👋 **Inside this week's edition:** 👀 The French tech ecosystem is brimming with talent, ideas, and ambition. But a stubborn procurement gap between startups and the corporates and government agencies that should be their biggest customers threatens to undermine the whole project. **We examine a series of new reports that highlight the size of the problem and why it remains so persistent.** 👀 If you thought payroll was a problem that had already been solved, well, think again. The 20-Something Co-Founders of Rivage just raised €2.6M to prove they can finally solve it. **CEO Tancrède d'Hauteville explains why payroll still sucks and how AI can make it suck less.** **Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand** * * * # Tech Talk 💟🐱 You could be forgiven if you thought that February had been declared national "**I ❤️ Mistral AI Month** " in France. The local LLM heartthrob has been feeling the warm fuzzies from just about every corner after months of perpetually online types insisting the company was going to get squeezed to death between Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI and Chinese open-source alternatives like DeepSeek. Instead, it appears Mistral has defied these gloomy predictions and gone from promising European hopeful to full-blown revenue rocket. **In a Financial Times profile**, the Paris-based start-up says its annualized revenue run rate is now north of $400 million, up from just $20 million a year ago. That's a 20-fold surge that would make even Silicon Valley blink. Founded in 2023 and valued at nearly €12 billion last year, Mistral is now aiming to cross $1 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026, powered by more than 100 large enterprise customers and a growing list of European governments. The timing is not accidental. As geopolitical tensions rise and concerns about US tech dominance deepen, European boardrooms have suddenly rediscovered the word “sovereignty.” More than 80% of the EU’s digital infrastructure depends on foreign, mostly Yankee Doodle Dandy, providers. Mistral’s pitch is straightforward: European-built models, European-run infrastructure, European data residency. In other words, AI without the hyperscaler umbilical cord. That pitch has helped persuade institutions such as France's national research agency, CNRS, **which this month rolled out a chatbot built on Mistral** for its researchers, who are not allowed to use other tools such as Claude or ChatGPT for official purposes. To back up that ambition, Mistral is investing €1.2 billion in a new AI data center in Sweden, its first major facility outside France. The site will deliver 23 megawatts of computing power and is expected to come online next year. CEO Arthur Mensch made the official announcement at the TechArena Conference in Sweden. "By building a fully sovereign AI stack, we’re strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy, competitiveness, and ability to serve industries, public institutions, and researchers at scale," **Mensch wrote on LinkedIn**. Via Arthur Mensch's LinkedIn Sweden’s appeal is relatively cheap and abundant low-carbon energy, an important detail when your product runs on power-hungry chips. The company says the facility could generate more than €2 billion in revenue over five years. Mistral has already raised €1.7 billion, including backing from ASML, and insists it doesn’t need to rush into an IPO thanks to readily available debt financing. That financial flexibility, CEO Arthur Mensch argues, helps safeguard independence, an increasingly fashionable word in European tech circles. About 60% of revenues now come from Europe, with the rest split between the US and Asia. Clients include ASML, TotalEnergies, HSBC, and several European governments. While OpenAI and Anthropic dominate headlines, Mistral is carving out a distinct role as Europe’s “sovereign AI” champion. The subtext is clear: in the race for artificial intelligence supremacy, Europe may not want to win—but it definitely doesn’t want to rent forever. | **Financial Times****,****Les Echos** 💸5️⃣ **Elaia** is back in the market with its fifth **Digital Venture Fund** , and it’s already locked in a €120 million first close to double down on Europe’s most ambitious tech founders. DV5 will write checks from €1 million to €15 million, backing B2B startups from pre-seed to Series B, with a clear bias toward deep, IP-heavy technologies, think AI, cybersecurity, techbio, and industrial innovation. The first bet is already in: Zurich-based Mimic Robotics, signaling the fund’s appetite for “physical AI” and foundational infrastructure plays. With heavyweight backers like Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, and MACSF on board, Elaia is making a familiar argument: Europe doesn’t just need more startups, it needs the kind that underpin entire industries and stick around long enough to matter. | **EU Startups** 🇮🇳⛰️ France is packing its AI bags for New Delhi. **La French Tech Mission** is bringing a 19-startup delegation to India’s AI Summit on February 19–20, led by its director Julie Huguet, with stops planned in Bangalore and Mumbai to drum up business. The lineup spans heavy hitters like BlaBlaCar and Pigment, rising AI players such as H Company and Harmattan AI, plus quantum, cybersecurity, space, biotech, and even agtech contenders. Paris wants a bigger slice of India’s booming tech market. | **Maddyness** ⚫ French business leaders can breathe a little easier, at least when it comes to their home addresses. A new decree published on August 25 now allows executives to mask their personal addresses on public documents like Kbis extracts, a long-awaited move that gained urgency after a string of kidnappings and attempted abductions, particularly in the crypto world. Since the rule took effect, around 40,000 anonymisation requests have been processed by commercial courts, with another 50,000 handled upstream by the INPI. The process takes about five days (assuming no paperwork hiccups), and early technical glitches have mostly been ironed out. That said, the data isn’t gone for good: authorities can still access it, and with personal information already flooding the dark web.**|****Les Echos** 🎮💢 The French president apparently forgot that timeless saying: _Hell hath no fury like a video gamer scorned_. **Emmanuel Macron** stepped into the gaming crossfire, floating the idea of restricting violent video games in the wake of recent youth violence. In an interview with Brut, he argued that spending five or six hours a day “killing people” in games can normalize violence and potentially push vulnerable teens toward real-world loss of control, though he insisted games aren’t inherently bad. Instead, he’s calling for a scientific review, tasking France’s National Council on AI and Digital Technology to assess the impact of violent games and even conversational AI agents on children, with conclusions expected by early summer. The comments come as France also advances a ban on social media for under-15s, putting it at the center of a broader European push to curb minors’ digital habits. Predictably, gamers bristled, prompting Macron to **clarify on X** that he supports the industry, even as he questions what happens when screen time starts looking more like combat training: "What I announced on Brut, in response to that teacher who was shouting her anger, isn’t a ban on video games: it’s the launch of a scientific, collegial effort to face reality head-on. Calmly, lucidly, and with all stakeholders. It’s our responsibility to ask researchers, scientists, and clinicians to evaluate the impacts, untangle misconceptions, and inform the public debate."**|****Brut****,****Macron Twitter** 👎 **X** , formerly known as the platform everyone still accidentally calls **Twitter** , is having a rough year in France. According to **Médiamétrie** , it lost 16% of its monthly visitors in 2025, dropping to 15.6 million, and in November, it hit its lowest audience levels since tracking began in 2017. Daily traffic is down even more sharply, off 21% to 4.2 million users, meaning 1.2 million people have quietly logged off. It’s still the undisputed heavyweight in micro-blogging, with Threads and Bluesky trailing far behind, but the dominance looks a little less imperial than it used to. Guess all the disinfo and deepfakes and child porn aren't winning hearts and minds, even if it's keeping French regulators and investors fully employed. Meanwhile, Reddit is staging a surprisingly strong French renaissance, jumping 72% in a year and muscling its way into the top 10, helped along by clever auto-translation and Google-friendly threads. X remains in the social media big leagues for now, but it’s suddenly within arm’s reach of LinkedIn, Pinterest, and even Discord, which is probably not the kind of competition it once worried about. | **Le Figaro** * * * # France Has the Startups. Why Won't Its Large Corporates Buy From Them? France likes to think of itself as a startup nation. And in many ways, over the past decade, it has become just that. The country has built one of Europe's most vibrant innovation ecosystems, producing heavyweights like **Mistral AI** in artificial intelligence, **Pigment** in finance, and **Exotec** in industrial robotics. The talent is here. The ideas are here. The ambition is here. What's missing? Big customers. That's the blunt takeaway from a flurry of reports and events that landed in early February 2026, all circling the same uncomfortable truth: French and European startups are struggling to sell to large corporations and government agencies, the very institutions that should be their most natural buyers. And without those contracts, even the most brilliant startups risk remaining forever small, forever fragile, **or worse** , packing their bags for the United States. Gaze into the purchasing abyss and weep * * * # Rivage's Founders Say French Payroll Is Broken. AI Can Fix It Rivage’s cofounders: top: Ayoub Saidane, down, from left to right: Hector Vergeron, Paul Lemoine, and Tancrède d’Hauteville (CEO). Payroll. It's not exactly the kind of word that gets pulses racing in startup land. And when I first heard the pitch for **Rivage**, a Paris-based startup that just raised €2.6 million to build payroll software, I'll confess my initial reaction was something like: really? Haven't we solved this already? After a decade of SaaS innovation, billions of euros poured into fintech, and the rise of unicorns like PayFit, you'd be forgiven for thinking that cutting paychecks in France is a problem that's been thoroughly cracked. But spend a few minutes talking to Tancrède d'Hauteville, the 20-something CEO of Rivage, and you start to realize the picture is far messier than it looks from the outside. "Payroll managers spend six to seven hours a day on the software," d'Hauteville told me during a recent interview. "So if you can make a 10% difference on the software, in terms of productivity, you're going to change an entire profession, an entire sector." See how Rivage is making payroll sexy again * * * # 💸 Top Funding Deals 💸 📇 **Company:** DentalMonitoring 🏷️ **Sectors:** HealthTech, AI & Machine Learning, Hardware 🔍 **Description:** DentalMonitoring develops AI-powered remote orthodontic monitoring solutions, operating as a software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD). Its platform enables orthodontists to supervise treatments remotely through AI-driven analysis of intraoral scans and patient data, improving clinical efficiency and patient experience. The company offers a suite of products, including DM Insights, ScanAssist, DM Engage, and ScanBox Pro, serving over 2 million patients globally. 💻 **Website:** **DentalMonitoring** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Growth 💰 **Amount Raised:** €84M (approx. $100M, mix of equity and debt) 🏦 **Investors:** Lazard Elaia Capital, ISALT 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Philippe Salah 🗞️ **News:** DentalMonitoring has secured €84M ($100M) to accelerate international expansion and product innovation, reinforcing its position as a global leader in AI-powered orthodontic remote monitoring. The round, led by Lazard Elaia Capital with participation from ISALT, combines equity and debt financing and follows the company’s $150M raise in 2021 that propelled it to unicorn status. Active across Europe, the US, Australia, and Japan, DentalMonitoring plans to expand into Brazil, Turkey, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The funding will also support AI R&D through a newly launched software development center and deepen integrations across the orthodontic ecosystem, including manufacturers, practice management software providers, and scanning hardware companies. With a treatment-agnostic platform model and growing enterprise partnerships, DentalMonitoring aims to define a new global standard of care in digital orthodontics while exploring applications beyond dentistry. | **EU Startups**, **Maddyness** * * * 📇 **Company:** Naboo 🏷️ **Sectors:** AI & Machine Learning, SaaS & Enterprise 🔍 **Description:** Naboo is an AI-powered procurement platform initially focused on corporate event management (MICE) and now expanding into broader “Class C” (tail spend) categories such as travel, fragmented services, and indirect procurement. Positioned as an AI-driven operating system for event and indirect spend management, Naboo centralizes sourcing, contracting, payments, compliance, and financial visibility for large enterprises. 💻 **Website:** **Naboo** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Series B 💰 **Amount Raised:** €60M (≈ $70M) 🏦 **Investors:** Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notion Capital, ISAI, Ternel 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Maxime Eduardo, Antoine Servant, Lucien Bredin, Jean-Louis Villeminot 🗞️ **News:** Naboo has raised €60M in a Series B led by Lightspeed to expand beyond event management into AI-driven control of “Class C” indirect spending—an often fragmented and weakly structured category covering events, travel, and miscellaneous services. Founded in 2022, Naboo positions itself not as a traditional SaaS tool but as a “service-as-software” platform that combines AI agents, procurement workflows, payment infrastructure, and supplier consolidation into a unified operating system. The company reports €125.8M in business volume to date, 3x year-over-year growth over the past three years, 0% churn among enterprise clients, and contracts with a quarter of CAC 40 companies. International expansion is accelerating, with the UK now its largest market outside France and a new North American hub in New York following its launch in Montreal. The fresh capital will fund deeper AI integration across sourcing, contracting analysis, automated tender management, and real-time compliance workflows, alongside expansion into adjacent procurement categories beyond events. Naboo aims to surpass €1B in managed business volume within two years, positioning itself as a strategic financial control tower for enterprise indirect spend in an AI-native procurement landscape. | **Maddyness**, **FrenchWeb**, **EU Startups** * * * 📇 **Company:** GitGuardian 🏷️ **Sectors:** Cybersecurity, AI & Machine Learning 🔍 **Description:** GitGuardian is a cybersecurity company specializing in the detection and remediation of exposed secrets (API keys, tokens, credentials, certificates) and the protection of non-human identities (NHIs) within codebases and cloud environments. Its platform monitors repositories and infrastructure to identify compromised secrets, alert developers and security teams, and orchestrate remediation to prevent lateral movement and data breaches. 💻 **Website:** **GitGuardian** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Growth 💰 **Amount Raised:** $50M 🏦 **Investors:** Insight Partners, Quadrille Capital, Eurazeo, Sapphire, Balderton, Bpifrance 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Eric Fourrier 🗞️ **News:** GitGuardian has raised $50M in a growth round led by Insight Partners to scale its platform amid the rapid expansion of non-human identities driven by AI agents and cloud automation. The company, founded in 2017, has become a reference player in secrets security, with over 500,000 developers using its GitHub-integrated tools and enterprise clients including Snowflake, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, and ING. In 2025 alone, GitGuardian detected and remediated 350,000 exposed secrets—five times more than the previous year—highlighting the acceleration of threat vectors as attackers increasingly leverage AI. Generating 70% of its revenues in the US and reporting annual revenues between €30M and €50M, the company aims to deepen its presence in North America while expanding into APAC, Latin America, and the Middle East. The raise positions GitGuardian to compete more aggressively against well-funded US and Israeli cybersecurity players in a market where AI-driven attacks are reshaping the threat landscape. | **Les Echos****,****Maddyness** * * * 👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: [email protected] / [email protected] 👋🏻‌

France likes to think of itself as a startup nation. And in many ways, over the past decade, it has become just that. The country has built one of Europe's most vibrant innovation ecosystems, producing heavyweights like **Mistral AI** in artificial intelligence, **Pigment** in finance, and **Exotec** in industrial robotics. The talent is here. The ideas are here. The ambition is here. What's missing? Big customers. That's the blunt takeaway from a flurry of reports and events that landed in early February 2026, all circling the same uncomfortable truth: French and European startups are struggling to sell to large corporations and government agencies, the very institutions that should be their most natural buyers. And without those contracts, even the most brilliant startups risk remaining forever small, forever fragile, **or worse** , packing their bags for the United States. The numbers tell a stark story. According to the **2025 Observatory of Relations Between Startups and Major Accounts**, published on February 5 by France's Mediator of Enterprises Pierre Pelouzet and presented to Anne Le Hénanff, the Minister for AI and Digital, the 39 largest French corporations devoted on average just 1.99% of their purchasing budgets to startups in 2024, up from 1.92% in 2023. Even for the 5 largest corporates that work most aggressively with startups, the figure only reaches 4.78%. Some of the most engaged groups spend upward of €200 million a year on startup solutions, but others scrape by at a mere €2 million. The gap between leaders and laggards is enormous, and it reveals just how much untapped potential sits on the table, according to the report. On the public purchasing side, there has been more progress. Government procurement from startups jumped 33.4% in 2023, crossing €2.3 billion. This was spurred partly by the push around the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Still, that represents just a meager 1.43% of total purchases, up from 1% the previous year. ## Same Old, Same Old ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

Payroll. It's not exactly the kind of word that gets pulses racing in startup land. And when I first heard the pitch for **Rivage**, a Paris-based startup that just raised €2.6 million to build payroll software, I'll confess my initial reaction was something like: really? Haven't we solved this already? After a decade of SaaS innovation, billions of euros poured into fintech, and the rise of unicorns like PayFit, you'd be forgiven for thinking that cutting paychecks in France is a problem that's been thoroughly cracked. But spend a few minutes talking to Tancrède d'Hauteville, the 20-something CEO of Rivage, and you start to realize the picture is far messier than it looks from the outside. "Payroll managers spend six to seven hours a day on the software," d'Hauteville told me during a recent interview. "So if you can make a 10% difference on the software, in terms of productivity, you're going to change an entire profession, an entire sector." Founded in July 2025, Rivage is the brainchild of four co-founders who met at some of France's most prestigious schools. D'Hauteville and co-founder Hector Vergeron are HEC graduates, while Ayoub Saidane**and** Paul Lemoine came from École Polytechnique and CentraleSupélec, respectively. While the young team faced skepticism, D'Hauteville also makes a case for why youth, in this particular instance, might actually be an advantage. "We have no personal obligation. Can sleep on the floor of the office and just completely give away our life for this problem." So, what exactly is the problem? PayFit built an HR and human capital management tool aimed at SMEs directly. Rivage is targeting a completely different slice of the market. More than half of French employees depend on an accounting firm or outsourcing provider for their payroll and social security declarations. That's roughly 15 million pay slips processed every month by these firms. ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

