Helsing Chief Scientist Antoine Bordes receives AAAI Classic Paper Award for foundational AI research

Paris / Munich / London, 28.01.2026 – Antoine Bordes, Chief Scientist of Helsing, the leading European defence technology company, has received the prestigious Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Classic Paper Award for 2026.

This award recognises the 2011 paper, “Learning Structured Embeddings of Knowledge Bases”, co-authored by Antoine Bordes, Jason Weston, Ronan Collobert and Yoshua Bengio. Their research introduced a foundational method for AI to learn from structured, symbolic facts, enabling models to be grounded in reality.

While this research was a precursor to modern AI methods, its underlying principle and ethos is also today at the heart of Helsing’s approach to developing systems. For defence AI to operate safely and effectively in a complex environment, it must act based on a reliable, structured understanding.

Antoine Bordes said: “It is deeply gratifying to receive this award. As researchers, we hope our work will contribute something meaningful. To know that our paper is now considered a cornerstone of modern AI is the highest form of recognition. Today, through my work at Helsing, I continue that mission by putting the latest advances in AI to work in defence of democracies."