Leadership Team

Jean Ferré

CEO

Jean was CEO of Sinequa from 2005-2010 before joining Microsoft in 2011, to come back as Sinequa President & CEO in 2023. Jean likes to get to the point quickly, hence his passion for effective information retrieval and now RAG. He also loves working with scientists and engineers that are building game changing products that can have an impact.

Jean brings over 25 years of international business management expertise and product leadership to his role as CEO. He served as Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Vantiva (Connectivity), as Executive Vice-President SBU Digital Services with IN Groupe overseeing Nexus Technologies (Public Key Infrastructure). Jean also served as General Manager of Airspace Mobility Solution Business Line at Thales. Apart from Microsoft where his last role included the global design of ISV co-sell programs for Azure, Jean was Partner & Director at The Boston Consulting Group, focusing on Product & Data led transformation programs.

Jean grew up in the U.S. and in France, he graduated from Ecole Polytechnique with a Degree in Engineering, he also holds a Master of Science from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. At the beginning of his carrer, he was co-founder and CEO of Arisem (Artificial Intelligence and Semantics) a pioneer in NLP and Internet Search that was later bought by Thales.

Xavier Pornain

Senior Vice President, Sales North America

Xavier is in charge of Corporate Development, driving Strategic Alliance, mergers and acquisitions as well geographic expansions.

Prior to this role, Xavier was the senior vice president of Sales for North America where he established and led Sinequa’s U.S. operations and its successful expansion in the region.

Xavier started his career at IBM and worked over 20 years in various sales and leadership positions in the enterprise software space. Xavier has a strong track record to build high-performance sales teams and develop key relationships with F500 clients and partners.

Xavier is an avid runner with multiple marathons under his belt.

Stephane Kirchacker

Vice President, Europe Middle East & Africa

As Vice President, Sales EMEA, Stephane is responsible for driving sales and expanding channels to accelerate Sinequa’s regional growth. With 20 years of sales, project management and business development experience gained in the U.S and Europe, Stephane joins Sinequa from ASG Software Solutions where he was Senior Vice President, Business Development Infrastructure Software. While at ASG Software Solutions, he was responsible for accelerating worldwide growth of infrastructure products through an innovative approach to sales and go-to-market strategy. Prior to ASG Software Solutions, Stephane was Vice President Sales Worldwide for Active Circle and the Managing Director, Northern/Southern Europe for Atempo.

Stephane holds an executive MBA from ESCP Europe as well as a Master degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Paris 6. Stéphane likes books being both a reader and a writer with several short stories published.

Jeff Evernham

Vice President, Product Strategy

As VP of Product Strategy, Jeff Evernham sets the strategy for Sinequa’s software offerings and also leads Product Marketing. Jeff is a thought leader in the realm of applying technology to business problems, and guides the product roadmap so that Sinequa’s technical innovations lead to thrilled customers. As the Product Marketing lead, he defines the go-to-market strategy and communicates Sinequa’s value proposition. Prior to assuming this role, Jeff spent four years as VP of Customer Solutions, where he led the consulting team that brought Sinequa’s technical expertise to customers, partners, and prospects. Jeff’s 20+ year career spans a variety of firms and includes data analytics consulting, professional services, sales, and engineering.

Jeff holds a Master of Engineering degree from MIT.

Luc Manigot

Vice President, Center of Excellence

Luc manages Sinequa’s Center of Excellence that he created in 2018. Under this role, Luc oversees today critical activities like the Sinequa University platform, a dedicated team of Subject Matter Experts, and both the Customer Support and Training departments.

Luc collaborated in the development and production of the very first version of Sinequa Search Engine, which has become today one of the leading platforms on the market of Insight Engines. Luc also served as Scientific Director before being promoted VP Global Operations in 2009.

Prior to joining Sinequa and the Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence space in 1997, Luc conducted three years of research in Combinatorics and Graph Theory at the EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris).

Luc holds a Master of Theoretical Mathematics and Master II of Theoretical Computer Science from Paris VI University. Luc is a member of the Data Intelligence Cluster of the GICAT representing Sinequa. Luc loves jazz music and plays saxophone.

Adrien Gabeur

Vice President, Cloud and Saas

Adrien leads Sinequa’s Cloud & SaaS department where his team is responsible to design and take to market next gen [cloud native/SaaS] products on top of Sinequa’s technology.

Adrien joined Sinequa in 2016 as one of the first Senior Sales Engineer in New York where he brought in some key customers and greatly contributed to Sinequa’s expansion in North America. In 2018, he moved to Sinequa’s headquarters in Paris and headed the development of Sinequa’s AI business solutions, connecting the dots between all the different stakeholders in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning technologies.

Prior to joining Sinequa, Adrien started his career in the Energy Efficiency & Smart Grid space where he developed one of the first investment fund dedicated to the financing of energy reduction assets.

Adrien graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and received a Master of Science in Management Science & Engineering from Columbia University.

Laurent Fanichet

Vice President, Corporate Communications

Laurent drives our overall communications strategy, inclusive of public relations, media relations, internal communications, and analyst relationships.

Prior to this role, Laurent was the Vice President of Marketing. He built the U.S. Marketing team from scratch early on and contributed to start and grow Sinequa’s momentum in North America. He also contributed to establishing Sinequa as a leader repeatedly with analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester.

Laurent brings over 20 years of marketing experience in the software industry where he has worked in a variety of roles, in Europe, San Francisco and New York City. These roles include deep specialization in the areas of product marketing, field marketing/communications, and business development.

Prior to joining Sinequa, Laurent held various management positions at Quantum Corporation, Atempo (Acquired by ASG Software Solutions) and ILOG (acquired by IBM. He is a travel enthusiast and a wine connoisseur.

Alexandre Bilger

Chief Architect Officer

With over twenty years of experience as a top executive within enterprise software, Alexandre has a proven ability to build and lead high performing organizations. In addition to being a thought leader, he is passionate about cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing and natural language processing.

Alexandre co-founded and was Chief Technology Officer of eFront, a data-processing software vendor specializing in the financial industries. He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines. Alexandre is a champagne and travel enthusiast with a genuine passion for Japan.

Philippe Motet

Vice President, Engineering

Philippe brings over 25 years of software engineering and development management experience to Sinequa, having previously led engineering teams for leading software companies. Philippe oversees the development and evolution of the company’s AI-powered Search & Analytics Platform. As such, he is managing the research and development, including the machine learning, the natural language processing and the quality assurance departments.

Previously Philippe was at Oodrive, a European-based leading independent software company for sensitive data management, where he was chief technology officer in charge of accelerating development, offering customers a high level of quality and security. Prior to joining Oodrive, Philippe held various software engineering management positions at Atempo and Active Circle, which was acquired by Oodrive. Motet holds a Master of Science degree from Supélec. Besides developing software, Philippe loves to ski in the snowy mountains around the world.