Jérôme Freani
Artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity. OSINT.
Chief Operating Officer of Aleria (opens in a new tab), the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign AI company.
About Jérôme Freani
Jérôme Freani is Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Aleria, the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign AI company, where he previously served as Chief Product Officer. Aleria builds sovereign AI infrastructure for governments and national enterprises that need AI to run entirely within their own environment. Jérôme came to AI from cybersecurity and open-source intelligence (OSINT): he worked at CGI Business Consulting, ISMG and Altrnativ, led the Club Cyber of AEGE, the École de Guerre Économique alumni association, and has taught at INSA Centre Val de Loire and the EGE.
Areas of expertise
Artificial intelligence
As COO, and previously CPO, of Aleria, Jérôme represents a company that builds sovereign AI infrastructure, data platforms and agentic applications that run inside an organisation's own environment. In his interviews at GITEX Global 2025 and COMPUTEX 2026 he discussed Aleria's sovereign intelligence vision, sovereign AI factories and agentic AI in production.
Cybersecurity
He advised organisations on cybersecurity risk management and governance at CGI Business Consulting in Paris (2018–2020), moderated French-language roundtables and presented a webinar on SASE architecture for Information Security Media Group in 2020, and worked on the product side as Product Development Manager at Altrnativ (2021–2024). He led the Club Cyber of AEGE, organised the 2019 conference on digital sovereignty given by Éric Léandri, then CEO of Qwant (today CEO of Aleria), created the partnership between the EGE/AEGE and Paris Cyber Week, co-coordinated the 3rd Cyber-Day.Info (2020), co-organised Cyberday Corsica (2019) and founded Cyberologue, a cybersecurity news brand.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT)
He was one of the designers of the OSINT "317" challenge of the European Cyber Cup, which AEGE clubs created with France's Military Intelligence Directorate (DRM), and co-presented it at FIC 2021. His team took third place at the Stranger Case 2022 OSINT CTF. He has spoken on OSINT at OpenCYCOM 2022, CYCOM 2023 (on fake identities built with generative AI) and Expoprotection 2022, and discussed OSINT and personal protection on ESET's CyberDolus podcast.
Competitive intelligence and teaching
He is a graduate of the École de Guerre Économique's full-time programme in Strategy and Competitive Intelligence (Stratégie et Intelligence Économique) and wrote for Portail de l'IE, the school's intelligence portal, in 2018 and 2019. He has taught as a part-time lecturer at INSA Centre Val de Loire and at the École de Guerre Économique.
Selected moments
Speaking & media
Sovereign AI factories and agentic AI – COMPUTEX 2026
Interview with TECHx Media at COMPUTEX 2026 in Taipei (published 10 July 2026, 3 min 28 s).
Plays from YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com) when you click. Watch on YouTube
Aleria at GITEX Global 2025 – CXO DX interview
Interview with CXO DX at GITEX Global 2025 in Dubai, as Aleria's Chief Product Officer (published 21 October 2025, 4 min 29 s).
Plays from YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com) when you click. Watch on YouTube
“This person does exist” – CYCOM 2023
Jérôme Freani's talk on OSINT and fake online identities built with generative AI, CYCOM 2023, Montpellier, 28 April 2023 (in French, 44 min).
Plays from YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com) when you click. Watch on YouTube
OSINT challenge 317 – FIC 2021
Jérôme Freani on stage at FIC 2021 in Lille, presenting the rules and scenario of the OSINT challenge 317 of the European Cyber Cup (ZATAZ video, in French, 10 min).
Plays from YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com) when you click. Watch on YouTube
As seen on
Contact: Let’s talk.
For speaking invitations, media interviews and professional enquiries, the best way to reach Jérôme Freani is a message on LinkedIn.
Enquiries about Aleria's products: aleria.ai/contact (opens in a new tab).