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The formation of massive stars remains one of the most intriguing questions in astrophysics today. These objects heavily influence their environment, which has implications well beyond stellar physics. Several formation theories have been proposed such as stellar collisions, merging, competitive accretion and monolithic collapse amongst others. The main limitations in discriminating between these theories result from the difficulty to obtain direct observational constraints on the formation process itself.This PhD aims to shed new light on the formation process of massive stars by investigating the multiplicity properties of the star formation end products. Results from previous surveys have revealed a large population of moderate and faint companions, qualitatively matching to expectations of disk fragmentation. It is now critical to characterise their properties and push the detection limits further. This PhD made use of the second VLT generation extreme-AO instrument SPHERE to explore the low-mass end of the companion mass function around a population of O-, B- and WR-type stars in the Carina region. More than 800 sources were detected around these stars and their stellar properties were derived using a combination of imaging and statistical techniques. The research described within this PhD helps to discriminate between the different formation scenarios and also opens the window into the future of massive star observations.