#akur8sailing

15th Edition · November, 7th 2021

The Akur8 team is honored and excited to announce its partnership with French professional sailor Antoine Cornic, a great skipper and a great guy!

Akur8 will be supporting Antoine in his next sailing adventures on the magnificent Ebac IMOCA. This partnership began with the 15th edition of the Transat Jacques Vabre in November 2021, and will take us around the globe as Antoine is preparing to race the 2024 Vendée Globe.

Logo of Virtual Regatta
the IMOCA Akur8 for the Virtual Regata. A boat with a white and blue sail

Get on board with Akur8’s sailing team!

Whether you are a skipper at heart or simply curious about sailing, participate in Akur8’s private Virtual Regatta and win a weekend sailing cruise with a professional skipper!
Visit www.virtualregatta.com/en/
and sign in with Akur8’s exclusive code:

AKUR8SAILING

Registrations open on October 7; the boats set sail on November 11, along with all Transat Jacques Vabre skippers!
May you have fair winds and following seas!

What is it about sailing that feels right for Akur8?

The values of Akur8 and those of IMOCA Globe Series align in many ways.

Performance, Technology, Innovation

Akur8 is about applying these values to insurance pricing, to challenge the unbearable status quo and bring to life the next generation of insurance pricing, leveraging our proprietary Transparent AI technology.

Proximity, Accessibility, Humility

Akur8 is AI-driven, but refreshingly human! Our team enjoys building close relationships with our clients, whether in person, via zoom or via chat, to bring the best support possible with humility, empathy and open-mindedness.

Freedom, Authenticity

At Akur8, we disrupt the known and organize the unknown, genuinely embracing the freedom to move historical boundaries in the insurance sector all the while ensuring that we provide a safe, robust, sustainable and scalable solution to our clients.

the boat Akur8 named Ebac, an IMOCA, sailing the see
Antoine Cornic and Jean-Charles Luro on the boat, showing the Akur8's logo on their shoulders.

Respect, Solidarity, Commitment

At Akur8, we build things that last. We have tremendous respect for our clients, insurance carriers all over the world that have been around for decades or centuries, protecting their policyholders over generations. We are in it for the long run and are committed to prove ourselves worthy of their trust for decades to come!

Diversity

Akur8 is home to 75 great talents from 25 countries who speak 17 languages! Building and nurturing a truly inclusive, diverse and international company and culture has been our ambition from the start. We are actively engaged everyday in making sure that reality lives up to our aspirations. We’re proud to share that part of our identity with our community and beyond!

Meet Antoine Cornic and the Ebac IMOCA

Who is Antoine Cornic to Akur8?

This project is first and foremost a human adventure! Antoine and Benoît, our beloved IT operations manager, are family! We got to know Antoine through Benoît and it is a connection that we hold dear!

Antoine Cornic in his bar. In the background, the shells are loaded with lots of bottles of alcohol.

Antoine is the descendant of a family of sailors and skippers, generation-old adventurers of the seven seas.

Antoine is lucky enough to call the Island of Ré his home! On top of being a great skipper, he is a restaurant and bar owner on the island, which adds to his numerous qualities in the eyes of the Akur8 team, who surely likes to enjoy a nice meal and / or a fine drink!

Really, mostly, Antoine is a great guy! He is a national hero in La Rochelle and the Island of Ré, where we have been able to witness his fan base in action, paparazzing him and the magnificent Ebac IMOCA! He has been passionate about sailing and regattas since childhood. Racing the Vendée Globe is a dream he has been nurturing since he was a kid, and we’re extremely honored and humbled to accompany him as his dream becomes reality.

The Ebac IMOCA in a nutshell

A drawing of the boat IMOCA Ebac.

Performance & Characteristics

Max speed: 29 knots
Length: 18.28m
Width: 5.50m
Draft: 4.50m
Sail area: 260 / 600 square meters

Construction

Builder: Carbon
Architect: Owen Clarke

What’s next?

We’ll be cheering for Antoine Cornic and his co-skipper Jean-Charles Luro as they take the start of the 15th Transat Jacques Vabre, on November 7th, and head to Martinique!

A piece of world's map showing the route of the Transat Jacques Vabre. The start is in France, Le Havre and the end at Martiniqe.

Joining the IMOCA Globe Series is more than a marketing project, it is an Akur8 adventure!

Akur8 was officially incorporated as a company in July 2018.
Over the course of 2 years, we went from:

A handful of people to over 50.

A small sublet workspace in Paris to our fully-fledged Akur8 office, along with offices in London and New York that are growing fast, and should soon be joined by an Asian location.

A first client, who was also our beta-partner, to 30+ insurance companies and 350+ actuaries using Akur8 everyday to build their pricing models across 12 countries and 3 continents.

We are humbled by this success!

We are also aware that Akur8 is more than KPIs, it’s an incredible human adventure where talents, forces and energies unite to form a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. As a team, we want to cheer for and support Antoine, live the regatta adventures with him, share his day-to-day life as a skipper across the globe, join him for the high and low-lights, learn from his passion, tenacity and experience and grow as a team.
We are starting a new page in Akur8’s history with this adventure, and we can't wait to see the Ebac IMOCA at sea boosted by Akur8 team’s tailwind!


Photos: Yann Werdefroy and Cornic Sailing

Antoine Cornic et Estelle Lebar, an Akur8 employee, on the boat Ebac.