🧠 Europe has the talent, the research, and the ideas to lead in AI, but not yet the scale. In this no-nonsense interview, **JFD founder Delphine Remy-Boutang explains why regulation alone won’t save Europe, and why “scale or die” is now the only game in town.****–** **Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand** * * * # 🟡✨ The Big AI Bonanza **Howdy, dear readers.** February in Paris can mean only one thing: artificial intelligence. (What, you were thinking, _love? romance?_ Please. Such analog notions are so 2024.) No, if this month now has a theme, it's AI. And the nation celebrates with AI barometers, ecosystem mappings, closed-door briefings, buzzy conferences at startup campuses, exclusive dinners where the AI hoity-toity can hobnob at the Élysée, and the pending India Impact AI Summit opening in New Delhi on February 16. **President Macron will be among those traveling to the big AI hoedown next week**. The conversations this year come with an added splash of existential anxiety as the accelerated pace of AI development made things extra spicy. Is Europe doomed? Is the world doomed? Is this the greatest opportunity of our lifetimes? How do we stop AI? How do we win AI? Is that coffee free? Ground zero for the **Great French AI Rodeo** this week was Station F, where France Digitale organized its **10th annual AI Day with the PR[AI]RIE AI cluster.****** The event took place almost a year to the day after Paris’ big AI summit last year that drew world leaders and corporate big shots to the nation. Photo by David Arous Chris moderated a panel that included one of the lead organizers of the Paris summit, **Anne Bouverot** , Co-Chair of France’s AI & Digital Council. Joining them was Business France captain **Pascal Cagni** and **Zebox's Frédéric Guilleux**. They opened by reflecting on progress made since the summit, including €109 billion in public and private commitments to AI spending, the announcement of several high-profile AI startups, a renewed focus on sovereignty, and recognition of France's and Europe's immense talent and potential. The big challenges emphasized by both Bouverot and Cagni: big Corporates. While some progress has been made in digital transformation, it remains woefully inadequate. The pair were fairly blunt. AI represents a kind of last chance: If Europe's biggest companies don't seize this opportunity to reinvent themselves, the region risks falling permanently behind. Panel: How to build AI leaders, not followers in AI The day also offered a glimpse further down the road, with Yann LeCun outlining a future of AI systems and robots capable of understanding real-world, real-time environments. In conversations on the sidelines, he hinted that this shift from abstract intelligence to situated, embodied AI may move from theory to practice sooner than we think, with more to come in the months ahead. On perhaps one of the most operational panels of the day, **Helen** moderated a discussion on _moving from individual AI hacks to scalable workflows_ , with leaders from **Notion, Foundever** ,**and Ontomantics**. The takeaway was blunt: AI fails less because of the models and their complexity, and more because organisations don’t redesign workflows, incentives, and accountability early enough. Prompting is easy. Installing scalable AI Operations is hard and unavoidable. Panel: From Prompts to scalable works. Turning AI Experimentation into Operations # 📿 The Big AI Day Roundup As part of AI festivities, there have been announcements aplenty. Here now are a few of the tastiest morsels... 🥩 In a closed-door briefing with the tech press, **Station F** leaders announced the launch of **F/ai** , a new program designed to create the next generation of **global AI champions,** and to do so at a _very early stage_. The program targets **AI-native, early-stage founders only** , selected strictly by recommendation. Out of 70–100 applicants, **just 20 startups have already been chosen,** most less than 12 months old, **80% led by repeat founders** , many with prior exits, PhDs on the team, and **75% already through pre-seed**. Several are either already hitting or aim to hit **€1m in revenue within six months**. Backed by a dense network of **major AI players, including big US tech names,** F/ai offers financing, top-tier mentors, privileged partnerships, and a powerful go-to-market engine. Founders can submit a _wish list_ of corporate intros, with up to five warm connections to accelerate distribution. The three-month core program can extend to **18 months** , with three batches per year (batch two kicks off in September), positioning Station F as an **8,000-startup-strong global launchpad** rather than just a European hub. With cohorts spanning the US, UK, Germany, Pakistan, and five French startups, and C-level speaker sessions featuring names like Andrew Bosworth (CTO, Meta), **Station F Combinator wants Paris to be the home of the next generation of global AI champions.** 🥩 **France Digitale released its new AI Mapping** that counts **1,114 AI startups** , more than any other European country, with nearly **€16bn raised** , **45,000 jobs created** , and AI solutions firmly embedded across health, industry, finance, marketing, and the public sector. What stood out this year isn’t just scale, but maturity: GenAI is now mainstream, data quality has become a strategic bottleneck, and agentic, task-specific AI is quietly moving from demos into day-to-day operations. The message echoed across panels and corridors alike: the French AI ecosystem is no longer asking _whether_ AI works but how fast it can scale, industrialize, and secure real access to markets. | **Mapping here (in French)** 🥩 The **_Direction générale des Entreprises_** (DGE) and La French Tech Mission announced the first 10 companies picked to be part of the new **France Legaltech****program, to give extra support to this emerging sector.** Among those selected**:****Dastra****,****Pappers****,****Tomorro****,****Ordalie****,****Lexbase****, and****Gino LegalTech****.** 🥩 **To cap off AI Day,** the conversation quite literally moved up the food chain. Last night, around the Élysée table, Emmanuel Macron hosted a closed-door AI dinner bringing together some of the most influential figures of the French tech ecosystem, from **Frédéric Mazzella** to **Jean-Charles Samuelian** , alongside founders of Gleamer, Owkin, Mirakl, Nabla, Aqemia, and _mucho más_. Add a few industrial heavyweights, policymakers _,_ and economists, and you get a very French mix of power, capital _,_ and code. (Or no code, or vibe code, as the case may be these days...) |******Maddyness** * * * # Headlines No AI-filled week would be complete without a barometer or two... 🗞️ **The JFD/EY Fabernovel European AI Barometer delivered a sobering reality check.** Yes, Europe has world-class AI talent, strong academic leadership, and founders who want to stay. But sovereignty won’t come from declarations alone. The barometer’s headline ambition echoed the calls made by Cagni and Bouverot: Getting large European corporates to buy European AI solutions up to just **9% of all purchases within two years. That rather modest goal** landed awkwardly in a room obsessed with strategic autonomy. As Minister Anne Le Hénaff bluntly put it at the presentation in Bercy: without real private-sector demand, sovereignty remains theoretical. The message from JFD was clear: AI leadership won’t be regulated into existence. It has to be _purchased_ , partnered, and scaled by Europe’s own champions. | **For the lowdown,****check out the European AI barometer****and our****interview with JFD Founder and CEO Delphine Remy-Boutang.** 🗞️ **Generative AI adoption in France is officially “fulgurant.”** According to **Crédoc’s latest Digital Barometer,** nearly half of French people now use generative AI, a jump of 15 points in just one year, matching the speed of adoption seen in the US. Among 18–24 year-olds, usage hits a staggering 85%, with AI now preferred over search engines for homework, writing, coding, and content creation. But there’s a catch: the age gap is exploding. While AI is second nature to the young, only 15% of over-70s use it, turning generative AI into the country’s newest digital divide. | **20 Minutes** 🗞️ **But when it comes to the public sector, GenAI adoption is not so "fulgurant."** France may have written the playbook on “trustworthy AI,” but when it comes to actually using GenAI in public services, it’s mostly stuck in pilot purgatory. The country ranks near the bottom of a new global index among 10 countries, with adoption patchy, tools scarce, and just 27% of public servants saying their organization has invested in AI, according to the report by the Public First for the Center for Data Innovation, sponsored by Google. Nearly one in three officials thinks nothing they do could be done by AI, and 45% have never used it at work, which is… not exactly a hotbed of experimentation. Add in fuzzy guidance, minimal training (two-thirds report getting none), and a compliance maze that makes everyone nervous, and you get a self-reinforcing cycle of low use and low enthusiasm. | **Public First for the Center for Data Innovation****,****Euronews** 🗞️ **Still, adoption of GenAI does not apparently equal love.** If you were hoping the French were starry-eyed about an AI-powered tomorrow…not quite. According to a new Ifop survey, 71% say the prospect of a future with more AI in their daily lives is _inquiétante_ , versus just 29% who find it promising. And this general mood tracks with a broader sense that we’re living through decline rather than progress: 57% see today’s world as a period of regression, compared with only 18% who see progress. Younger respondents are noticeably more upbeat (43–45% of under-35s find AI promising), but the optimism drops off sharply with age. In other words, France isn’t anti-future. It’s just deeply suspicious of it. AI may be billed as the next big leap forward, but for most French people, it currently feels less like “Black Mirror” in a good way and more like… well, just “Black Mirror.” | **Ifop** 🗞️ **Cortex House: AI hits Montmartre.** A stone’s throw from the Sacré-Cœur, **Cortex House** is set to become Paris’ new AI hub. Spanning 11,000 m² over six floors, it will host 1,900+ workstations, events, workshops, and an incubator for pre-seed and seed startups. Founded by Albin Serviant with Daphni’s team and ex-WeWork’s Romain Allouch, it’s backed by a who’s who of French Tech, including Owkin, Back Market, Probabl, and more. Think less coworking, more “Maison de l’IA”, a year-round playground for innovation, collaboration, and AI excellence in the heart of Paris’ 18th arrondissement. | **Maddyness** 🗞️ **AI goes bedside:** The **Alliance Santé IA** is bringing AI into hospitals for real. Led by CHU Montpellier and Adlin Science, the €18M, 3-year project turns messy medical data into tools that speed research, ease admin, and improve care while keeping data in-house. Already tested at the hospital, it’s designed to scale nationwide with a team of 40+ full-time contributors and PhDs. | **Les Echos** 🗞️ **Crypto kidnappings push French bosses to hide their addresses.** Since last August, French company leaders have been able to anonymize their personal addresses on official docs like Kbis, a response to a recent wave of kidnappings and attempted kidnappings targeting entrepreneurs. So far, **40,000 requests** have been processed, with another 50,000 handled by the INPI. The measure doesn’t erase the data — authorities still have access — but it’s a small shield in an era where personal info spreads fast, even onto the dark web. | **Les Echos** ### **ICYMI** 🗞️ **Europe's AI Reckoning: Caught Between Regulation, Rivalry, and Risk** | As 2026 begins, France and the European Union find themselves at the center of a perfect storm, facing diplomatic confrontation with Washington, urgent safety crises, and mounting questions about whether their regulatory approach can survive first contact with geopolitical reality. | **The French Tech Journal** 🗞️ **From Tesla to Paris: UMA's Audacious Bet on European Robotics** | A new French startup believes Europe—not Silicon Valley—is the best place to build the robots of tomorrow. | **The French Tech Journal** 🗞️ **Gradium Wants To Make Voice The New Operating System for AI |** The Paris startup, spun out of research lab Kyutai, just emerged from stealth with a $60M seed round to become the global foundation layer for real-time voice interactions. | **The French Tech Journal** 🗞️**How HyprView Is Using Photonics And AI To Bring Cancer Diagnostics Into the Light** | Thanks to developments in AI, photonics is stepping out of the lab and into the clinic. HyprView uses light to uncover the invisible biology inside tumors - information microscopes miss entirely - opening the door to faster, smarter, and far more predictive cancer diagnostics. | **The French Tech Journal** * * * ### 🧠 The AI Barometer Decoded: Delphine Remy‑Boutang on Why Europe Must Scale. Now. Delphine Remy-Boutang, Founder & CEO of JFD (©photo: François Tancré) Founder & CEO of JFD, **Delphine Remy‑Boutang** , doesn’t mince her words. Europe has the talent, the research, and the ideas. What it lacks is scale and contracts. Founded in 2012, **JFD** is a growth accelerator that connects innovative entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and investors with one goal: turning European innovation into real business and industrial scale. Ahead of the presentation of JFD’s 2026 European AI Barometer at Bercy, we sat down with her for a fast-paced, no-nonsense conversation about regulation, sovereignty, the myth of ‘small is beautiful’, and why 2026 is Europe’s make-or-break year. Read the full Q&A * * * _****Want to reach an audience of more than 30,000 readers each month?****_ _****The French Tech Journal is the leading English-language media platform covering France's dynamic tech ecosystem. With 31,000 + engaged readers across key global markets and consistently high engagement rates, our sponsorships provide unparalleled access to decision-makers in French tech.****_ Learn more about sponsorships * * * # 🗣️ Announcements 🗣️ 🚀 **€1M AI Challenge for Space Data Innovation** | **Apply by March 9** | The Île-de-France Region and CNES officially launch a €1 million AI Challenge to accelerate innovation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space data. Continuing the Region’s AI Challenge series started in 2019, this initiative aims to foster future national champions and strengthen France’s technological and economic sovereignty. Two tracks are open: (1) AI-powered applications leveraging satellite data for use cases such as security, energy, environment, and risk management; and (2) advanced vision-language models for automatic interpretation of high- and very-high-resolution satellite imagery. CNES will provide data, technical expertise, and project oversight. | **Apply via the Île-de-France Region platform:** **Challenge AI for Space** 🚀**National AI Mapping | Deadline February 15 |**_Hub France IA_ is launching a second invitation to startups, SMEs, and innovative companies located outside of Paris to join the _2026 national map_ of French artificial intelligence. This sixth edition, launched once before, aims to provide an accurate snapshot of the AI ​​ecosystem across the country, highlighting the diversity of regional dynamics. More than 700 AI stakeholders are already listed. Interested regional gems can still apply now until February 15, 2026. | **_Registration link_** # 📆 Events 📆 📆**World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF)** | **February 12 and 13** | Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes | With more than 10,000 expected participants, 320 international speakers, and 180 exhibitors, the WAICF is the European event dedicated to the innovations and strategic challenges of artificial intelligence. | **Buy tickets** 📆 **Paris Hardware Meetup | The New Defense Stack** | **February 17** | Join Paris-area hardware builders — founders, engineers, designers, and investors — for talks and community networking focused on defense hardware and physical product innovation at Hexa (eFounders) in Paris. Speakers include leaders from Harmattan AI, Helsing, Landroval, and more, with structured talks followed by open mic and networking. | **Request to join** 📆 **Neurons and Peppers #3** | **February 18** | **Paris** | The state-of-the-art AI research meetup in Paris hosted by **Neurons and Peppers by datacraft** , focused on deep technical sessions such as domain-specific modeling and retrieval-augmented generation benchmarking, followed by community networking, talks, and food & drinks. | **Request to Join** 📆 **AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 | March 17–18 | ESCP Business School | Paris |** Artificial intelligence is transforming universities at every level — from classrooms to research labs and administrative offices. The AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 in Paris will bring together academics, innovators, and policy-makers to discuss one central question: How should higher education evolve in an AI-driven world? This international event is the place to exchange ideas, showcase innovations, and shape the roadmap for universities in the age of AI. | **Pre-Registration** 📆 **OpenText Summit Paris 2026** | **April 15 | Palais Brongniart** | AI is everywhere and full of promise — but without contextualized data, governance, and security, AI fails. Join OpenText Summit Paris 2026 to discover how to unlock the intelligence of your enterprise data and activate AI with confidence. Expect visionary keynotes, French customer success stories, real-world use cases, in-depth small-group sessions, live demos, expert meetings, and peer networking. Explore the latest innovations in content management, cybersecurity, service management, business networks, and more — and learn how to deploy responsible, compliant AI with full control and freedom of choice. | **Register** 📆 **RAISE Summit 2026** | **July 8–9, 2026 | Carrousel du Louvre, Paris** | Join one of Europe’s most influential AI gatherings bringing together thousands of builders, investors, executives, and innovators to shape the future of artificial intelligence. Learn from global leaders through keynotes, panels, workshops, a hackathon, startup competitions, and high-impact networking — all curated to accelerate AI strategy, investment, and real-world deployment across industries. | **Tickets** * * * 👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: [email protected] / [email protected] 👋🏻‌

Founder & CEO of JFD, **Delphine Remy‑Boutang** , doesn’t mince her words. Europe has the talent, the research, and the ideas. What it lacks is scale and contracts. Founded in 2012, **JFD** is a growth accelerator that connects innovative entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and investors with one goal: turning European innovation into real business and industrial scale. Ahead of the presentation of JFD’s 2026 European AI Barometer at Bercy, we sat down with her for a fast-paced, no-nonsense conversation about regulation, sovereignty, the myth of ‘small is beautiful’, and why 2026 is Europe’s make-or-break year. **Q: You spent 15 years in London at IBM, right at the birth of cloud and social tech. How did that shape your view of innovation?** **DRB:** I don’t regret a single minute. At IBM, I had what you might call _carte blanche_. Twitter and Facebook were emerging, cloud was just taking off, and I genuinely felt like we were building the future in real time. It taught me one thing: innovation doesn’t depend on where you’re from. It depends on where you’re going. When I came back to France in 2012, I arrived just as the French tech ecosystem was being born: Bpifrance, then La French Tech. I saw the energy, the ambition - and also, very quickly, the structural limits. ### **Q: You founded JFD in 2012. What problem were you trying to solve?** **DRB:** A very concrete one: innovation without business doesn’t scale. JFD was built on three pillars. **Accelerate** , through initiatives like the Margaret Awards. **Insights** , through tools like our annual tech barometer. And **Connect** - which is far more than networking. Connect exists to help entrepreneurs fill their order books. Because without contracts, there is no sovereignty, no scale, no impact. ### **Q: Let’s talk about the 2026 European AI Barometer. What’s the headline takeaway?** **DRB:** Europe produces **15% of the world’s AI research** , yet AI innovation financing here is **seven times harder to access than in the US**. That’s the paradox. We are brilliant at creating ideas. We are far less effective at turning them into global leaders. ### **Q: The report is quite critical of Europe’s regulatory approach. Do you see regulation as a brake on innovation?** **DRB:** Regulation is necessary, but _regulation first_ is not a strategy. In the past three years, Europe has produced **13,000 legislative acts** , compared with **3,500 in the US**. That complexity is costly. It creates friction. And today, **23% of European AI startups are considering leaving the EU**. Ethics without industrial power is just a wish list. If regulation becomes a glass ceiling instead of a safety net, we lose. ### **Q: You often talk about turning “compliance into oversight”. What do you mean by that?** **DRB:** I would have allowed more freedom to experiment, more room to play. We need rules, yes. But rules that protect without excluding us from the game. The AI Act should be balanced by a **European purchasing priority**. That didn’t happen. So now we must act through the market: _European first_ procurement, demand‑side power, and a real Small Business Act mindset for tech. Today, it’s no longer “Small is Beautiful”. It’s **Scale or Die**. ### **Q: The barometer calls for a European “AI Mittelstand.” Why is that so important?** **DRB:** Because sovereignty doesn’t come from startups alone - it comes from mid‑sized, profitable, industrial tech companies embedded in value chains. We’ve spent years supporting innovation. Now we must move from proof of concept to strategic industrial alliances. Public funding has done its job. Today, private companies must take over. Our target is clear: **9% of private‑sector purchasing dedicated to innovative technologies within two years**. Regulation protects. Business propels. ### **Q: Were there any findings that genuinely surprised you?** **DRB:** Yes. Despite everything, **80% of AI founders in Europe choose to stay here**. That’s extraordinary. At the same time, Europe controls just **5% of global computing power** , while holding 15% of AI research output. The issue is not intelligence - it’s scale. We need to shift the debate from public subsidies to **public and private procurement**. Today, public procurement stands at 9%. Private procurement is just 5%. That’s where the real lever is. ### **Q: So how do we move from theory to reality?** **DRB:** By deploying, not testing. When a company like Carrefour doesn’t just experiment, but rolls out AI nationwide, things change. AI is transforming entire sectors, and adoption has been too slow. That was our warning last year. Now, acceleration is non‑negotiable. We must move from **subsidy to contract** , from **regulation to acceleration**. ### **Q: On a scale of 1 to 10 - how optimistic are you about Europe?** **DRB:** Ten out of ten. Entrepreneurs _have_ to be optimists. 2026 is the tipping point. We can still change course, but it has to happen now. Europe has a solid tech ecosystem. What’s needed is conviction, demand, and scale. ### **Q: Finally, what do you expect from the upcoming World AI Summit in India?** **DRB:** It’s a moment to present this collective work and show a different path. Rather than consuming US tech, Europe must build alliances with strategic partners. India is one of them. The message is simple: AI for all, technology in service of people - and innovation that moves from promises to reality. I won’t let go. Large companies can trust the entrepreneurs we bring to the table. **_The European AI Barometer 2026, “United by Tech_ ,_” will be officially presented to AI minister, Anne le Hénanff, on 9th February at the French Ministry of the Economy._****_Access the barometer here._**

