot licences allocated
ITER, around 15% of users
« En tout, 400 licences Microsoft 365 Copilot ont été attribuées, représentant environ 15% des utilisateurs, des ingénieurs, des scientifiques mais aussi des collaborateurs des fonctions corporate ou dédiées à la régulation. »
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300 agents
AI agents created by experienced users
ITER
« environ 300 agents ont été créés par des utilisateurs avertis ("power users") via Agent Builder de Microsoft 365 Copilot ou Copilot Studio »
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2,000 employees
ITER headcount
ITER, 34 nations
« quelque 2 000 employés, représentant 34 nations »
Classification
- Country
- France
- Company size
- Large companies
- Industries
- Industry and manufacturing · Energy, utilities, environment
- Companies
- GitHub (supplier), Microsoft (supplier), ITER (deploys AI)
- Keywords
- nuclear fusion, microsoft copilot, azure openai, internal chatbot, document management, it support
Entry written by Marsanne Studio from the cited article, with the help of an AI model (claude-sonnet-5). The rights to the article and its illustrations belong to Journal du Net and its author. Entry translated from French by Claude Sonnet 5.5.