Laurent Solly is a French executive and entrepreneur whose career has spanned public service, media, and global technology leadership.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Sciences Po Paris, one of France's most prestigious institutions for political science and public affairs, before going on to graduate from the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA), the elite French grande école historically responsible for training the country's senior civil servants, diplomats, and top executives. This dual academic foundation gave Solly both the analytical rigor and institutional fluency that would come to define his professional trajectory across the public and private sectors.

Following his graduation from ENA, Solly entered public service and rose to serve as Chief of Staff to Nicolas Sarkozy during Sarkozy's tenure as Minister of the Interior and subsequently during his presidency of the French Republic. This role placed Solly at the center of French political and administrative decision-making, sharpening his capacity for strategic leadership and executive management at the highest levels of government. He later transitioned into the media and advertising industry, serving as Chief Executive Officer of TF1 Publicité, the commercial advertising arm of TF1 Group, France's leading private broadcaster, where he gained substantial experience in media monetization, commercial strategy, and the evolving digital advertising landscape.

Solly joined Meta (then Facebook) in 2012 and spent nearly 13 years in increasingly senior leadership roles, ultimately serving as Vice President for Europe. In this capacity, he oversaw Meta’s operations, policy, partnerships, and commercial activities across Europe, navigating the company through significant periods of regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical complexity, and platform transformation. Among his most consequential contributions during this period was his central role in establishing and building the Paris hub of FAIR — Meta's Fundamental AI Research division — into what became the largest artificial intelligence research laboratory outside the United States.

This achievement reflected both his ability to attract world-class scientific talent and his skill in cultivating productive relationships between the technology industry and France's academic and governmental ecosystems.