# 🧮 Data Point: Only €30M For AI? President Emmanuel Macron went viral among smug Silicon Valley types last week for all the wrong reasons thanks to this tweet: Cue the lazy French bashing: That was only one of many, many, many tweets, but it was the one that Macron chose to respond to directly: Of course, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to critique various aspects of France's economy, policies, and regulations. However, in this case, the €30M Macron cited was a specific scientific grant program within the larger €54 BILLION France 2030 innovation program. Before that, starting in 2018, when Macron announced the first specific AI action program, the government had spent €2.5 billion on AI-related programs. The results have been decent: Last year, at the Paris AI Summit, Macron also announced a mix of €109 billion in public and private spending on AI. Indeed, things are so bad here that France was the number one country in 2025 in terms of foreign investment to build data centers: Is France closing the gap in terms of VC or government funding in terms of AI? Of course not. But then, the U.S. just tried to cut the funding for its National Science Foundation from $8.1 billion to $3.9 billion. And just last year, under President Trump and his Grand AI Plan, the NSF announced **a MASSIVE $100M** "investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes awards to secure American leadership in AI." If I were in the U.S., I'd be more worried about the growing number of states considering moratoriums on new data centers than I would be about how much the French government is spending on AI. Become a paid subscriber * * * SPONSORED ****🚀 Scaling your startup in EMEA?**** Learn how high-growth French companies like Pigment use Vanta to grow fast—without compromising on security. 🔐 Turn compliance into a competitive advantage. 📈 Close deals faster with built-in trust. 📘 Download the Customer Guide * * * # 💸 Weekly Funding Recap: February 6 * * * * * * * * * 📇 **Company:** newcleo 🏷️ **Sectors:** Energy, CleanTech 🔍 **Description:** **newcleo** is a European developer of advanced nuclear technologies focused on lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs) powered by fuel derived from recycled nuclear waste. By combining proven reactor physics with next-generation fuel cycles, newcleo aims to deliver steady, competitive, low-carbon electricity and industrial heat for energy-intensive industries such as steel, chemicals, cement, shipping, and offshore infrastructure. 💻 **Website:** **newcleo** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris, Turin 🧗 **Round:** Series B 💰 **Amount Raised:** €75M 🏦 **Investors:** Kairos, Indaco Ventures, Azimut Investments, CERN Pension Fund, Walter Tosto, Danieli & C., Cementir Holding, Orion Valves, NextChem, Family Offices 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Stefano Buono 🗞️ **News:** newcleo has closed a €75M financing round, bringing capital raised over the past 12 months to more than €105M and total funding since 2021 to €645M. The round combines continued backing from financial investors with the entry of major industrial players from steel, cement, valves, engineering, and energy-adjacent sectors—signalling strong industrial validation of newcleo’s technology and commercialization roadmap. Proceeds will support R&D infrastructure in Europe, including PRECURSOR, a 10 MW non-nuclear lead-cooled test reactor, and accelerate expansion in the US, now the most dynamic market for advanced nuclear technologies. Operationally, newcleo is advancing on multiple fronts: licensing and siting in France (Nogent-sur-Seine and Chinon), large-scale R&D facilities in Italy (Brasimone, including OTHELLO and PRECURSOR), deployment planning in Slovakia via a JV with JAVYS, and a strategic fuel-cycle partnership with Oklo in the US. The round underscores newcleo’s transition from technology development to industrial deployment, positioning it as one of Europe’s most capitalized and vertically integrated advanced nuclear players. | **Marketscreener**, **PR** * * * 📇 **Company:** Hublo 🏷️ **Sectors:** HealthTech, SaaS & Enterprise 🔍 **Description:** Hublo is a workforce management SaaS platform dedicated to healthcare institutions. Born from the merger of Whoog and MedGo during the Covid crisis, Hublo enables hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and healthcare providers to manage staffing end-to-end—from recruitment and scheduling to internal mobility and communication. The platform centralises both ad-hoc and recurring staffing needs, significantly improving operational efficiency for healthcare professionals. 💻 **Website:** Hublo 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Growth 💰 **Amount Raised:** €40M 🏦 **Investors:** Revaia 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Antoine Loron 🗞️ **News:** Revaia has committed €40M through a reinvestment vehicle to continue supporting Hublo following its sale in 2025 to Five Arrows (Rothschild & Co’s alternative assets arm). The vehicle extends Revaia’s involvement beyond its initial holding period. It allows both existing and new European, UK, and US investors to reinvest alongside Hublo’s new majority shareholder and management team. Founded in 2016, Hublo is now used by more than 22,000 managers across over 5,000 healthcare facilities, benefiting around 1 million healthcare professionals and saving an average of 2.5 hours per user per day. Since Revaia’s initial investment in 2021, Hublo has quadrupled its ARR, reached operational break-even ahead of schedule, expanded its product into a full workforce and talent management suite, strengthened its go-to-market with public and private institutions, and executed a consolidation strategy including three acquisitions. This €40M reinvestment stands out as significantly larger than recent European HealthTech rounds, reflecting a late-stage, ownership-driven commitment rather than primary growth capital alone. | **EU Startups** * * * 📇 **Company:** MyC 🏷️ **Sectors:** HealthTech, SaaS & Enterprise 🔍 **Description:** MyC is a B2B SaaS platform dedicated to managing employee health in industrial, multi-site, and high-risk environments. The cloud-based solution centralizes and secures medical data, enabling on-the-ground medical teams, HQ functions, HR, and compliance teams to coordinate care, manage regulatory obligations, and maintain a consolidated, real-time view of workforce health. Designed for complex and low-connectivity environments, MyC combines operational robustness with strict international compliance standards. 💻 **Website:**__**MyC** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Series A 💰 **Amount Raised:** €10M 🏦 **Investors:** Hi inov, IXO, Elaia, OSS Ventures 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Laurent Bonnardot, Benjamin Crevant 🗞️ **News:** Founded in 2020, MyC supports international organizations operating in highly regulated and complex environments such as energy, industry, maritime, defense, and specialized medical services. The platform is deployed across nearly 400 sites in more than 60 countries, serving over 500,000 beneficiaries with more than 1,000 monthly active users. With this €10M funding round, MyC plans to accelerate product development—particularly AI-driven data analysis and process automation—and to scale its international commercial footprint. The company aims to address growing regulatory pressure and operational complexity in occupational health, a global software market estimated at €1.4B and growing at nearly 10% annually. | **Tech EU** * * * 📇 **Company:** Apmonia Therapeutics 🏷️ **Sectors:** BioTech 🔍 **Description:** Apmonia Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech company developing targeted cancer therapies by addressing the extracellular matrix (ECM), a key component of the protective micro-environment surrounding solid tumors. Its proprietary research platform models protein–protein interactions within the ECM to generate novel therapeutic candidates aimed at improving drug penetration and efficacy across multiple cancer indications. 💻 **Website:** **Apmonia Therapeutics** 📍 **HQ City:** Reims 🧗 **Round:** Series A 💰 **Amount Raised:** €10M 🏦 **Investors:** Capital Grand Est, Finovam Gestion, Fondation Fournier-Majoie, Angels Santé, Capital Cell 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Albin Jeanne 🗞️ **News:** Apmonia Therapeutics has raised €10M to advance its lead asset TAX2 into first-in-human clinical development. The round, backed by existing shareholders and new private investors, brings total funding raised since the company’s creation in 2019 to nearly €21M, including €9.5M secured from the European Innovation Council in 2024 (grants and equity). Proceeds will finance a Phase I clinical trial in France and Belgium targeting ovarian, colorectal, pancreatic cancers, and melanoma, while further expanding Apmonia’s ECM-focused discovery platform. The company has also strengthened its operational and governance footprint by opening a dedicated R&D subsidiary in Liège and appointing two independent board members, reinforcing its ambition to reach clinical validation and prepare for strategic partnerships and a potential Series B ahead of its targeted break-even in 2028. | **Journal des Enterprises** 📇 **Company:** Linkup 🏷️ **Sectors:** AI & Machine Learning 🔍 **Description:** Linkup is building a real-time search engine designed specifically for AI systems, positioning itself as the “Google Search for AI agents.” Through an API-first architecture, Linkup enables AI models and autonomous agents to search, retrieve, and validate web information in real time. Its proprietary indexing technology extracts fine-grained “atoms of information” from online content to create an exact, AI-native search index, optimized for how machines consume information rather than humans. 💻 **Website:****Linkup** 📍 **HQ City: Paris** 🧗 **Round:** Seed 💰 **Amount Raised:** €8.46 🏦 **Investors:** Gradient, Elaia, Leblon Capital, Weekend Fund, Seedcamp, Axeleo Capital, OPRTRS Club, Motier Ventures, Business Angels, Arthur Mensch, Florian Douetteau, Olivier Pomel 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Philippe Mizrahi, Boris Toledano, Denis Charrier 🗞️ **News:** After a €3M seed round closed in November 2024, Linkup has now raised an additional $10M to accelerate its ambition of becoming the reference search infrastructure for AI systems. The startup has developed an API allowing AI agents to retrieve reliable, real-time information from the web, addressing challenges such as misinformation, deepfakes, and bot-generated content. Linkup has partnered with trusted media publishers to ensure high-quality data sources and will use the new funding to scale its teams across Paris, New York, and San Francisco. | **Maddyness****,****Linkup** * * * 📇 **Company:** UBEES 🏷️ **Sectors:** AgriTech 🔍 **Description:** UBEES is a global leader in regenerative pollination, providing scalable pollination programs designed as an operational lever for regenerative agriculture. By combining professional apiculture, connected beehives equipped with sensors, agronomic data, and on-the-ground support, UBEES helps farmers and brands monitor ecosystem health, optimize agricultural practices, improve crop yields, protect biodiversity, and increase smallholder incomes. 💻 **Website:** Ubees 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Series A 💰 **Amount Raised:** €8M 🏦 **Investors:** Starquest, Capagro, Newtree Impact 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Louis Delelis-Fanien 🗞️ **News:** Founded in 2017, UBEES operates in more than 15 countries across five continents and works with major global players in agri-food, cosmetics, and energy, including Nespresso, Nestlé, and Starbucks. Originally founded in the United States, the company strategically relocated its headquarters to France to be closer to its European teams, clients, and investors. The €8M Series A will be used to accelerate international expansion—particularly in Latin America and Africa—further develop its connected hive technologies, strengthen its Impact team to better measure agronomic, environmental, and economic outcomes, and build a global community of trained farmers generating additional income through apiculture. | **Les Echos** * * * 📇 **Company:** Bobine 🏷️ **Sectors:** CleanTech 🔍 **Description:** Bobine is an industrial cleantech startup developing an electricity-based chemical recycling technology targeting plastics that are currently non-recyclable and destined for landfill or incineration. Its proprietary process combines heterogeneous catalysis and electromagnetic induction to break down complex plastics into high-quality polymers equivalent to virgin plastic—without relying on pyrolysis or fossil-fuel-based heat. 💻 **Website:** **Bobine** 📍 **HQ City:** Lyon 🧗 **Round:** Series A 💰 **Amount Raised:** €7.5M 🏦 **Investors:** Axeleo Capital, UI Investissement, Angelor, CA Création, CACF Capital Innovation, C.A.V., Quest Investment 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Vincent Simonneau 🗞️ **News:** Bobine has raised €13M to accelerate the industrialisation of its novel chemical recycling technology, with €7.5M raised in equity. Led by Axeleo Capital, the round backs a differentiated approach to plastic recycling that avoids pyrolysis and vapocracking, reducing energy consumption by 60%, production costs by 45%, and significantly lowering CO₂ emissions. Originating from CNRS research in Strasbourg and developed in collaboration with Sicat and Blackleaf, Bobine has since relocated its engineering base to Lyon and installed its first industrial pilot at Michelin’s materials center in Clermont-Ferrand. The current pilot processes up to 100 kg of plastic waste per day, with plans to scale to a 1-ton/day demonstrator. The company began generating initial revenues in 2025 through partnerships with petrochemical players testing difficult-to-recycle plastic waste. The raise comes amid growing scrutiny of chemical recycling in Europe, positioning Bobine as a rare industrial player focused on efficiency, scalability, and regulatory alignment rather than speculative capacity announcements. | **Les Echos** * * * 📇 **Company:** Dionymer 🏷️ **Sectors:** CleanTech, BioTech 🔍 **Description:** Dionymer develops an industrial biotechnology process that converts food waste into bio-based polymers (PHA – polyhydroxyalkanoates) designed to replace petroleum-based plastics. Its proprietary two-step process—sugar extraction followed by bacterial fermentation—overcomes the heterogeneity of food waste, a key bottleneck in the sector, and enables the production of high-quality biopolymers in powder or pellet form for multiple industrial applications. 💻 **Website:** Dionymer 📍 **HQ City:** Pessac 🧗 **Round:** Series A 💰 **Amount Raised:** €7M 🏦 **Investors:** UI Investissement, BNP Paribas Développement, Bpifrance, Naco, Irdi, Aquiti, AFI Ventures, Resilience 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Thomas Hennebel, Guillaume Charbonnier, Antoine Brege 🗞️ **News:** Dionymer has raised €7M to scale the industrial production of biopolymers derived from food waste, building on a technology already validated at pilot scale with first commercial customers. Founded in 2021 by three chemists from the University of Bordeaux, the startup has developed a unique two-step process that neutralizes the variability of food waste by extracting sugars before converting them into PHA via bacterial fermentation. The resulting ultra-fine, spherical polymer powder has already been adopted by cosmetic industry clients seeking petrochemical alternatives. The new funding will finance a 100-ton-per-year industrial demonstrator planned for 2026, expand commercial traction into plastics and textiles—supported by Dionymer’s recent ability to produce pellets—and prepare the ground for a 1,000-ton-per-year factory by 2030. With two major commercial contracts under negotiation and headcount set to grow rapidly, Dionymer is transitioning from pilot-stage innovation to early industrial scale in the bio-based materials value chain. | **Les Echos** * * * 📇 **Company:** Geolinks Services 🏷️ **Sectors:** DeepTech, Energy 🔍 **Description:** Geolinks Services is a deeptech company developing advanced subsurface monitoring and modeling solutions based on passive seismic technology originating from CNRS research. Its flagship product, **FlowTerra™** , enables near–real-time dynamic modeling of the subsurface, allowing industrial players to visualize fluid movements underground. The technology significantly improves the safety and sustainability of mining operations, secures CO₂ storage sites, and increases the probability of identifying and exploiting decarbonised energy resources such as natural hydrogen and next-generation geothermal energy. 💻 **Website:** **Geolinks Services** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Seed 💰 **Amount Raised:** €3.4 🏦 **Investors:** Calderion, Bpifrance, BRGM Invest, InnoEnergy 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Jean-Charles Ferran 🗞️ **News:** This round also included €2.6M in additional financing for a total of €6M to support the commercial launch of **FlowTerra™ in 2026** , targeting mining, CO₂ capture and storage (CCS), and natural hydrogen exploration markets. The funding will also be used to strengthen teams—particularly in AI, geosciences, and modeling—and to structure the company’s industrial and operational capabilities for scale-up. FlowTerra™ represents the transition from technological proof to an operational industrial solution, with broader applications spanning CO₂ storage, geothermal energy, water resource management, underground storage integrity, and industrial risk prevention. The technology enables continuous, reliable subsurface monitoring and is positioned as a key enabler for Europe’s energy transition and sovereignty. | **Bpifrance****,****LinkedIn** * * * 📇 **Company:** DermaScan 🏷️ **Sectors:** MedTech, AI & Machine Learning 🔍 **Description:** DermaScan is a French healthtech startup building specialized centers for early-stage skin cancer screening. By combining advanced medical technologies (including systematic total-body mapping, R&D, and AI) with optimized clinical workflows, DermaScan acts as a first-line screening filter, enabling faster diagnosis while relieving pressure on dermatologists. The company aims to radically improve access to preventive dermatology across France. 💻 **Website:** **DermaScan** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Seed 💰 **Amount Raised:** €2.5M 🏦 **Investors:** Ring Capital, Techmind, Kima Ventures, 199 Ventures, Hexa, Business Angels, Céline Lazorthes, Jean-Charles Samuelian 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Florian Legris, Hadrien Lepage 🗞️ **News:** Founded in 2024, DermaScan has already opened two skin cancer screening centers in Paris (18th arrondissement and Bastille). With a monthly capacity of 3,000 patients, the startup reports having diagnosed 50 cancers, including 8 melanomas—all detected at an early stage. Only 10% of patients are referred to dermatologists for further treatment, helping to significantly reduce strain on the healthcare system. The fresh funding will be used to expand DermaScan’s network of screening centers across major French cities. | **Maddyness** * * * 📇 **Company:** Entent 🏷️ **Sectors:** CleanTech, DeepTech, Industrial Decarbonization, Energy Hardware 🔍 **Description:** Entent is a French deeptech cleantech company developing Heat-to-Power solutions that convert low-temperature industrial waste heat into electricity. Its patented Pulse machine uses an innovative thermo-acoustic cycle capable of valorising heat from as low as 60°C, enabling industrial players to reduce energy waste, decarbonise operations, and diversify their electricity mix. 💻 **Website:** Entent 📍 **HQ City:** Aix-en-Provence 🧗 **Round:** Seed 💰 **Amount Raised:** €2.4M 🏦 **Investors:** Team For The Planet, CAAP Création, Sowefund 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Mathias Fonlupt 🗞️ **News:** Entent has raised €2.4M to launch the first commercial deployments of its Pulse machines and prepare a future Series A. Based at the Technopole de l’Arbois, the company is entering a pivotal phase as deeptech hardware remains challenging to finance. Its first industrial application will be installed at a Michelin site starting in Q1 2026, marking the transition from development to real-world deployment. Entent’s technology converts low-grade waste heat—such as hot water, steam, exhaust fumes from boilers, furnaces, compressors, and engines—into electricity using a thermo-acoustic cycle that avoids energy-intensive pumps, significantly improving efficiency. With ambitions to install several dozen machines within three years and ongoing discussions with industrial partners in France and abroad, Entent positions itself as a critical enabler of industrial decarbonisation and energy efficiency. | **Mesinfos** * * * PRESAGE Co-Founders (left to right): Arthur Chevalier, Annah Augier, Hamza Aassif (founding engineer), and Benjamin Rey 📇 **Company:** PRESAGE 🏷️ **Sectors:** AI & Machine Learning 🔍 **Description:** PRESAGE develops AI-driven _world models_ designed to capture the causal behavior of cloud infrastructures. By simulating the impact of actions before deployment, the platform enables engineering teams to move from reactive incident management to anticipatory, predictive operations—reducing risk, improving reliability, and optimizing complex cloud systems at scale. 💻 **Website:** **PRESAGE** 📍 **HQ City:** Paris 🧗 **Round:** Seed 💰 **Amount Raised:** €1.2M 🏦 **Investors:** welovefounders, Kima Ventures, Boost10x 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Arthur Chevalier, Annah Augier, Hamza Aassif 🗞️ **News:** PRESAGE has raised €1.2M to accelerate product development and initiate first real-world deployments of its AI-powered world models for cloud infrastructure. The technology is rooted in the scientific work of co-founder Arthur Chevalier (ENS, PhD) and has been shaped by feedback from over 100 senior engineering leaders across leading tech companies, including Front, Doctolib, Voodoo, Heetch, Nodle, and FlexAI. By focusing on causal modeling rather than purely statistical observability, PRESAGE positions itself at the frontier of next-generation cloud operations—where infrastructure decisions can be simulated and optimized before being executed in production. | **LinkedIn** * * * 📇 **Company:** Sailiz 🏷️ **Sectors:** E-commerce & Retail 🔍 **Description:** Sailiz designs technical nautical clothing specifically adapted to women, addressing a long-standing gap in maritime equipment traditionally designed for male morphologies. The brand combines performance-driven design with eco-responsibility, focusing on recyclable, PFC-free, mono-material garments and strong repairability to extend product lifecycles. Its offering spans from recreational sailing to professional marine workwear. 💻 **Website:** **Sailiz** 📍 **HQ City:** Lorient 🧗 **Round:** Pre-Seed 💰 **Amount Raised:** €200K 🏦 **Investors:** Bretagne Sud Angels, Michel Le Bars, Philippe Guidoux, Business Angels 👨💼👩💼 **Founders:** Solène Saclier 🗞️ **News:** Lorient-based Sailiz has raised €200K in its first funding round to move from market validation to structured growth. The round, led by Bretagne Sud Angels and private investors, is structured in two tranches (€150K closed, €50K still open). Founded in May 2023, Sailiz has already convinced over 200 customers with its first product—technical dungarees designed exclusively for women and fully recyclable. The funding will support new product development (including lightweight sailing gear, technical shorts, underwear, and marine workwear for professionals), the recruitment of a textile engineer, and the launch of European expansion targeting the UK, Spain, and Scandinavia. With repairability and eco-design at its core, Sailiz positions itself at the intersection of performance apparel, sustainability, and the growing feminisation of maritime professions and leisure sailing. | **Boat Industry**, **LinkedIn** * * * 👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: [email protected] / [email protected] 👋🏻‌

<p>👋 <strong>Inside this week's edition: </strong></p><p>👀 <strong>Fleet,</strong> the French startup famed for its bootstrapped approach, announced it has reached a €100 million valuation after opening its capital to outside investors for the first time. After defying Silicon Valley's playbook for so long, <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/from-eu5-000-to-eu100-million-how-fleets-founders-built-a-tech-empire-without-venture-capital-then-finally-said-yes/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>CEO Sevan Marian explains why now is the moment</strong></a>.</p><p>👀 Climate <strong>VC Slate</strong> announced its first close of €132M. The Paris-based firm targets energy and circularity startups where environmental gains align with superior economics. <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/climate-vc-slate-closes-first-fund-at-eu132m-betting-on-industrial-efficiency-over-green-premium/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Co-Founders Renaud Visage and Chloé Giard explain their vision for this next-generation climate fund.</strong></a></p><p><strong>Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand</strong></p><hr /><div class="kg-card kg-cta-card kg-cta-bg-blue kg-cta-immersive kg-cta-has-img "> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label-wrapper"> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label"> <span style="white-space:pre-wrap">SPONSORED</span> </div> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content"> <div class="kg-cta-image-container"> <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/12/ready-to-pitch-applications-for-the-2026-eu-startups-summit-pitch-competition-are-now-open/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/EU-Startups-Summit_Main-2-1536x864.png.webp" alt="CTA Image" /></a> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content-inner"> <div class="kg-cta-text"> <p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">On May 7-8, Malta will transform into the main meeting point for Europe’s most ambitious founders and investors as we host the 12th edition of the </span><a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/summit/" class="cta-link-color"><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">EU-Startups Summit</strong></b></a><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">. The event will gather around 2,500 founders, startup enthusiasts, corporates, angel investors, VCs, and media from across Europe – all united by a focus on startups with global ambitions.</span></p><p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">We’ll have two stages, great networking opportunities, workshops, a buzzing exhibition hall, and a super exciting </span><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">Pitch Competition</strong></b><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> featuring 15 most promising early-stage startups from across Europe! Each finalist will have three minutes to pitch their idea on the main stage in front of a large audience of investors, media, and startup enthusiasts, followed by questions from our panel of high-profile VC judges.