NEW YORK, NY / SAINT-DENIS, FRANCE — July 29, 2026 — Grist Labs, the company behind Grist, the open source spreadsheet-database hybrid, today announced a new partnership with au carré, a French development agency that builds solutions on low-code technology while helping unemployed people break into the tech industry.
Au carré takes a three-step approach to its mission: it identifies unemployed people in Seine-Saint-Denis who want to join the tech world, trains them in software development basics, low-code tools, and soft skills through a three-month bootcamp, and then hires them to work on real customer projects.
Grist has become one of au carré’s go-to platforms. Its open source model and focus on data sovereignty line up well with the needs of au carré’s public sector customers, including the French Ministry of Finance, the Préfecture d’Occitanie (a regional administration), and the National Research Agency (ANR), among many others.
Au Carré is also a member of the Grist.gouv community, an initiative led by the DINUM (the French government’s Interministerial Directorate of Digital Affairs) to help public administrations get more out of Grist.
“We are convinced that Grist is a powerful platform to build the custom solutions that our customers need,” said Pierre Deleforge, co-founder of au carré. “As an official Grist service partner, our ambition is to provide our technical expertise to the fast-growing Grist customer base in France, so they can get the benefits of the many advanced features available in the tool. And by doing so, we can provide employment opportunities to more and more of our alumni.”
“Sovereignty isn’t a feature we bolted on – it’s a direct result of Grist’s open source roots,” said Stefano Maffulli, Chief Revenue Officer at Grist Labs. “That’s what draws in a wide community of partners like au carré, building an ever-growing array of solutions on top of Grist. And it’s exactly why security- and compliance-first organizations, especially in the public sector, are choosing Grist to get the job done.”
With this partnership, Grist Labs adds a trusted implementation partner and training provider for French public and private organizations looking to build custom, secure solutions on Grist – and a partner whose work creates real opportunity along the way.
About au carré
Au carré is a purpose-driven company founded in France in 2022 that builds Grist-based and other low-code solutions for public and private organizations, while training and hiring unemployed people from Seine-Saint-Denis to deliver on customer projects.
About Grist Labs
Grist Labs is the company behind Grist, the open source spreadsheet-database hybrid that combines the flexibility of a spreadsheet with the structure of a database. Grist gives teams and organizations – including government agencies with strict sovereignty requirements – a platform they can trust to build the tools they need.
