Veolia
Veolia builds a secure internal GPT in two months and opens it to its whole workforce
Veolia, the French environmental services group, replaced employees' use of public AI chatbots with its own secure assistant, Veolia Secure GPT, built by its IT teams in two months. Access grew from 400 people in July 2023 to all 213,000 employees by October 2023. By June 2025 a trade outlet reported nearly 65,000 active users.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
213,000
Employees with access worldwide in October 2023, after a staged rollout from 400 employees in July 2023 and 2,000 at headquarters in September1
nearly 65,000
Active users across 45 entities, as reported by Journal du Net in June 20252
plus de 90 % (more than 90%)
Share of the group's white-collar staff among those active users, as reported by Journal du Net2
13,000
Employees trained to use the technology, as reported by Journal du Net in June 20252
The problem
Veolia has about 213,000 employees. Staff were already using free public AI tools for quick translations and searches. These carry a risk that company data leaves the group. Veolia told employees not to use them, but it needed a safe alternative that people would actually choose.
What they built
Veolia Secure GPT is an internal chat assistant for writing, translating, searching and summarising information, including questions about uploaded PDF documents. Veolia's IT teams built it on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service and Google Cloud. Later it added Amazon's Bedrock service, which gives access to many models, so that the platform does not depend on one supplier.
By 2025 the platform hosted many specialised assistants and agents on top of the basic chat. One example is VivaOGPT at Veolia Eau France, the group's water business in France, which reads tender documents from local authorities that want to outsource their water service.
How they did it
The IT teams developed the tool in two months. The rollout was staged on purpose to test scalability: 400 employees in July 2023, 2,000 at headquarters in September, then all employees in October 2023. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), where the system first looks up passages in company documents and then writes an answer from them, powers the document services. The group IT department funded the first phase; subsidiaries were to be charged by usage once they got access.
At Veolia Eau France, the CIO told Journal du Net the first aim was to make generative AI available to everyone. The unit ran awareness sessions through 2024, first for management committees, then for local champions, and trained 1,500 managers. From the end of 2024 it moved to specific tools, starting with the tender-file assistant.
Results
Per Veolia's October 2023 press release, all 213,000 employees had access by that month. In June 2025 Journal du Net reported nearly 65,000 active users across 45 entities, which it put at more than 90% of the group's white-collar staff, with 13,000 people trained and 130 internal assistants.
At Veolia Eau France, VivaOGPT analysed nearly 150 tender files after its November 2024 launch. Journal du Net reports a gain of one working day per file and per business developer. The unit expected more than half of its tenders, over 300 files, to go through the tool over a full year. That is an expectation, not a result.
All reported figures
| Measure | Figure | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Employees with access worldwide in October 2023, after a staged rollout from 400 employees in July 2023 and 2,000 at headquarters in September | 213,0001 | |
| Active users across 45 entities, as reported by Journal du Net in June 2025 | nearly 65,0002 | |
| Share of the group's white-collar staff among those active users, as reported by Journal du Net | plus de 90 % (more than 90%)2 | |
| Employees trained to use the technology, as reported by Journal du Net in June 2025 | 13,0002 | |
| Internal assistants running on the platform, as reported by Journal du Net in June 2025 | 1302 | |
| Tender files analysed by the VivaOGPT assistant at Veolia Eau France since its November 2024 launch | près de 150 (nearly 150)2 | |
| Time saved per tender file and per business developer with VivaOGPT, as reported by Journal du Net | un gain d'une journée de travail (one working day)2 | |
| Daily connections to Secure GPT at Veolia Eau France, which has 15,000 staff, in June 2025 | plus de 700 (more than 700)2 |
Lessons for your project
Offer a safe in-house alternative before staff drift to public chatbots. Veolia banned services that risk leaking data and built its own tool at the same time.
Scale in stages. Veolia went from 400 users to 2,000 at headquarters to the whole workforce in about three months, which let the IT team test that the platform held up.
Keep the platform model-agnostic. Veolia started on Azure OpenAI, then added Amazon Bedrock and Google models so each use case can use the model that suits it.
Train people alongside the rollout. Veolia ran prompt sessions and, at Veolia Eau France, trained 1,500 managers and named local champions.
Move from a general chatbot to specific assistants. The reported time savings come from a targeted tool for tender files, not from the general chat.
Caveats
- The headline rollout figures come from Veolia's own press release. Adoption, trained-staff and time-saving figures come from a Journal du Net article that relays what Veolia told the journalist; Veolia has not published them in a source we could open.
- The one-day saving per tender file and the 150 files are reported for one assistant at one subsidiary (Veolia Eau France), not for the group, and no measurement method is given.
- The press release says 'record time' and 'two months' for the build but names no cost or team size. The tool was first funded by the group IT department.
- The press release says Azure OpenAI without naming a model. The GPT versions come from a Le Monde Informatique article of October 2023; Gemini and Claude 3.5 come from the 2025 Journal du Net article, which also says the platform uses 19 models in all.
- The 213,000 headcount is the figure in the October 2023 press release. Later articles quote slightly different group headcounts.
Sources
- Veolia Secure GPT: generative artificial intelligence for the environment
Veolia · 2023-10-23 · Press release · veolia.com
- Veolia déploie un ChatGPT interne adossé à 280 bases de données
Journal du Net · 2025-06-10 · News · journaldunet.com
- Avec Secure GPT, Veolia sensibilise les collaborateurs à l'IA générative
Le Monde Informatique · 2023-10-12 · News · lemondeinformatique.fr
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.