</span></p> </div> <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/12/ready-to-pitch-applications-for-the-2026-eu-startups-summit-pitch-competition-are-now-open/" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> Apply now </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center>Tech Talk</center></h1> <p>🤖🏭 <strong>Exotec</strong>, France’s robotics unicorn, just opened its new global headquarters near Lille, finally putting an end to the logistical headache of having its teams scattered across seven different sites. Dubbed the <em>Imaginarium</em> (subtle it is not), the Wasquehal HQ now brings together 700 employees spanning engineering, production, and support functions. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-10.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1440" height="810" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-10.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-10.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-10.png 1440w" /></figure><p>According to the founders, the old setup was actively slowing growth, because innovation apparently works better when people can actually find each other. Exotec is riding the twin tailwinds of e-commerce growth and chronic labor shortages in logistics, with its Skypod robots already deployed in more than 200 warehouses worldwide. The company now counts 1,200 employees globally, booked around €340 million in revenue in 2025, and has sold some 14,000 robots to clients like Carrefour, Decathlon, and Uniqlo. | <a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/02/03/robotique-exotec-inaugure-son-nouveau-siege-pres-de-lille/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://www.exotec.com/news/exotec-opens-new-global-headquarters-imaginarium/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>PR</strong></a></p><p>♻️🏢 <strong>Deepki</strong> is quietly pulling ahead of the crowded energy-efficiency pack, closing 2025 with an estimated €65 million in annual recurring revenue, comfortably putting the French scale-up in pole position. The company, which helps real estate owners track and optimize energy performance, now counts 70,000 users and around 600 heavyweight clients, from Generali Real Estate to the French government. Growth slowed to about 20% last year, but North America is doing the heavy lifting, already accounting for 18% of revenues as Deepki leans into a very American pitch: less ESG talk, more hard-nosed economic efficiency. Back home, the property slump hasn’t helped, but France still serves as a regulatory and product test lab. Deepki is also playing the consolidation game, snapping up consulting firm Sobre Energie in cash, its third acquisition in three years, as the sector gradually thins out. Despite its lead, management insists this is still early days, with just 5% of the European market captured and a potential new fundraising round penciled in for 2027. | <a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/start-up/impact/la-start-up-deepki-accelere-aux-etats-unis-et-renforce-sa-position-en-france-2213542" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Les Echos</strong></a></p><p>🤑 <strong>Phitrust</strong> has officially closed <strong>Phitrust Partenaires Inclusion</strong>, a €60 million fund aimed squarely at tackling Europe’s toughest social challenges. Backed by a heavyweight lineup of institutional investors, led by a €20 million commitment from the European Investment Fund, the fund blends private equity discipline with a philanthropic soul. PPI is focused on two big-ticket items: helping people find their place in society through jobs and training, and improving access to essentials like housing, food, healthcare, and energy. The fund has already put €10.3 million to work across 14 investments and carries the gold-star Article 9 SFDR label, signaling maximum ESG seriousness. With another €20–30 million still in sight from private investors, Phitrust is betting that Europe’s social transition won’t happen on goodwill alone, that it needs patient capital, real governance, and fewer silos between “doing good” and “making it scale.”<strong> | </strong><a href="https://phitrust.com/en/final-closing-of-phitrust-partenaires-inclusion-a-e60-million-fund-dedicated-to-social-impact-investment-in-europe/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Phitrust</strong></a></p><p>🏗️ <strong>Raphaël Vullierme</strong> is officially back in builder mode, this time as a Partner at Hexa, where he plans to crank out AI startups between Paris and San Francisco. Two years after the bumpy Luko–Allianz finale, he’s skipped the VC costume change and opted instead for hands-on company creation via Hexa’s “Start” program. The mandate is unapologetically global: AI-first startups designed from day one to scale in the US, with a particular focus on physical AI (defense and robotics), regulated finance, and a spicy new thesis dubbed “AI as a Buyer.” Yes, the idea is that companies will soon need to learn how to sell to algorithms, not humans. <em>Bienvenue</em> to the future of procurement. Helping make that leap is Hexa House, the startup studio’s freshly opened hacker-style base in San Francisco, built to soften the Valley landing for European founders. For Vullierme, it’s a full-circle moment as he bets that French founders with global ambition and the right AI timing can punch well above their weight. | <a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/02/05/ia-le-co-fondateur-de-luko-rebondit-chez-hexa-pour-faire-emerger-des-pepites-entre-paris-et-san-francisco/"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/raphaelvullierme_building-physicalai-activity-7425176368512065536-K9Da?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAADtQEBK2cPoar2fKhYuhhp-DyTx_pSNBI" rel="noreferrer"><strong>LinkedIn</strong></a></p><p>☢️💸 A young startup from Grenoble has decided that Europe’s next nuclear leap should come in molten form. Founded in 2023, <strong>Stellaria</strong> wants to become a European leader in fast-neutron, molten-salt reactors, and it’s now officially in the game, having filed a request to build a nuclear installation. Its pitch is a cheaper, safer reactor with liquid fuel that can actually burn more nuclear waste than it creates, and sit right next to energy-hungry industries without causing a meltdown of public nerves. The prototype, named Alvin, is slated for around 2030, with commercial versions penciled in for 2035 and power outputs rivaling major hydro dams. Stellaria isn’t trying to build everything itself, instead focusing on the reactor core and leaning on partners like Schneider Electric and Technip Energies. The catch, unsurprisingly, is money. After €23 million raised so far, the startup says it’ll need about €300 million more, ideally via a very European, multi-country funding effort. | <a href="https://mesinfos.fr/38000-grenoble/nucleaire-comment-la-start-up-grenobloise-stellaria-ambitionne-de-devenir-un-leader-europeen-238703.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Mesinfos</strong></a></p><p>💪🪙 <strong>Fipto</strong> just became Europe’s first stablecoin payments player with both a Payment Institution licence and a full MiCA CASP licence. Granted by France’s AMF, the dual authorisation lets Fipto run the entire payment value chain, neatly stitching together euros and stablecoins under one compliance umbrella. While much of the crypto world is still squinting at MiCA and hoping for the best, Fipto went full teacher’s pet and passed the toughest prudential, operational, and AML tests on offer. The payoff: EU-wide passporting, a single API, and uninterrupted access to the European market just as “grandfathered” regimes start falling apart. With the July 2026 MiCA deadline looming, Fipto is positioning itself as the industry’s regulatory safe harbour—less cowboy crypto, more grown-up financial plumbing. In short, they’re betting that in Europe’s new crypto order, boring compliance is the ultimate competitive edge. (<a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/seed-of-the-week-fipto/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Read our profile of Fipto here</strong></a>) | <a href="https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2026/fipto-secures-crypto-asset-service-provider-license/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>PYMNTS</strong></a></p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="#/portal/signup" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Become a Paid Subscriber</a></div><hr /> <h1><center>From €5,000 to €100 Million: How Fleet's Founders Built a Tech Empire Without Venture Capital. Then Finally Said Yes</center></h1> <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/from-eu5-000-to-eu100-million-how-fleets-founders-built-a-tech-empire-without-venture-capital-then-finally-said-yes/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-4.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1304" height="838" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-4.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-4.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-4.png 1304w" /></a></figure><p>Seven years ago, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sevan-marian-a351aa4b/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Sevan Marian</strong></a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/berriche/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Alexandre Berriche</strong></a> each scraped together €2,500, pocket change by startup standards, and launched <a href="https://fleet.co/en?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener">Fleet</a> from a Paris apartment.</p><p>They had no venture capital, no debt facilities, no safety net. What they had was a simple bet: that mid-sized companies were tired of buying laptops outright and dealing with the headaches that followed.</p><p>On Monday, Fleet announces it has reached a €100 million valuation and is opening its capital to outside investors for the first time. ISAI Expansion, the private equity arm of one of France's pioneering tech investment firms, is taking a minority stake in a deal that provides liquidity to the founders and, critically, to employees who bet on the company when no one else would.</p><p>"We invested two and a half thousand euros each six years ago, and it became 100 million," Marian said in an interview, still sounding slightly amazed. "Which is crazy."</p><p>The deal marks a turning point for a company that has become something of a cult hero in French tech circles, proof that you don't need to play the venture capital game to build something significant.</p><p>But it also raises a question that Marian and Berriche have been wrestling with for months: after building an identity around being bootstrapped, why change course now?</p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/from-eu5-000-to-eu100-million-how-fleets-founders-built-a-tech-empire-without-venture-capital-then-finally-said-yes/" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Read more on the past, present, and future of Fleet</a></div><hr /> <h1><center>Climate VC Slate Closes First Fund at €132M, Betting on Industrial Efficiency Over Green Premium</center></h1> <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/climate-vc-slate-closes-first-fund-at-eu132m-betting-on-industrial-efficiency-over-green-premium/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-5.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1304" height="871" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-5.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-5.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-5.png 1304w" /></a></figure><p>The venture capital world has grown skeptical of climate tech hype, but a new Paris-based fund called Slate is betting that the sector's winners are finally emerging and that now is the time to back them.</p><p>Slate Venture Capital announced Tuesday that it has secured €132 million for the first close of its inaugural growth fund, a substantial sum in today's challenging fundraising environment. The fund focuses specifically on European B2B companies working on energy transition, low-carbon industrial processes, circularity, and climate resilience. These are sectors where the firm's four co-founders believe environmental and economic performance are increasingly aligned.</p><p>"We are really focused on helping the startups transition from startup to scale up," said Renaud Visage, one of Slate's co-founders and a veteran of Silicon Valley's tech scene. "We know it's a long journey. How do you build a team? Where do you build a team? Where do you expand internationally? So many questions that a lot of first-time founders have to figure out."</p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/climate-vc-slate-closes-first-fund-at-eu132m-betting-on-industrial-efficiency-over-green-premium/" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Read more on Slate's climate vision</a></div><hr /> <h1><center>💸 Top Funding Deals 💸</center></h1> <p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Hublo<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors:</strong> HealthTech, SaaS &amp; Enterprise<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Hublo is a workforce management SaaS platform dedicated to healthcare institutions. Born from the merger of Whoog and MedGo during the Covid crisis, Hublo enables hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and healthcare providers to manage staffing end-to-end—from recruitment and scheduling to internal mobility and communication. The platform centralises both ad-hoc and recurring staffing needs, significantly improving operational efficiency for healthcare professionals.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.hublo.com">Hublo</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Growth<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €40M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Revaia<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Antoine Loron<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Revaia has committed €40M through a reinvestment vehicle to continue supporting Hublo following its sale in 2025 to Five Arrows (Rothschild &amp; Co’s alternative assets arm). The vehicle extends Revaia’s involvement beyond its initial holding period. It allows both existing and new European, UK, and US investors to reinvest alongside Hublo’s new majority shareholder and management team. Founded in 2016, Hublo is now used by more than 22,000 managers across over 5,000 healthcare facilities, benefiting around 1 million healthcare professionals and saving an average of 2.5 hours per user per day. Since Revaia’s initial investment in 2021, Hublo has quadrupled its ARR, reached operational break-even ahead of schedule, expanded its product into a full workforce and talent management suite, strengthened its go-to-market with public and private institutions, and executed a consolidation strategy including three acquisitions. This €40M reinvestment stands out as significantly larger than recent European HealthTech rounds, reflecting a late-stage, ownership-driven commitment rather than primary growth capital alone. | <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/02/healthtech-platform-hublo-secures-e40-million-revaia-reinvestment-to-support-post-exit-growth-phase/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>EU Startups</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> MyC<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors:</strong> HealthTech, SaaS &amp; Enterprise<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> MyC is a B2B SaaS platform dedicated to managing employee health in industrial, multi-site, and high-risk environments. The cloud-based solution centralizes and secures medical data, enabling on-the-ground medical teams, HQ functions, HR, and compliance teams to coordinate care, manage regulatory obligations, and maintain a consolidated, real-time view of workforce health. Designed for complex and low-connectivity environments, MyC combines operational robustness with strict international compliance standards.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong><em> </em><a href="https://www.myc.doctor/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>MyC</strong></a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Series A<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €10M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Hi Inov, IXO, Elaia, OSS Ventures<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Laurent Bonnardot, Benjamin Crevant<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Founded in 2020, MyC supports international organizations operating in highly regulated and complex environments such as energy, industry, maritime, defense, and specialized medical services. The platform is deployed across nearly 400 sites in more than 60 countries, serving over 500,000 beneficiaries with more than 1,000 monthly active users. With this €10M funding round, MyC plans to accelerate product development—particularly AI-driven data analysis and process automation—and to scale its international commercial footprint. The company aims to address growing regulatory pressure and operational complexity in occupational health, a global software market estimated at €1.4B and growing at nearly 10% annually. | <a href="https://tech.eu/2026/02/03/french-healthtech-myc-secures-eur10m-to-digitise-medical-operations-for-complex-worksites/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Tech EU</strong></a></p><hr /><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-6.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1960" height="1306" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-6.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-6.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/image-6.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-6.png 1960w" /></figure><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Linkup<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors:</strong> AI &amp; Machine Learning<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Linkup is building a real-time search engine designed specifically for AI systems, positioning itself as the “Google Search for AI agents.” Through an API-first architecture, Linkup enables AI models and autonomous agents to search, retrieve, and validate web information in real time. Its proprietary indexing technology extracts fine-grained “atoms of information” from online content to create a highly precise, AI-native search index, optimized for how machines consume information rather than humans.<br />💻 <strong>Website: </strong><a href="https://www.linkup.so" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Linkup</strong></a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City: Paris</strong><br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> $10M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Gradient, Elaia, Leblon Capital, Weekend Fund, Seedcamp, Axeleo Capital, OPRTRS Club, Motier Ventures, Business Angels, Arthur Mensch, Florian Douetteau, Olivier Pomel<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Philippe Mizrahi, Boris Toledano, Denis Charrier <br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> After a €3M seed round closed in November 2024, Linkup has now raised an additional $10M to accelerate its ambition of becoming the reference search infrastructure for AI systems. The startup has developed an API allowing AI agents to retrieve reliable, real-time information from the web, addressing challenges such as misinformation, deepfakes, and bot-generated content. Linkup has partnered with trusted media publishers to ensure high-quality data sources and will use the new funding to scale its teams across Paris, New York, and San Francisco. | <a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/02/03/des-anciens-de-spotify-lyft-et-carrefour-levent-10-millions-de-dollars-pour-batir-le-google-search-de-lia/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://www.linkup.so/blog/linkup-raises-10m-seed-to-build-web-search-for-ai" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Linkup</strong></a></p><hr /><p>👋🏻 If you’re enjoying <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.substack.com/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener">The French Tech Journal</a>, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> / <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> 👋🏻‌</p>

<p>🧠 After three years of negotiations, Europe’s AI rulebook is finally here. The question is no longer “will AI be regulated?” but “how, and when?” From risk categories to real-world impact, this is the EU AI Act. <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/the-eu-ai-act-decoded/"><strong>We break down what you need to know. </strong></a></p><p><strong>Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand</strong></p><hr /><div class="kg-card kg-cta-card kg-cta-bg-purple kg-cta-immersive kg-cta-has-img "> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label-wrapper"> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label"> <span style="white-space:pre-wrap">SPONSORED</span> </div> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content"> <div class="kg-cta-image-container"> <a href="https://www.vanta.com/downloads/the-iso-42001-compliance-checklist?utm_campaign=emea-generic&amp;utm_source=french-tech-journal&amp;utm_medium=newsletter"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2025/12/ISO_Checklist_1200x628--3-.png" alt="CTA Image" /></a> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content-inner"> <div class="kg-cta-text"> <p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">ISO 27001 is the gold standard for information security—but getting certified can feel like navigating a maze. That’s why Vanta has created a straightforward ISO 27001 Compliance Checklist to help you cut through the complexity and take action with confidence. Whether you're starting from scratch or refining your existing program, this resource lays out exactly what you need to do—step by step.</span></p> </div> <a href="https://www.vanta.com/downloads/the-iso-42001-compliance-checklist?utm_campaign=emea-generic&amp;utm_source=french-tech-journal&amp;utm_medium=newsletter" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> Download the checklist </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center>Headlines</center></h1> <p>🗞️ <strong>Alan</strong> is back on the fundraising circuit, reportedly shopping a new round at a €5 billion valuation as it looks to keep growing France’s most hyped digital health insurer, according to Bloomberg. The company wants to raise north of €100 million, though the final number is still in flux. Founded a decade ago by Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, Alan has evolved from a sleek digital insurer into a full-service health platform, bundling insurance with care access and doctor networks. It has also been getting high marks for its aggressive embrace of AI (<a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/alan-goes-all-in-on-ai/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Read: Alan Goes All-In On AI</strong></a>). As a result, Investors seem happy to go along for the ride: its last round in late 2024 valued the company at €4 billion and drew in heavyweights like Ontario Teachers’, Index Ventures, and Coatue. The raise would put Alan in the same valuation league as French health-tech darlings Doctolib and the newly flush Nabla. | <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/french-health-startup-alan-in-funding-talks-at-5-billion-value"><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ France has decided it’s had enough of <strong>X’s</strong> anything-goes era and sent prosecutors straight into the company’s Paris offices. The raid is part of a sweeping investigation into allegations ranging from the spread of child sexual abuse images to sexually explicit deepfakes. <strong>Elon Musk</strong> has been summoned for questioning, alongside former "<strong>CEO" Linda Yaccarino</strong>, as authorities probe whether X knowingly played a role in distributing illegal content. The timing isn’t great: <strong>Musk’s AI chatbot Grok</strong> recently triggered global backlash after churning out nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on demand. Meanwhile, UK regulators are piling on, opening their own investigations into how X and Musk’s AI outfit xAI handled personal data while building Grok. For Musk, it's just another day of drama, whether it's trying to get into "wild parties" on Jeffrey Epstein's sex island or merging SpaceX with xAI so he can buy Twitter for the third time in four years, the man is just...non-stop. | <a href="https://apnews.com/article/france-x-investigation-seach-elon-musk-1116be84d84201011219086ecfd4e0bc" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Associated Press</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ One product announcement from <strong>Anthropic</strong> was all it took to send a chunk of the French stock market into an AI-induced panic. After the US startup unveiled a new tool designed to automate legal work, investors promptly dumped anything that looked remotely “AI-disruptable,” sending <strong>Capgemini</strong> and <strong>Publicis</strong> down about 9% and knocking nearly 6% off Teleperformance. The sell-off rippled far beyond France, with legal and data heavyweights like RELX, Wolters Kluwer, Thomson Reuters, and LSE Group taking double-digit hits even though Anthropic’s tool doesn’t directly replace their core businesses. Analysts called it classic contagion trading, where fear moves faster than facts. Underneath the market drama is a familiar anxiety: that AI will squeeze prices, cut out intermediaries, and leave traditional services firms fighting for relevance. | <a href="https://www.tradingsat.com/capgemini-FR0000125338/actualites/capgemini-a-cause-d-un-nouvel-outil-d-ia-d-anthropic-capgemini-et-publicis-ont-plonge-de-9-en-bourse-et-teleperformance-a-chute-de-pres-de-6-1155722.html?at_brand=BFMTV&amp;at_compte=bfmbusiness&amp;at_plateforme=twitter&amp;at_campaign=Fan_pages&amp;at_medium=Community_Management" rel="noreferrer"><strong>BFM</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>Deezer</strong> is getting serious about the AI music epidemic. The French streaming platform has licensed its AI-detection technology to France's royalty agency Sacem in a deal aimed at stopping AI-musicmakers from flooding the system with machine-made tracks designed to steal royalties from actual musicians. The company's been pretty effective at it too, catching and removing up to 85% of fraudulent AI-generated streams in 2025, which is impressive considering AI-generated uploads have ballooned from just 10% of daily uploads last year to a whopping 39% now. The detection tool basically has superhero ears, analyzing audio for telltale patterns that machines like <strong>Suno</strong> and <strong>Udio</strong> leave behind, anomalies so subtle humans can't hear them. However, not everyone's convinced that tech alone is the answer. Sweden's Stim royalty society argues that mandatory licensing and transparency about training data would actually nip the problem in the bud rather than just treating the symptoms. | <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/deezer-licenses-ai-detection-tool-french-royalty-agency-sacem-plans-wider-roll-2026-01-29/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Reuters</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ In what might be a record for French military procurement, the DGA (<strong><em>Direction générale de l'armement</em></strong>) just delivered 1,000 combat drones to the army in under a year, a feat made possible by French startup <strong>Harmattan AI</strong>, which went from non-existent two years ago to becoming France's first defense-sector unicorn. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-2.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="792" height="445" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-2.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-2.png 792w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Harmattan AI Fighter drone. Photo courtesy of the DGA.</span></figcaption></figure><p>The 1.8 kg micro-drones are equipped with infrared cameras from fellow French company Lynred and boast a 40-minute flight time and 2+ kilometer range. According to the military, they are already seeing action in the Orion military exercise kicking off this month. What makes this actually impressive isn't just the speed; it's that the DGA managed to streamline its typically Byzantine procurement process through a simplified request-for-proposal and the broader "aerial defense drones pact." | <a href="https://www.defense.gouv.fr/dga/actualites/dga-livre-larmee-terre-1-000-premiers-drones-du-combattant-cout-maitrise" rel="noreferrer"><strong>French Defense Department</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ Speaking of drones...a small French precision-machining firm has quietly built what looks like a very loud answer to the Shahed drone problem. <strong>ALM Meca’s</strong> Fury 120 is a jet-powered interceptor drone that screams along at 700 km/h—about three times faster than the suicide drones it’s meant to hunt by pulling up to 20G like a tiny fighter jet. Developed in under a year and entirely on the company’s own dime, the project surprised industry observers and seemed to appear out of nowhere as it bypassed France’s defense procurement agency and the usual big-industry suspects. At just over a meter long, the Fury is designed to physically intercept incoming attack drones, and its creators insist there’s nothing else like it in Europe. The timing is impeccable, as NATO countries keep dealing with Russian drone incursions spilling over borders from Ukraine. Whether Fury becomes Europe’s go-to counter-drone or just the best-kept secret in French defense now depends on whether governments decide to buy what a scrappy SME built without asking permission. | <a href="https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/defense/il-ny-a-pas-dautre-produit-de-ce-type-en-europe-fury-le-siderant-intercepteur-de-drones-made-in-france_638078" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Challenges</strong></a>, <a href="https://united24media.com/latest-news/france-develops-jet-powered-fury-interceptor-to-outrun-shahed-type-drones-three-times-faster-15469" rel="noreferrer"><strong>United24</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>Qwant</strong> is officially jumping on the conversational search bandwagon, while insisting it’s doing it <em>the European way</em>. The French search engine (reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, apparently!) has launched an AI chat feature on both Qwant and Lilo, letting users talk to their search results instead of endlessly clicking blue links. Qwant says the chat doesn’t replace traditional results, but layers context and follow-up questions on top, with sources still visible and tied to the live web. The pitch is fewer dead ends, more continuous dialogue, and no hallucinated answers floating free of reality. It’s free, optional, and very much framed as a response to users’ growing addiction to chat-style interfaces. Under the hood, this is also a sovereignty play, tying into Qwant’s longer-term plan to build a fully European search and AI stack with Ecosia. | <a href="https://betterweb.qwant.com/2026/01/13/qwant-lance-le-chat-ia-une-nouvelle-facon-dexplorer-le-web/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>PR</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ France has cautiously waved through <strong>MARA Holdings’</strong> plan to buy a 64% stake in Exaion, EDF’s low-carbon data center spinout. But only after putting it through the full Bercy regulatory wringer. The deal, now parked under strict conditions from the Treasury, keeps “sensitive” activities and industrial capacity firmly on French soil and bars EDF from dabbling in bitcoin mining or HPC on the side for two years. Born in EDF’s startup incubator to recycle aging supercomputers, Exaion pitched itself as a green compute play for AI, HPC, and blockchain. But it’s been burning cash, posting €4.5 million in losses on just €2 million in revenue last year. That made MARA’s $168 million offer hard to ignore, even as lawmakers raised red flags about technological sovereignty and the optics of a US bitcoin miner muscling into French infrastructure. The controversy escalated all the way to the financial prosecutor after MPs sounded the alarm, turning what could’ve been a quiet M&amp;A into a national debate about energy, crypto, and control. Now MARA gets its European beachhead—assuming it can survive France’s regulatory maze without tripping over politics, paperwork, or both. | <a href="https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/software/nasdaq-mara/mara-holdings/news/french-approval-recasts-mara-holdings-as-european-hpc-and-bi" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Simplywall</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/energie-environnement/video-pourquoi-la-cession-dexaion-la-pepite-tech-dedf-fait-polemique-2211732" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Les Echos</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>STATION F</strong> locked down a partnership with <strong>Mistral AI</strong>, Europe's hot-shot AI decacorn known for building open, efficient foundation models, bringing the company's teams directly onto campus for workshops, technical events, and exclusive handholding for the most advanced startups. The announcement comes just a couple of weeks after Station F announced a similar deal with Yankee favorite <strong>OpenAI</strong>. So, fun! </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-3-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="796" height="499" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-3-1.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-3-1.png 796w" /></figure><p>With 80% of STATION F's residents now building AI products, Station F is basically an AI hothouse with restaurants, which, what's so bad about that? Now Mistral's leadership and engineers will be hanging around campus regularly, which means startups get direct access to one of Europe's most serious AI teams without having to take the Paris Metro all the way up the 18th arrondissement and Mistral's new glass and steel palace. | <a href="https://stationf.co/news/mistral-ai" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Station F</strong></a></p><p>🗞️<strong> École Polytechnique</strong> and <strong>ENSAE</strong> Paris a<strong>re banking on AI to rewire Quantitative Finance</strong>. The top universities are launching MaQI, a new Master's program that promises to train the next generation of algorithm architects who'll reshape finance through artificial intelligence, because apparently, traditional quantitative finance hasn't disrupted itself fast enough. The two-year program, taught entirely in English and backed by BNP Paribas, Qube Research &amp; Technologies, and even the financial regulator AMF, is explicitly designed to position France as the global hub for AI-powered finance. The real innovation isn't just the cutting-edge curriculum on generative AI and machine learning for risk management; it's the co-teaching model where every second-year course has both an AI expert and a quant finance guru tag-teaming the lecture hall. | <a href="https://www.polytechnique.edu/en/press-room/press-releases/ecole-polytechnique-and-ensae-paris-launch-maqi-masters-program" rel="noreferrer"><strong>PR</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ France’s market watchdog has discovered what everyone else already knows: AI is everywhere in finance. Also, it's mostly doing the boring stuff. In a new report, the <strong>Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF)</strong> found that about 90% of French financial players are already using AI or planning to, with generative AI now the tool of choice for summarizing documents, drafting text, translating reports, and acting as an internal “copilot.” Actual customer-facing or revenue-driving use cases are still the exception, not the rule. Most firms rely heavily on off-the-shelf tools from a small club of US tech giants, which raises familiar worries about data protection, tech dependence, and whether humans are still paying attention. Regulators themselves are also leaning into AI, using it to detect fraud, market abuse, and scams while repeatedly reminding everyone that accountability still sits with management, not the algorithm. | <a href="https://www.amf-france.org/en/news-publications/publications/reports-research-and-analysis/study-use-artificial-intelligence-french-financial-market-participants" rel="noreferrer"><strong>AMF</strong></a></p><h3 id="other-headlines">Other Headlines</h3><p>🗞️<strong> The AI brain drain: Why Europe can’t keep the talent it trains | </strong>Europe is seeing its AI experts move abroad. Even with strong universities and top research, the EU has a hard time turning these advantages into global leadership in AI.<strong> | </strong><a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/01/29/the-ai-brain-drain-why-europe-cant-keep-the-talent-it-trains" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Euro News</strong></a></p><h3 id="icymi"><strong>ICYMI</strong></h3><p>🗞️ <strong>Europe's AI Reckoning: Caught Between Regulation, Rivalry, and Risk</strong> | As 2026 begins, France and the European Union find themselves at the center of a perfect storm, facing diplomatic confrontation with Washington, urgent safety crises, and mounting questions about whether their regulatory approach can survive first contact with geopolitical reality. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/europes-ai-reckoning-caught-between-regulation-rivalry-and-risk/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>From Tesla to Paris: UMA's Audacious Bet on European Robotics</strong> | A new French startup believes Europe—not Silicon Valley—is the best place to build the robots of tomorrow. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/from-tesla-to-paris-umas-audacious-bet-on-european-robotics/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>Gradium Wants To Make Voice The New Operating System for AI | </strong>The Paris startup, spun out of research lab Kyutai, just emerged from stealth with a $60M seed round to become the global foundation layer for real-time voice interactions. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/gradium-wants-to-make-voice-the-new-operating-system-for-ai/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><p>🗞️<strong> How HyprView Is Using Photonics And AI To Bring Cancer Diagnostics Into the Light</strong> | Thanks to developments in AI, photonics is stepping out of the lab and into the clinic. HyprView uses light to uncover the invisible biology inside tumors - information microscopes miss entirely - opening the door to faster, smarter, and far more predictive cancer diagnostics. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/how-hyprview-is-using-photonics-and-ai-to-bring-cancer-diagnostics-into-the-light/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><hr /><h3 id="%F0%9F%A7%A0-the-eu-ai-act-decoded">🧠 The EU AI Act, Decoded</h3><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/the-eu-ai-act-decoded/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/20260203_1742_Image-Generation_simple_compose_01kgjy3rmgf1yt19gh6e7ckn9a-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1536" height="1024" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/20260203_1742_Image-Generation_simple_compose_01kgjy3rmgf1yt19gh6e7ckn9a-1.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/20260203_1742_Image-Generation_simple_compose_01kgjy3rmgf1yt19gh6e7ckn9a-1.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/20260203_1742_Image-Generation_simple_compose_01kgjy3rmgf1yt19gh6e7ckn9a-1.png 1536w" /></a></figure><p>If it feels like Europe has been talking about regulating artificial intelligence forever, that is because it almost has. </p><p>After more than three years of negotiations, rewrites, lobbying, and late-night trilogues, the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act finally entered into force on August 1st, 2024. The legislation is the world’s first comprehensive, legally binding framework for AI.</p><p>Since then, implementation has followed a phased approach, with different obligations officially coming into effect over two years (from February 2025 to August 2027). So if you’re a founder, operator, or investor, the real question is not <em>what has been adopted, but what actually applies today?</em> </p><p>And what is still very much in motion.</p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/the-eu-ai-act-decoded/" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Enter the EU AI Act Matrix, if you dare!</a></div><hr /><div class="kg-card kg-cta-card kg-cta-bg-blue kg-cta-immersive kg-cta-centered"> <div class="kg-cta-content"> <div class="kg-cta-content-inner"> <div class="kg-cta-text"> <p><i><b><strong class="italic" style="white-space:pre-wrap">Want to reach an audience of more than 30,000 readers each month?</strong></b></i> <i><b><strong class="italic" style="white-space:pre-wrap">The French Tech Journal is the leading English-language media platform covering France's dynamic tech ecosystem. With 31,000 + engaged readers across key global markets and consistently high engagement rates, our sponsorships provide unparalleled access to decision-makers in French tech.</strong></b></i></p> </div> <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.com/sponsors/" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> Learn more about sponsorships </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center>🗣️ Announcements 🗣️</center></h1> <p>🚀 <strong>€1M AI Challenge for Space Data Innovation</strong> | <strong>Apply by March 9</strong> | The Île-de-France Region and CNES officially launch a €1 million AI Challenge to accelerate innovation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space data. Continuing the Region’s AI Challenge series started in 2019, this initiative aims to foster future national champions and strengthen France’s technological and economic sovereignty. Two tracks are open: (1) AI-powered applications leveraging satellite data for use cases such as security, energy, environment, and risk management; and (2) advanced vision-language models for automatic interpretation of high- and very-high-resolution satellite imagery. CNES will provide data, technical expertise, and project oversight. | <strong>Apply via the Île-de-France Region platform:</strong> <a href="https://www.iledefrance.fr/aides-et-appels-a-projets/challenge-ai-space?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Challenge AI for Space</strong></a></p><p>🚀<strong> National AI Mapping | Deadline February 15 | </strong><a href="https://u11714644.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=u001.8gmJa7-2F5vFnNURntQ-2B2MW-2B774naecRbREo0JEKAP77bhdm01lF-2BCQCRM05KGtxbXA3rz_LegDzTFO0QQIRWK2-2Bk6gfCyxgybRYoXaoB2KDUvhD7yA-2B2d79SrFpkFxFk9poisxRfNWPIOCBFA11bbLWoe35Zz3ofQ379d5Dq2ULsvWDbHd0fDutwIdzpcKaj906r7OfTa9RE7nWacCipji8AOZ3CT8zM6e1TO6bxjac46sSGr1th-2BEZUu1-2Ba3wLSjNAEwJ-2FMUnnLjbdCK8smkmfuv7mu0PP1da-2BH-2FeZH2g23ojMiNM7HOSGWyYorpXrdSQkH-2F5GzhOnD9eky-2FhRsj6dqYBATZOCCTj3FhO3wevd4nrsHmvT3-2BTPWeslxNq7dV-2FIx7Bcyv-2FwzUUauEsGyUPh13WsT76E1kGThKrTfMfqCcA2aY-3D"><u>Hub France IA</u></a> is launching a second invitation to startups, SMEs, and innovative companies located outside of Paris to join the <a href="https://u11714644.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=u001.8gmJa7-2F5vFnNURntQ-2B2MW-2B774naecRbREo0JEKAP77b8AU-2FR-2FFHX-2Buqyxs-2FfFQsr7AugVjtZbDvGnhjz7Wor97VXSSCW4NV0vh6PefeQS7E-3D1el0_LegDzTFO0QQIRWK2-2Bk6gfCyxgybRYoXaoB2KDUvhD7yA-2B2d79SrFpkFxFk9poisxRfNWPIOCBFA11bbLWoe35Zz3ofQ379d5Dq2ULsvWDbHd0fDutwIdzpcKaj906r7OfTa9RE7nWacCipji8AOZ3CT8zM6e1TO6bxjac46sSGr1th-2BEZUu1-2Ba3wLSjNAEwJ-2FMUnnLjbdCK8smkmfuv7miCreZaziCHJDvo7cPtg7vHxU-2BZ9fXhXoC-2FkUXzA81FIe0b9elcpKXpqkQPtTeDIOzjckj3WoK7MyPBaLi05ond0b2JHkhPhw-2B0Y6xf0mt185MyBjHj5S-2B4EW-2BDwvSF1Lef5TN0fOp32MLI4-2FY0yJb0-3D"><u>2026 national map</u></a> of French artificial intelligence. This sixth edition, launched once before, aims to provide an accurate snapshot of the AI ​​ecosystem across the country, highlighting the diversity of regional dynamics. More than 700 AI stakeholders are already listed. Interested regional gems can still apply now until February 15, 2026. | <a href="https://u11714644.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=u001.8gmJa7-2F5vFnNURntQ-2B2MW4xSd2N9lNdaC-2F8SkxsPPwswgAsP7eXv1H4-2B8yClNA9b18q-2BLPu-2BdrR3lZppGFf1KWumvWX3OCDLvhsJ-2FGqwxvw-3Dg_nG_LegDzTFO0QQIRWK2-2Bk6gfCyxgybRYoXaoB2KDUvhD7yA-2B2d79SrFpkFxFk9poisxRfNWPIOCBFA11bbLWoe35Zz3ofQ379d5Dq2ULsvWDbHd0fDutwIdzpcKaj906r7OfTa9RE7nWacCipji8AOZ3CT8zM6e1TO6bxjac46sSGr1th-2BEZUu1-2Ba3wLSjNAEwJ-2FMUnnLjbdCK8smkmfuv7mhk6tpdjuR73yUJnD9Rc3H7B-2FKNsA1Pf8LhkO4EmQoAin3xnFjg-2BdxRxUQ8wmaljkYQHQFPOkxKLQPqSRffTKg5jTjL6LrkLs0TkPhwBQdWGOP85M-2FmRL2flgKQLlWjPed2QvNIy2KD9S-2BjaU4ViZTQ-3D"><strong><u>Registration link</u></strong></a></p> <h1><center>📆 Events 📆</center></h1> <p>📆 <strong>2026 AI Predictions &amp; Founder Mixer - powered by 🧠 The AI Collective x Paatch 🚀 | February 5 |</strong> To kick off the year, <strong>The AI Collective</strong> and <strong>Paatch</strong> are bringing together founders, engineers, and operators for an evening focused on grounded AI predictions and high-signal connections. No hype cycles, no polished decks, just people who spent 2025 shipping, breaking, and rebuilding AI systems, comparing notes on what comes next. | <a href="https://luma.com/2026-ai-predictions-founder-mixer" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Request to join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>AI FILM HACKATHON | Paris</strong> | <strong>February 7</strong> | Official Paris pre-event of the international <strong>AI FILM FEST MONACO</strong>, this hackathon brings together creative technologists to learn AI filmmaking, build short films using AI tools, master generative workflows (including voice generation with ElevenLabs), and present their projects for potential selection and competition in Monaco — all with hands-on workshops, team collaboration, and creative skill building for AI-powered storytelling. | <a href="https://luma.com/AIFILMFESTMONACO-HACKATHONPARIS" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Join Waitlist</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>{Tech: Europe} Paris AI Hackathon – Paris Edition</strong> | <strong>Feb 7–8</strong> | Paris | A weekend-long AI hackathon designed for builders across functions (founders, engineers, product, researchers) to collaborate, innovate, and prototype cutting-edge AI solutions; features structured networking, team match-making, mentor support, and a prize pool awarded at the conclusion of the competition. | <a href="https://luma.com/paris-hack" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Request to Join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>No-Code Communities Meetup #3 — AI Edition</strong> | <strong>February 9, 2026, 7:00 PM</strong> | Paris | A special meetup for no-code and AI builders to connect over drinks and conversation, celebrate the intersection of AI and no-code ecosystems, and build community — ideal for founders, operators, designers, and anyone curious about practical AI and no-code workflows. | <a href="https://luma.com/vbm9sk3j" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Register</strong></a></p><p>📆<strong> AI Day 2026 | France Digitale</strong> | <strong>February 10</strong> | At Station F in Paris, this flagship AI event gathers ~2,000 founders, C-level leaders, investors, researchers, and operators from across Europe. Explore <em>AI &amp; Research</em>, <em>AI &amp; Business</em>, and <em>AI &amp; Operations</em> tracks through high-level talks, hands-on workshops, demos, exhibitions, and structured matchmaking between startups and investors — all under the high patronage of the French President. | <a href="https://ai-day.org/ticket/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Get tickets</strong></a></p><p>📆<strong> World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF)</strong> | <strong>February 12 and 13</strong> | Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes | With more than 10,000 expected participants, 320 international speakers, and 180 exhibitors, the WAICF is the European event dedicated to the innovations and strategic challenges of artificial intelligence. | <a href="https://www.worldaicannes.com/en-gb/book-your-pass.html?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Buy tickets</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>Paris Hardware Meetup | The New Defense Stack</strong> | <strong>February 17</strong> | Join Paris-area hardware builders — founders, engineers, designers, and investors — for talks and community networking focused on defense hardware and physical product innovation at Hexa (eFounders) in Paris. Speakers include leaders from Harmattan AI, Helsing, Landroval, and more, with structured talks followed by open mic and networking. | <a href="https://luma.com/oq94zfvf?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Request to join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>Neurons and Peppers #3</strong> | <strong>February 18</strong> | <strong>Paris</strong> | The state-of-the-art AI research meetup in Paris hosted by <strong>Neurons and Peppers by datacraft</strong>, focused on deep technical sessions such as domain-specific modeling and retrieval-augmented generation benchmarking, followed by community networking, talks, and food &amp; drinks. | <a href="https://luma.com/ehna1sny" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Request to Join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 | March 17–18 | ESCP Business School | Paris | </strong>Artificial intelligence is transforming universities at every level — from classrooms to research labs and administrative offices. The AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 in Paris will bring together academics, innovators, and policy-makers to discuss one central question: How should higher education evolve in an AI-driven world? This international event is the place to exchange ideas, showcase innovations, and shape the roadmap for universities in the age of AI. | <a href="https://escp.eu/events/ai-higher-education-summit-2026-paris-17-18-march" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Pre-Registration</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>OpenText Summit Paris 2026</strong> | <strong>April 15 | Palais Brongniart</strong> | AI is everywhere and full of promise — but without contextualized data, governance, and security, AI fails. Join OpenText Summit Paris 2026 to discover how to unlock the intelligence of your enterprise data and activate AI with confidence. Expect visionary keynotes, French customer success stories, real-world use cases, in-depth small-group sessions, live demos, expert meetings, and peer networking. Explore the latest innovations in content management, cybersecurity, service management, business networks, and more — and learn how to deploy responsible, compliant AI with full control and freedom of choice. | <a href="https://events.opentext.com/paris-summit-2026?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Register</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>RAISE Summit 2026</strong> | <strong>July 8–9, 2026 | Carrousel du Louvre, Paris</strong> | Join one of Europe’s most influential AI gatherings bringing together thousands of builders, investors, executives, and innovators to shape the future of artificial intelligence. Learn from global leaders through keynotes, panels, workshops, a hackathon, startup competitions, and high-impact networking — all curated to accelerate AI strategy, investment, and real-world deployment across industries. | <a href="https://www.raisesummit.com/tickets-2026?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener"><strong>Tickets</strong></a></p><hr /><p>👋🏻 If you’re enjoying <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.substack.com/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener">The French Tech Journal</a>, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> / <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> 👋🏻‌ </p>

<p>If it feels like Europe has been talking about regulating artificial intelligence forever, that is because it almost has. </p><p>After more than three years of negotiations, rewrites, lobbying, and late-night trilogues, the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act finally entered into force on August 1st, 2024. The legislation is the world’s first comprehensive, legally binding framework for AI.</p><p>Since then, implementation has followed a phased approach, with different obligations officially coming into effect over two years (from February 2025 to August 2027). So if you’re a founder, operator, or investor, the real question is not <em>what has been adopted, but what actually applies today?</em> </p><p>And what is still very much in motion.</p><h3 id="what-is-the-eu-ai-act"><strong>What is the EU AI Act?</strong></h3><p>At its core, the AI Act is a risk-based regulation. Rather than banning or “blessing” AI as a whole, it categorizes AI systems according to the level of risk they pose to people’s safety, rights, and freedoms.</p><p>There are four tiers:</p><ul><li><strong>Unacceptable risk:</strong> AI systems that are banned outright, such as social scoring, certain forms of biometric surveillance, or systems designed to manipulate behaviour without users’ awareness.</li><li><strong>High-risk:</strong> AI systems that handle personal or sensitive data and are used in regulated areas such as hiring, education, credit scoring, healthcare, or law enforcement. These systems are allowed, but only under strict conditions related to data quality, transparency, human oversight, and risk management.</li><li><strong>Limited-risk:</strong> AI systems such as chatbots or generative AI tools, which must meet transparency obligations - for example, clearly informing users that they are interacting with AI or that content has been AI-generated.</li><li><strong>Minimal-risk:</strong> The vast majority of everyday AI tools (spam filters, photo enhancement, recommendation engines), which remain largely unregulated.</li></ul><p>The ambition is clear:<strong> ensure that AI used in Europe is safe, transparent, non-discriminatory, and under human oversight, </strong>while still allowing innovation to happen.</p><h3 id="how-did-we-get-here"><strong>How did we get here?</strong></h3><p>The EU AI regulatory journey began in April 2021, when the European Commission published its first proposal for AI regulation. What followed was nearly three years of intense back-and-forth between the Commission, the European Parliament, and Member States.</p><p>Parliament pushed hard for strong safeguards: human oversight, traceability, environmental considerations, and a technology-neutral definition that wouldn’t be obsolete in five years. Industry groups, meanwhile, warned against overregulation, compliance overload, and Europe “regulating itself out of innovation”.</p><p>By June 2024, a compromise text was finally adopted. Several obligations had been softened. Some were delayed. General-purpose AI models received a bespoke regime. The result: a framework that is undeniably ambitious, but also complex.</p><h3 id="is-the-ai-act-finished"><strong>Is the AI Act finished?</strong></h3><p>Legislatively, yes. Practically, not at all.</p><p>The Act entered into force on 1 August 2024, but its application is phased:</p><ul><li><strong>2025:</strong> bans on unacceptable-risk AI apply, along with early obligations around AI literacy.</li><li><strong>2 August 2026:</strong> the bulk of obligations take effect, particularly for high-risk AI systems.</li><li><strong>2027–2030:</strong> further provisions roll out depending on system type.</li></ul><p>Simply put, Europe has passed the law, but we are still very much in the implementation chapter.</p><h3 id="who-is-impacted-and-who-isn%E2%80%99t"><strong>Who is impacted, and who isn’t?</strong></h3><p>The AI Act has an extremely broad scope. It applies to any company that provides, deploys, or imports AI systems used in the EU, regardless of where that company is based. US, UK, or Asian AI providers are firmly in scope if their systems touch the European market.</p><p>That said, not everyone is equally impacted. Startups and SMEs using off-the-shelf, low-risk AI tools will see limited obligations. Companies developing or deploying high-risk systems, particularly in regulated sectors, face the heaviest compliance burden.</p><p>The key question every organisation must answer is simple: <strong>What AI do we use, and where does it sit in the risk taxonomy?</strong></p><h3 id="what-are-the-main-obligations"><strong>What are the main obligations?</strong></h3><p>For companies in scope, the AI Act is less about paperwork and more about governance. Core obligations include:</p><ul><li><strong>Mapping and documenting AI use cases:</strong> for example, listing all AI systems used internally or sold externally, what they do, where they are deployed, and what data they rely on.</li><li><strong>Classifying systems by risk:</strong> determining whether a system falls into minimal, limited, or high-risk categories, based on its use case and potential impact on individuals.</li><li><strong>Defining roles:</strong> clarifying whether a company acts as an <strong>AI provider</strong> (developing or placing an AI system on the market) or a <strong>deployer</strong> (using an AI system in its operations), as obligations differ significantly between the two.</li><li><strong>Ensuring transparency toward users:</strong> informing users when they are interacting with an AI system, when content is AI-generated, or when automated decision-making is involved.</li><li><strong>Implementing human oversight:</strong> ensuring that a trained human can intervene, override, or stop an AI system when necessary, particularly for high-risk use cases.</li><li><strong>Monitoring systems over time:</strong> tracking performance, bias, errors, and unintended outcomes once systems are deployed, rather than treating compliance as a one-off exercise.</li></ul><p>Whatever your stance on regulation, these obligations are to be taken seriously. Non-compliance can be expensive: <strong>fines can reach</strong> <strong>€35 million or 7% of global annual turnover</strong>, whichever is higher.</p><h3 id="pushback-pauses-and-regulatory-fatigue"><strong>Pushback, pauses, and regulatory fatigue.</strong></h3><p>Unsurprisingly, the AI Act has not landed quietly.</p><p>Big Tech has repeatedly criticized it as cumbersome and innovation-slowing. In 2025, executives from Meta and OpenAI publicly warned Europe against moving too slowly while the rest of the world accelerates. At the same time, French regulators such as Arcep have cautioned that Europe risks repeating past mistakes if it fails to pair regulation with serious AI infrastructure investment.</p><p>Even startups and funds started to push back.</p><p> In June 2025, nearly 50 European tech leaders, including Airbus, BNP Paribas, Partech, and Pigment, <a href="https://aichampions.eu/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com#stoptheclock"><u>signed an open “stop the clock” letter </u></a>calling for a two-year pause in implementation. Their argument: the rules are complex, guidance is still missing, and the technology is evolving faster than the law.</p><p>Brussels’ response was blunt: <em>there is no stopping the clock!</em></p><p><strong>Enter the Digital Omnibus</strong></p><p>Against this backdrop of regulatory strife comes the <a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-omnibus-regulation-proposal"><u>Digital Omnibus</u></a>, an attempt by the Commission to simplify, align, and de-conflict Europe’s growing stack of digital rules (AI Act, GDPR, DSA, DMA).</p><p>For the AI Act, the Omnibus makes several meaningful adjustments:</p><ul><li><strong>Centralizing enforcement under the EU AI Office:</strong> a new body within the European Commission responsible for overseeing general-purpose AI models and coordinating enforcement across Member States.</li><li><strong>Easing registration requirements for some lower-risk systems:</strong> for example, reducing documentation obligations for non-high-risk AI tools used internally.</li><li><strong>Delaying transparency obligations for generative AI until early 2027.</strong></li><li><strong>Expanding real-world testing options for high-risk AI.</strong></li><li><strong>Giving SMEs more flexibility on quality management systems:</strong> allowing lighter compliance processes where risks are limited, and resources are constrained.</li></ul><p>These changes do not rewrite the AI Act, but they do acknowledge a simple reality: compliance is hard when guidance is incomplete.</p><h3 id="so-where-are-we-today"><strong>So where are we today?</strong></h3><p>As of now, the AI Act is law, but not yet fully operational. Most companies still have time to comply with the regulations, but not unlimited time. The smart move for founders is not panic compliance, but preparation: mapping AI use, understanding risk exposure, and building internal literacy.</p><h3 id="a-final-thought"><strong>A final thought</strong></h3><p>The EU AI Act will likely do for AI what GDPR did for data: frustrate many, shape global norms, and eventually become the baseline. The real risk for European companies is not the regulation itself; it is waiting too long to engage with it.</p><p>Decoded, the message is simple: the rules are coming. The question is whether Europe’s innovators will choose to meet them early… or scramble later.</p>

<h1><center>🧮 Data Point: Angel Suprême</center></h1> <p>Famed French bootstrapped startup success Fleet announced a financial deal today that values the company at €100 million. (<a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/from-eu5-000-to-eu100-million-how-fleets-founders-built-a-tech-empire-without-venture-capital-then-finally-said-yes/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>See our story here</strong></a>.) That's good news for its employees and co-founders <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sevan-marian-a351aa4b/" rel="noopener"><strong>Sevan Marian</strong></a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/berriche/" rel="noopener"><strong>Alexandre Berriche</strong></a>. But it's also potentially very good news for France's and Europe's entrepreneurs because Berriche has become one of France's most active (according to Sifted, THE #1 Most Active) business angels. Now he's reloading.</p><p>Since becoming a Sequoia Capital scout in 2021, Berriche has made more than 80 investments. His flagship bet, a pre-seed investment in Swedish AI startup Lovable, has returned more than 100 times his initial stake as the company rocketed to a $5 billion valuation. But Berriche isn't content playing exclusively in the early-stage sandbox. Through Blue Chips by Roundtable, an investment community he co-founded, he has secured stakes in some of the world's most sought-after private companies: OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic, xAI, Stripe, Databricks, and Anduril. He's also an LP in elite funds, including Kleiner Perkins, Creandum, and Seedcamp, positioning himself at virtually every stage of the venture capital food chain.</p><p>Here's an overview of his portfolio, based on his extensive LinkedIn profile and other public statements: </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/berriche-investment-infographic.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="2667" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/berriche-investment-infographic.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/berriche-investment-infographic.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/berriche-investment-infographic.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/berriche-investment-infographic.png 2400w" /></figure><hr /><div class="kg-card kg-cta-card kg-cta-bg-purple kg-cta-immersive kg-cta-has-img "> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label-wrapper"> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label"> <span style="white-space:pre-wrap">SPONSORED</span> </div> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content"> <div class="kg-cta-image-container"> <a href="https://www.vanta.com/downloads/emea-customer-guide?utm_campaign=vanta-for-startups&amp;utm_source=french-tech&amp;utm_medium=newsletter"><img src="https://frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2025/07/SOC_EMEA_ScalingSecurity_1200x628--2--1-.png" alt="CTA Image" /></a> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content-inner"> <div class="kg-cta-text"> <p><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">🚀 Scaling your startup in EMEA?</strong></b></p><p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Learn how high-growth French companies like Pigment use Vanta to grow fast—without compromising on security.</span></p><p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">🔐 Turn compliance into a competitive advantage.</span></p><p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">📈 Close deals faster with built-in trust.</span></p> </div> <a href="https://www.vanta.com/downloads/emea-customer-guide?utm_campaign=vanta-for-startups&amp;utm_source=french-tech&amp;utm_medium=newsletter" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> 📘 Download the Customer Guide </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center> 💸 Weekly Funding Recap: 30</center></h1> <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/sectors-jan-30.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1744" height="1328" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/sectors-jan-30.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/sectors-jan-30.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/sectors-jan-30.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/sectors-jan-30.png 1744w" /></figure><hr /><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/top-deals-jan-30.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1774" height="650" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/top-deals-jan-30.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/top-deals-jan-30.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/top-deals-jan-30.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/top-deals-jan-30.png 1774w" /></figure><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Aviwell<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors:</strong> AgriTech, FoodTech, HealthTech, BioTech, AI &amp; Machine Learning<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Aviwell is a deep-tech animal nutrition company developing AI-driven, microbiome-based solutions to improve animal health, growth, and resilience. Built on decades of microbiome research, the company leverages its proprietary Aneto™ platform to design native bacterial ecologies with defined modes of action, enabling antibiotic-free, sustainable nutrition for poultry and aquaculture.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.aviwell.fr">Aviwell</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Toulouse<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Series A<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €11M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Blue Revolution Fund, Blast.Club, SWEN Capital Partners, Elaia, MFS Investment Management<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Rémy Burcelin, Mouli Ramani<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Aviwell closed an €11M Series A to scale its AI-powered Aneto™ microbiome discovery platform and advance nature-based biological solutions for animal nutrition. The funding will support the progression of poultry and aquaculture microbial ecologies from discovery through validation and industrial scale-up, expand platform services, and deepen commercial partnerships. Led by Blue Revolution Fund, the round underscores growing investor conviction in AI-enabled, sustainable alternatives to antibiotics amid rising global protein demand and tighter environmental constraints. | <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aviwell_aviwell-welcomes-brf-blast-and-swen-to-our-activity-7420485842999164928-55SB?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAE0kG8BObj6r7nc5sfWRNVZaz22BQG3gmI" rel="noreferrer"><strong>LinkedIn</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Twin<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>AI &amp; Machine Learning<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Twin is an AI platform that lets non-technical users build fully autonomous agents capable of running entire businesses end-to-end — from planning and decision-making to execution. Using browser control, self-correction, long-term memory, and a hybrid model stack (high-reasoning models to plan, lightweight models to execute), Twin enables complex operational workflows to be created in minutes without writing code. During its beta, users deployed over 100,000 autonomous agents, including fully automated trading systems, service businesses, retail arbitrage operations, and wholesale import companies.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://builder.twin.so">Twin</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €8.4M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> LocalGlobe, Kima Ventures, betaworks, Irregular Expressions, Motier Ventures, Andrena Ventures, Drysdale Ventures<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Hugo Mercier, João Justi<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Twin publicly launched on January 27 following a one-month beta in which users deployed more than 100,000 autonomous agents. The company announced a $10M seed round led by LocalGlobe to support its vision of becoming the “AI company builder,” enabling anyone to create self-sufficient AI-run businesses. Orrick Paris Tech Studio advised Twin on the financing. Early adopters praise the platform’s ease of use and power, while observers note upcoming challenges around reliability and enterprise-grade adoption as Twin scales. | <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hugomercier_what-a-ride-after-2-months-of-beta-and-activity-7422211846599880704-9SSI?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAE0kG8BObj6r7nc5sfWRNVZaz22BQG3gmI" rel="noreferrer"><strong>LinkedIn</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Atlas V Group<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>Gaming<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Atlas V is a European leader in VR and immersive content, known for premium narrative experiences developed with top-tier creative talent and global entertainment IPs. The studio is now diversifying into free-to-play immersive gaming and location-based VR, building a vertically integrated model spanning creation, production, and publishing of scalable XR experiences.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://atlasv.io/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Atlas V</strong></a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Series A<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €5M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> HTC<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders: Antoine Cayrol</strong>, <strong>Arnaud Colinart</strong>, <br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Founded in 2017, Atlas V has built a strong reputation producing critically acclaimed VR experiences such as <em>Spheres: Songs of Spacetime</em> (Darren Aronofsky), <em>Gloomy Eyes</em>, <em>Battlescar</em>, <em>Wallace &amp; Gromit: The Grand Getaway</em> (with Aardman and Meta), and <em>Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom</em> (with Bandai Namco). Its works have premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, Venice, and Cannes. With this €5M raise led by strategic investor HTC, Atlas V is accelerating its diversification into social and casual free-to-play VR gaming and location-based immersive experiences. The company has grown to 55 employees, including talent from leading gaming studios such as Ubisoft, and is currently developing <strong>per year</strong>. Atlas V will also extend existing IPs into location-based formats and deepen partnerships with major entertainment franchises, while leveraging HTC’s XR ecosystem to scale distribution and adoption. | <a href="https://variety.com/2026/digital/global/atlas-v-raise-6-million-diversify-gaming-location-based-vr-1236642469/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Variety</strong></a></p><hr /><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="560" height="558" /></figure><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Recupere Metals<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>DeepTech, Hardware, CleanTech, Energy<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Recupere Metals is a French industrial startup developing a patented mechanical process to transform copper waste directly into high-performance copper wires, without melting or refining. By bypassing energy-intensive steps of traditional copper production, the company offers a low-carbon, locally sourced alternative for industrial copper supply, addressing Europe’s growing exposure to copper shortages driven by electrification, renewables, data centers, and AI infrastructure.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.recupere-metals.com/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Recupere Metals</strong></a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €5M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> SistaFund, Endgame Capital, Ring Capital, Triple Impact Ventures, Business Angels, Sake Bosch<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders: </strong>Katie Marsh, Julien Vaïssette<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Founded in March 2025, Recupere Metals raised €5M just months after launch to transition from R&amp;D to industrial production. The funding will be used to scale manufacturing capacity and tailor its recycling process to industrial customer needs. The company targets applications in electric motors, data centers, and digital infrastructure, with pilot testing underway. Against a backdrop of a projected 30% global copper supply gap by 2035 (per IEA estimates), Recupere Metals aims to build a resilient European copper recycling value chain and reach <strong>6,000 tons of annual copper wire production by 2028</strong>. | <a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/01/30/face-a-une-demande-de-cuivre-qui-explose-recupere-metals-leve-5-millions-deuros/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> AYAQ<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>E-commerce &amp; Retail<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> French technical apparel brand focused on high-performance outdoor clothing, built on field-tested functionality, durability, and a long-term product vision. Founded by Olympic gold medalist Vincent Defrasne, AYAQ combines elite performance standards with premium positioning, supported by a senior advisory board drawn from the retail and luxury industries.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://ayaq.com/">Ayaq</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Growth<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €3.2M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Mike Horn<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Vincent Defrasne<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> AYAQ has raised €3.2M in equity, complemented by non-dilutive financing, bringing total capital mobilized to over €5M to accelerate international expansion and strengthen its product roadmap. The round welcomes renowned explorer Mike Horn as a shareholder, while the management team retains majority ownership, ensuring continuity of governance and long-term strategic vision. The funding will support intensified product development, industrial scaling, and a disciplined international rollout. AYAQ is already established in Switzerland and Austria and reached a major milestone with its entry into the Japanese market in September 2025 via leading department stores. The brand has also laid the groundwork for expansion into the UK. | <a href="https://www.sporteco.com/une-augmentation-de-capital-chez-ayaq/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Sport Eco</strong></a></p><hr /><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1536" height="864" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-1.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-1.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image-1.png 1536w" /></figure><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> GoCanopy<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>PropTech &amp; Real Estate, AI &amp; Machine Learning<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> AI-native operating system for institutional real estate investors, enabling teams to transform fragmented internal data into <strong>compounding institutional intelligence</strong>. GoCanopy uses human-in-the-loop agentic AI workflows to ingest unstructured documents (PDFs, Excel files, offering memoranda, rent rolls, asset management reports) into a single system of record that supports both investment and asset management workflows.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.gocanopy.tech" rel="noopener">GoCanopy</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €2.1M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> ISAI, BNP Paribas Développement, Yellow, Andrew Baum, Ludovic Jacquot<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> William He, Yash Pabbisetti<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> GoCanopy has raised €2.1M in seed funding to build the AI operating system for institutional real estate investors. Founded in 2023 and bootstrapped until this round, the company already counts major asset managers among its users, including Brookfield and certain Apollo-managed funds. The platform addresses a core industry pain point: the fragmentation of deal, asset, tenant, and financial data across inboxes, PDFs, spreadsheets, and internal silos. By creating a shared AI-driven extraction layer and a living institutional memory, GoCanopy enables investment teams to improve deal screening, underwriting, and investment committee preparation, while empowering asset management teams with proactive portfolio execution tools such as lease expiry detection and rent review tracking. The funding will be used to accelerate enterprise-grade product development and support international expansion, including scaling teams across Paris and London. | <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/01/gocanopy-ends-bootstrapping-streak-and-raises-e2-1-million-to-build-ai-operating-system-for-institutional-real-estate-investors/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>EU Startups</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Radiant<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>Energy, CleanTech<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Radiant is an industrial climate tech startup developing high-temperature solar thermal solutions designed to decarbonise industrial heat. Its system combines next-generation heliostats, a proprietary receiver, and thermal energy storage to replace fossil-fuel-based equipment such as gas burners and oil-fired boilers across heat-intensive industrial processes.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.radiant-energy.eu/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Radiant</strong></a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Massy<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €2M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Tiresias Angels, Selim Cherif, Business Angels, Hexa, <br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders: </strong>Thomas Delhon, Alexandre Meurisse<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Radiant has been selected for Hexa’s <strong>Carbon Zero</strong> acceleration programme and closed a €2M funding round to support the industrialisation of its solar thermal technology. Built on over <strong>15 years of R&amp;D</strong> conducted at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Radiant’s solution can deliver industrial heat between <strong>200°C and 1,000°C</strong>, with thermal power outputs ranging from <strong>2 to 50 MW</strong>, while maintaining precise operational control. The technology targets sectors such as <strong>cement, glass, and asphalt</strong>, where industrial heat represents more than 70% of energy consumption and remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels. The new funding will finance Radiant’s <strong>first industrial demonstrator in Le Mans</strong>, validating scalability and deployment efficiency, ahead of broader international expansion to support the decarbonisation of industrial heat at scale. | <a href="https://tech.eu/2026/01/27/radiant-joins-hexas-carbon-zero-programme-and-raises-eur2m-to-decarbonise-industrial-heat/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Tech EU </strong></a></p><hr /><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-51.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1128" height="752" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-51.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-51.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-51.png 1128w" /></figure><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Evolutive Agronomy<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>AgriTech, BioTech <br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Evolutive Agronomy develops biological crop protection solutions that are both high-performance and easy to deploy, helping farmers protect crops sustainably. The company’s approach focuses on soil pests, leveraging beneficial organisms to reduce reliance on chemical inputs while improving agronomic outcomes.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://evolutiveagronomy.com/solution-bye-nematode/">Evolutive Agronomy</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Sophia Antipolis<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Pre-Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €1.8M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors: </strong>50 Partners, Business Angels<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Antoine Pasquier, Lucie Monticelli<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Evolutive Agronomy raised €1.8M to accelerate the field deployment of its first commercial product, <strong>ByeNematode®</strong>, a biological solution based on predatory mites targeting root-knot nematodes. The funding will also support the scale-up of production capacities and continued R&amp;D closely aligned with real-world farm needs, with a strong focus on soil-borne pests. The round marks a key milestone in the company’s mission to deliver practical, sustainable crop protection tools for farmers. | <a href="https://www.nicematin.com/economie/avec-ses-acariens-predateurs-cette-starup-azureenne-a-un-plan-sans-pesticide-pour-aider-les-agriculteurs-a-lutter-contre-les-ravageurs-des-sols-10664758" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Nice Matin</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Dowgo<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>FinTech, Web3<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Dowgo is a French fintech building a blockchain-based investment infrastructure dedicated to financing private impact assets. The platform is designed to connect professional and institutional investors with project developers through a secure, transparent, and liquid digital marketplace, covering the full investment lifecycle from primary issuance to secondary trading.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.dowgo.com/en" rel="noreferrer">Dowgo</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €2M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Bpifrance, 50 Partners, Cube Accelerator, Emmanuel Picot, Damien Guermonprez<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders: </strong>Oscar Dumant,<strong> </strong>Romain Menetrier<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Dowgo announced a €2M funding round to finalize the deployment of its blockchain-based platform for financing impact-driven private assets. Developed over more than three years by finance and investment professionals, the platform aims to become a <strong>reference European infrastructure</strong> for impact private markets, combining regulatory-grade security, transparency, and continuous liquidity. Dowgo’s solution enables institutional and professional investors to access impact projects previously reserved for large players, with full visibility on financial performance, environmental impact, and CO₂ avoided. For project developers (SMEs, infrastructure developers, local authorities), the platform promises faster, lower-cost, and better-adapted financing through a fully digital infrastructure. A built-in secondary market will allow continuous liquidity and simplified execution across the asset lifecycle. The platform relies on blockchain technology and is pending regulatory approval as an investment firm, alongside an exemption under the EU <strong>Pilot Regime</strong>. Dowgo’s application is currently under review by the AMF, Banque de France, and ACPR. Ahead of the regulated launch, Dowgo has already released a <strong>sovereign, AI-connectable dataroom</strong>, compliant with ISO 27001 and DORA standards, hosted in France, and featuring immutable audit trails. The solution supports secure document analysis and audit preparation via AI connectors, while preserving strict read-only data integrity. More than <strong>€300M worth of impact projects</strong> are already identified and awaiting distribution on the platform, signaling strong early demand for a new generation of compliant, liquid private-market infrastructure in Europe. | <a href="https://finyear.com/dowgo-leve-2-millions-deuros" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Finyear</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> ATOBA Energy<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>ClimateTech, SpaceTech &amp; Aerospace<br />🔍 <strong>Description: </strong>ATOBA Energy is a midstream Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) aggregator designed to unlock industrial-scale growth of SAF by resolving the financial deadlock between airlines and producers. By aggregating upstream and downstream offtake portfolios, ATOBA enables long-term SAF contracts with optimized pricing indexes, mitigating technology and pricing risk across production pathways and accelerating final investment decisions.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.atoba.energy">ATOBA Energy</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Lyon<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Pre-Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €1.265M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> 👨💼👩💼 <br />👨💼👩💼<strong>Founders: </strong>Arnaud Namer <br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> ATOBA Energy raised an oversubscribed $1.5M pre-seed round to scale its SAF aggregation platform and expand short- and long-term offtake agreements with producers, airlines, and jet fuel resellers. The company addresses a critical bottleneck in the SAF market, where producers require long-term price stability to finance projects while airlines seek market-linked pricing with reduced execution risk. By unifying the SAF financial value chain, ATOBA enables bankable long-term offtake contracts—key to scaling SAF from a ~$2B market today toward a projected $400B+ market by 2050. | <a href="https://atoba.energy/blog/atoba-raises-1.5m-pre-seed-round-to-unlock-scaling-of-sustainable-aviation-fuel" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Atoba</strong></a></p><hr /><p>👋🏻 If you’re enjoying <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.substack.com/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener">The French Tech Journal</a>, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> / <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> 👋🏻‌</p>

<p>Seven years ago, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sevan-marian-a351aa4b/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Sevan Marian</strong></a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/berriche/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Alexandre Berriche</strong></a> each scraped together €2,500, pocket change by startup standards, and launched <a href="https://fleet.co/en" rel="noreferrer">Fleet</a> from a Paris apartment. </p><p>They had no venture capital, no debt facilities, no safety net. What they had was a simple bet: that mid-sized companies were tired of buying laptops outright and dealing with the headaches that followed.</p><p>On Monday, Fleet announces it has reached a €100 million valuation and is opening its capital to outside investors for the first time. ISAI Expansion, the private equity arm of one of France's pioneering tech investment firms, is taking a minority stake in a deal that provides liquidity to the founders and, critically, to employees who bet on the company when no one else would.</p><p>"We invested two and a half thousand euros each six years ago, and it became 100 million," Marian said in an interview, still sounding slightly amazed. "Which is crazy."</p><p>The deal marks a turning point for a company that has become something of a cult hero in French tech circles, proof that you don't need to play the venture capital game to build something significant. </p><p>But it also raises a question that Marian and Berriche have been wrestling with for months: after building an identity around being bootstrapped, why change course now?</p><h2 id="the-anti-vc-playbook">The Anti-VC Playbook</h2><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/85b698a3-46dc-4a5a-9fa8-98eed83e7228-2-1.jpg" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1184" height="791" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/85b698a3-46dc-4a5a-9fa8-98eed83e7228-2-1.jpg 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/85b698a3-46dc-4a5a-9fa8-98eed83e7228-2-1.jpg 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/85b698a3-46dc-4a5a-9fa8-98eed83e7228-2-1.jpg 1184w" /><figcaption><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">Fleet co-founders Sevan Marian (left)</strong></b><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> and </span><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">Alexandre Berriche</strong></b></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/Fleet-Article/blob/main/fleet-financing-feature-story.md#the-anti-vc-playbook"></a></p><p>Fleet's origin story reads like a deliberate rejection of the startup orthodoxy that dominated the late 2010s. While their peers were raising seed rounds and chasing growth at any cost, Marian and Berriche were doing something unfashionable: making money.</p><p>The business model was deceptively simple. Companies with five to 500 employees could lease laptops, tablets, phones, and even office furniture through Fleet's platform, converting capital expenditures into predictable monthly payments. Fleet handled procurement, device management, security, maintenance, and end-of-life recycling. The customer got a single platform called "Cockpit" and never thought about IT equipment again.</p><p>"After six months, we sat down together and said, okay, we have a lot of cash in the bank. The more we grow, the more we accumulate cash, because we have almost negative working capital," Marian recalled. "Does it make sense to raise money? Or can we grow just with our own cash?"</p><p>They chose the latter. The decision forced architectural choices that would prove prescient. Fleet operates a drop-shipping model, avoiding inventory costs. Rather than financing customer leases from its own balance sheet, the company integrated directly with French banks' APIs, essentially acting as a broker. Suppliers got paid late; customers paid monthly upfront. Cash flowed in faster than it flowed out.</p><p>The result was a company that grew 60 percent in 2024 and then 92 percent in 2025, reaching more than €30 million in annualized revenue while remaining profitable with just 45 employees. Two-thirds of that revenue now comes from outside France, with operations spanning Spain, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, and a fast-growing American business launched nine months ago that's already generating €6 million annually.</p><p>"We've made a longer journey, a long pass," Marian acknowledged. "But today we have a very solid foundation."</p><figure class="kg-card kg-gallery-card kg-width-wide"><div class="kg-gallery-container"><div class="kg-gallery-row"><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/9f101811-7fa7-40a9-b8f5-d86a1d0fdfe2-1.jpg" width="1600" height="900" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/9f101811-7fa7-40a9-b8f5-d86a1d0fdfe2-1.jpg 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/9f101811-7fa7-40a9-b8f5-d86a1d0fdfe2-1.jpg 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/9f101811-7fa7-40a9-b8f5-d86a1d0fdfe2-1.jpg 1600w" /></div><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/c7e60126-7f61-49eb-96f9-ca1a7e0c57bb-1.jpg" width="1600" height="899" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/c7e60126-7f61-49eb-96f9-ca1a7e0c57bb-1.jpg 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/c7e60126-7f61-49eb-96f9-ca1a7e0c57bb-1.jpg 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/c7e60126-7f61-49eb-96f9-ca1a7e0c57bb-1.jpg 1600w" /></div><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image--31--1.png" width="1661" height="1082" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image--31--1.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image--31--1.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/image--31--1.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/image--31--1.png 1661w" /></div></div></div></figure><h2 id="the-butterfly-effect">The Butterfly Effect</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/Fleet-Article/blob/main/fleet-financing-feature-story.md#the-butterfly-effect"></a></p><p>If Fleet had followed the traditional path, it might have raised a seed round in 2019, a Series A in 2021 at an inflated valuation, and then faced the brutal reckoning that hit European tech in 2023. Instead, the company sailed through the venture capital winter unscathed.</p><p>"We went through this VC crisis, especially in Europe and in France, in 2023," Marian said. "What was maybe at the beginning not a weakness, but something harder for us, became a strength."</p><p>The founders have started calling bootstrapped success stories "butterflies": companies that grow like caterpillars before transforming into something bigger. It's a deliberate counter to the unicorn mythology that has dominated tech culture.</p><p>"We don't really make the headlines when we don't raise money," Marian said. "We talk about unicorns. I think we should celebrate this more."</p><h2 id="why-now">Why Now?</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/Fleet-Article/blob/main/fleet-financing-feature-story.md#why-now"></a></p><p>So why, after seven years of principled independence, open the door to outside capital?</p><p>The answer involves both personal and strategic calculations. </p><p>In January 2025, Berriche stepped back from the CEO role to become Executive Chairman, while Marian took sole command. Berriche had developed a parallel career as one of Europe's most prolific angel investors. He's a scout for Sequoia Capital and was ranked the number-one investor on Sifted's 2025 AI 100 list, with a portfolio that includes a stake in Lovable that has returned more than 100 times his investment.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/02/berriche-investment-infographic.svg" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1200" height="1600" /></figure><p>"Since Alex is now more or less part-time and not fully invested in the company, maybe we should make a difference in the cap table between us," Marian explained. "That was the first reason."</p><p>The second was more philosophical. After seven years, the founders wanted external validation of what they'd built, a real number backed by real money, not a theoretical valuation from a previous funding round.</p><p>"It's a real €100 million valuation, because it's only secondary," Marian emphasized. "There is no cash in the company. It's only cash out."</p><p>The third reason may be the most significant. Fleet had given stock options to early employees, but stock options in a bootstrapped company are abstract promises of future value with no obvious path to liquidity. The venture capital collapse of recent years has left many startup employees at other companies holding worthless paper, poisoning the well for equity compensation.</p><p>"The image of stock options in the ecosystem has been very bad lately," Marian said. "We wanted to give liquidity and to tell the story that many people at our company became rich thanks to us." </p><p>Employees are receiving full cash-outs on their options, totaling €2-3 million across the team.</p><p>Berniche and Marian will also completely cash out, but...they are also reinvesting and will remain majority shareholders. Which means that – yes – between the two of them, the are putting €50 million back into the company. </p><p>"The PE fund is a minority and we stay in command," he said.</p><h2 id="the-road-to-%E2%82%AC100-million-in-revenue">The Road to €100 Million in Revenue</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/Fleet-Article/blob/main/fleet-financing-feature-story.md#the-road-to-100-million-in-revenue"></a></p><p>The ISAI investment isn't about survival. Fleet doesn't need the money to operate. It's about acceleration. The company aims to grow from €30 million to €100 million in annual revenue within four years, a trajectory that will require executing on multiple fronts simultaneously.</p><p>The immediate priority is geographic expansion. The American market, operated entirely from a Barcelona sales hub with staff working shifted hours, is Fleet's fastest-growing region. Marian plans to establish a proper US presence with local hires.</p><p>But the bigger strategic bet involves transforming Fleet from a device management company into what Marian calls an "AI MSP"—an artificial intelligence-powered managed service provider. Today, Fleet excels at hardware lifecycle management and automated employee onboarding and offboarding. Tomorrow, it wants to handle the entire IT stack: software issues, printer problems, access management, and the daily friction that bogs down small and medium businesses without dedicated IT departments.</p><p>"This market is very old school," Marian said of traditional managed service providers. "Small players, not digitalized, that come in the office to help you. We want to, thanks to AI, disrupt this market and create this full-stack solution."</p><p>The timing, he argues, is finally right. Remote and hybrid work have created distributed teams that local IT providers can't serve. Cloud computing means most infrastructure can be managed remotely. And AI is making it possible to automate the kind of support that previously required human technicians.</p><h2 id="remaining-in-command">Remaining in Command</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/Fleet-Article/blob/main/fleet-financing-feature-story.md#remaining-in-command"></a></p><p>Despite taking outside investment, Marian and Berriche have structured the deal to maintain control. ISAI Expansion holds a minority stake with board representation and veto rights, but the founders remain majority shareholders.</p><p>"We stay in command," Marian said. "Alex, both of us are majority shareholders if we sum up our shares."</p><p>It's a conscious rejection of the typical private equity playbook, where financial sponsors often take controlling positions and install their own management. ISAI Expansion, whose portfolio includes French success stories like Theodo and aDvens, has a track record of backing profitable, founder-led companies through growth phases without seizing the wheel.</p><p>For Marian, the deal represents something like having it both ways: the validation and liquidity of outside investment without sacrificing the independence that made Fleet's journey possible.</p><p>"You can go big, grow big, be very ambitious, scale fast, without raising money if you have the right business model and if it's the right choice for you," he said. "It's not automatic to raise money. You have to ask yourself as a founder: Do I want that? Does my business require this?"</p><p>Seven years and 20,000 times his initial investment later, Marian finally has his answer.</p>

<p>👋 <strong>Inside this week's edition: </strong></p><p>👀 A French nuclear startup backed by the state and industry giants burned through €90 million, only to collapse days after a last-minute rescue deal fell apart in court. <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/nuclear-meltdown-how-naarea-burned-through-eu90-million-and-collapsed-in-spectacular-fashion/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>This is the story of NAAREA’s rise and fall, and what its failure reveals about the brutal mismatch between startup timelines, government ambition, and next-generation nuclear tech.</strong></a></p><p><strong>Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand</strong></p><hr /><div class="kg-card kg-cta-card kg-cta-bg-blue kg-cta-immersive kg-cta-has-img "> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label-wrapper"> <div class="kg-cta-sponsor-label"> <span style="white-space:pre-wrap">SPONSORED</span> </div> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content"> <div class="kg-cta-image-container"> <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/12/ready-to-pitch-applications-for-the-2026-eu-startups-summit-pitch-competition-are-now-open/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/EU-Startups-Summit_Main-2-1536x864.png.webp" alt="CTA Image" /></a> </div> <div class="kg-cta-content-inner"> <div class="kg-cta-text"> <p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">On May 7-8, Malta will transform into the main meeting point for Europe’s most ambitious founders and investors as we host the 12th edition of the </span><a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/summit/" class="cta-link-color"><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">EU-Startups Summit</strong></b></a><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">. The event will gather around 2,500 founders, startup enthusiasts, corporates, angel investors, VCs, and media from across Europe – all united by a focus on startups with global ambitions.</span></p><p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">We’ll have two stages, great networking opportunities, workshops, a buzzing exhibition hall, and a super exciting </span><b><strong style="white-space:pre-wrap">Pitch Competition</strong></b><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> featuring 15 most promising early-stage startups from across Europe! Each finalist will have three minutes to pitch their idea on the main stage in front of a large audience of investors, media, and startup enthusiasts, followed by questions from our panel of high-profile VC judges.</span></p> </div> <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/12/ready-to-pitch-applications-for-the-2026-eu-startups-summit-pitch-competition-are-now-open/" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> Apply now </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center>Tech Talk</center></h1> <p>🛡️🇪🇺 France has a <strong>new cybersecurity strategy. </strong>Unveiled in Bordeaux by <strong>digital minister Anne Le Hénanff</strong>, the 2026–2030 plan promises to turn France into a “top-tier cyber power” by training more talent, hardening defenses, and scaring off hackers. The strategy leans heavily on resilience, with a national cyber “one-stop shop,” EU-mandated minimum security standards for 15,000 entities, and a prevention campaign modeled (optimistically) on road safety ads. Local governments and election candidates are flagged as prime targets ahead of municipal elections, with a clear message: don’t be naïve, enable two-factor authentication, and stop using terrible passwords. There’s also talk of labels for SMEs, European cyber sovereignty, and international cyber solidarity, because no strategy is complete without buzzwords. As for funding? Weellllllllll...investments are promised, numbers are not forthcoming in these budget strained time. Apparently, cybersecurity, like everything else, must survive France’s budget reality check. | <a href="https://www.franceinfo.fr/internet/securite-sur-internet/cyberattaques/plan-sur-la-cybersecurite-en-france-les-collectivites-sont-une-cible-pour-les-municipales-previent-la-ministre-chargee-de-l-intelligence-artificielle-et-du-numerique_7771826.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>France Info</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://presse.economie.gouv.fr/cybersecurite-le-gouvernement-devoile-la-strategie-nationale-de-cybersecurite-2026-2030/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Minister of the Economy</strong></a>,</p><p>🤖🇫🇷 As digital sovereignty rhetoric heats up, <strong>French SaaS and cloud alternatives are finally seeing real demand</strong>. Jamespot, a long-standing French collaborative software player, reports growing interest from CAC 40 groups looking to reduce Microsoft dependence. Cloud exit plans are now openly discussed, albeit on multi-year timelines, while US hyperscalers rush to rebrand “sovereign” offerings. The race is on between genuine autonomy and cleverly wrapped dependency. |<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/le-vent-tourne-jamespot-ou-lincarnation-de-la-premiere-heure-de-la-souverainete-numerique-francaise-2211901" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Les Echos</strong></a></p><p>🖥️🇺🇸 <strong>Capgemini is squirming under scrutiny over a U.S. ICE contract that’s “not in execution”...</strong>for now. According to the French IT giant, its American subsidiary paused work due to legal challenges and internal review. Still, public filings show the contract included ID and tracking tools for foreign nationals, plus hotline management for crime victims. | <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2026/01/29/capgemini-assure-que-son-contrat-avec-l-ice-n-est-pas-en-cours-d-execution_6664625_3234.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Le Monde</strong></a></p><p>🧪💶  <strong>Paris-based VC daphni just closed its Blue fund at €260m, </strong>above target and in under nine months. The mission-driven firm is doubling down on science-first deeptech, backing startups spun out of Europe’s top research institutions, from INRIA to Institut Curie. Nine investments are already live, spanning green chemistry, brain-machine interfaces, fertility tech, and immunotherapy. The bet is that Europe’s vast scientific output has been chronically underfunded at the “lab-to-market” stage and that patient capital can turn IP into impact. With ESG-linked carry and a plan to back ~40 companies, daphni is positioning deep science as both investable and essential. | <a href="https://tech.eu/2026/01/29/daphni-blue-completes-eur260m-final-close-for-science-driven-european-investments/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Tech.Eu</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/01/from-lab-coats-to-unicorns-french-vc-daphni-blue-closes-e260-million-fund-to-turn-science-into-startups/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>EU Startups</strong></a></p><p>❤️💉 <strong>French medtech is pulsing. HighLife’s minimally invasive mitral valve system just got CE marking, while Bordeaux-based FineHeart raised €83M to scale its wireless cardiac pump.</strong> CorWave’s fish-inspired heart assist reached human trials in Australia, and consolidators like Carvolix are combining forces to take on the €23B valve replacement market. French heart innovation is going global, all without skipping a beat. | <a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/start-up/ecosysteme/derriere-carmat-une-nouvelle-generation-de-start-up-francaises-dans-la-chirurgie-cardiaque-2212283" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Les Echos</strong></a></p><p>🌱⚠️ Meanwhile, if MedTech is up on the up, <strong>funding for green industrial startups in France has halved in two years</strong>, dropping to €1.5bn in 2025, with deal count nearly cut in half. Political uncertainty, regulatory stop-and-go, and reduced France 2030 budgets are now blamed more than tech risk. Investors are still writing big cheques, but mainly for mature energy projects, leaving early-stage industrial climate tech struggling to scale. | <a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/start-up/impact/ce-nest-pas-une-baisse-cest-une-chute-le-gros-coup-de-fatigue-des-start-up-de-lindustrie-verte-2212692" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Les Echos</strong></a></p><p>🌱🏠 <strong>Paris’ Climate House is making plans to firmly plant its flag in Bordeaux</strong>. The 600 m² hub will mirror its Paris sibling, gathering entrepreneurs, researchers, artists, and investors to prototype green and social innovations. Co-founders (“cofos”) are now Bordeaux-bound, and the stage is set for civic-tech meets climate-tech, with hopes to expand to Nantes, Lyon, and Marseille next. | <a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/01/28/apres-paris-la-climate-house-va-sexporter-a-bordeaux/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a></p><p>💼🧑‍💻 <strong>A new generation of French Tech bankers is stepping into the spotlight.</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/englebertphilippe/" rel="noreferrer">Philippe Engleber</a>, ex ministerial advisor for Tech, who has just been promoted to Managing Partner at Lazard Bank. From Lazard to Rothschild, Chausson and Clipperton, these rising figures are advising the biggest IPOs, deeptech mega-rounds, and restructurings of the moment. Their edge is deep sector expertise, closer ties to founders, and a market that now favours strategy and selectivity over pure volume. | <a href="https://www.lesechos.fr/start-up/portraits/la-nouvelle-garde-de-banquiers-daffaires-de-la-french-tech-2212529 La nouvelle garde de banquiers d'affaires de la French Tech" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Les Echos</strong></a></p><p>🍱🌏<strong>  Too Good To Go is going east.</strong> After conquering Europe and the U.S., the anti-food-waste app is opening in Japan with local leadership and partnerships, targeting ambitious waste-reduction goals. France remains the revenue engine, with 20M downloads and 20M meals saved in 2025 alone. The startup’s mix of social impact, AI-powered logistics, and new verticals proves that fighting food waste can also be seriously profitable. | <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-largest-marketplace-for-surplus-food-too-good-to-go-launches-in-japan-302672081.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>PR Newswire</strong></a></p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="#/portal/signup" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Become a Paid Subscriber</a></div><hr /> <h1><center>Nuclear Meltdown: How NAAREA Burned Through €90 Million and Collapsed in Spectacular Fashion</center></h1> <figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/nuclear-meltdown-how-naarea-burned-through-eu90-million-and-collapsed-in-spectacular-fashion/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-52.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1304" height="873" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-52.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-52.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-52.png 1304w" /></a></figure><p>On the morning NAAREA’s employees thought they’d been saved, their would-be buyer suddenly walked away, accusing the startup of hidden problems and a reactor design stuck in a “technological impasse.” </p><p>Within days, a courtroom forced the deal through anyway, and the supposed rescuer filed for bankruptcy, ending a five-year sprint that burned through roughly €90 million, left more than 100 people without jobs, and produced exactly zero reactors. </p><p>How does a France 2030 “flagship” with government backing and heavyweight partners implode this fast and this publicly?</p><p>In this special report, we trace the chain reaction: a founder’s COP21-born vision of a molten-salt, fast-neutron microreactor in a shipping container; a business model that promised selling clean power like a service; and the brutal collision between venture timelines, nuclear physics, and state bureaucracy. Along the way: the “NuScale shockwave” that froze investor appetite, a Phase II funding bottleneck that never arrived, and a final due diligence knife fight that raises uncomfortable questions about France’s nuclear innovation strategy, and even its AI ambitions, which increasingly depend on delivering abundant power.</p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/nuclear-meltdown-how-naarea-burned-through-eu90-million-and-collapsed-in-spectacular-fashion/" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Inside France’s most spectacular nuclear startup collapse</a></div><hr /> <h1><center>💸 Top Funding Deals 💸</center></h1> <p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Aviwell<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors:</strong> AgriTech &amp; FoodTech, HealthTech &amp; BioTech, AI &amp; Machine Learning<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Aviwell is a deep-tech animal nutrition company developing AI-driven, microbiome-based solutions to improve animal health, growth, and resilience. Built on decades of microbiome research, the company leverages its proprietary Aneto™ platform to design native bacterial ecologies with defined modes of action, enabling antibiotic-free, sustainable nutrition for poultry and aquaculture.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://www.aviwell.fr">Aviwell</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Toulouse<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Series A<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €11M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Blue Revolution Fund, Blast.Club, SWEN Capital Partners, Elaia, MFS Investment Management<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Rémy Burcelin, Mouli Ramani<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Aviwell closed an €11M Series A to scale its AI-powered Aneto™ microbiome discovery platform and advance nature-based biological solutions for animal nutrition. The funding will support the progression of poultry and aquaculture microbial ecologies from discovery through validation and industrial scale-up, expand platform services, and deepen commercial partnerships. Led by Blue Revolution Fund, the round underscores growing investor conviction in AI-enabled, sustainable alternatives to antibiotics amid rising global protein demand and tighter environmental constraints. | <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aviwell_aviwell-welcomes-brf-blast-and-swen-to-our-activity-7420485842999164928-55SB?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAE0kG8BObj6r7nc5sfWRNVZaz22BQG3gmI" rel="noreferrer"><strong>LinkedIn</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> Twin<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>AI &amp; Machine Learning<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> Twin is an AI platform that lets non-technical users build fully autonomous agents capable of running entire businesses end-to-end — from planning and decision-making to execution. Using browser control, self-correction, long-term memory, and a hybrid model stack (high-reasoning models to plan, lightweight models to execute), Twin enables complex operational workflows to be created in minutes without writing code. During its beta, users deployed over 100,000 autonomous agents, including fully automated trading systems, service businesses, retail arbitrage operations, and wholesale import companies.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://builder.twin.so">Twin</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Seed<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> $10M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> LocalGlobe, Kima Ventures, betaworks, Irregular Expressions, Motier Ventures, Andrena Ventures, Drysdale Ventures<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Hugo Mercier, João Justi<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> Twin publicly launched on January 27 following a one-month beta in which users deployed more than 100,000 autonomous agents. The company announced a $10M seed round led by LocalGlobe to support its vision of becoming the “AI company builder,” enabling anyone to create self-sufficient AI-run businesses. Orrick Paris Tech Studio advised Twin on the financing. Early adopters praise the platform’s ease of use and power, while observers note upcoming challenges around reliability and enterprise-grade adoption as Twin scales. | <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hugomercier_what-a-ride-after-2-months-of-beta-and-activity-7422211846599880704-9SSI?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAE0kG8BObj6r7nc5sfWRNVZaz22BQG3gmI" rel="noreferrer"><strong>LinkedIn</strong></a></p><hr /><p>📇 <strong>Company:</strong> AYAQ<br />🏷️ <strong>Sectors: </strong>E-commerce &amp; Retail<br />🔍 <strong>Description:</strong> French technical apparel brand focused on high-performance outdoor clothing, built on field-tested functionality, durability, and a long-term product vision. Founded by Olympic gold medalist Vincent Defrasne, AYAQ combines elite performance standards with premium positioning, supported by a senior advisory board drawn from the retail and luxury industries.<br />💻 <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="https://ayaq.com/">Ayaq</a><br />📍 <strong>HQ City:</strong> Paris<br />🧗 <strong>Round:</strong> Growth<br />💰 <strong>Amount Raised:</strong> €3.2M<br />🏦 <strong>Investors:</strong> Mike Horn<br />👨💼👩💼 <strong>Founders:</strong> Vincent Defrasne<br />🗞️ <strong>News:</strong> AYAQ has raised €3.2M in equity, complemented by non-dilutive financing, bringing total capital mobilized to over €5M to accelerate international expansion and strengthen its product roadmap. The round welcomes renowned explorer Mike Horn as a shareholder, while the management team retains majority ownership, ensuring continuity of governance and long-term strategic vision. The funding will support intensified product development, industrial scaling, and a disciplined international rollout. AYAQ is already established in Switzerland and Austria and reached a major milestone with its entry into the Japanese market in September 2025 via leading department stores. The brand has also laid the groundwork for expansion into the UK.</p><hr /><p>👋🏻 If you’re enjoying <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.substack.com/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener">The French Tech Journal</a>, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> / <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> 👋🏻‌</p>

<p>On the morning of January 14, 2026, the employees of NAAREA arrived at work expecting salvation. After six months in judicial reorganization, the French nuclear startup had finally found a buyer. The Polish-Luxembourgish energy company Eneris was set to acquire them the very next day, preserving 108 of their 206 jobs. The nightmare, it seemed, was ending.</p><p>Then came the cold shower.</p><p>Hours before the scheduled court hearing, Eneris announced it was walking away. <a href="https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/afp/nucleaire-naarea-se-defend-apres-son-depot-de-bilan-par-son-repreneur-eneris-260121" rel="noreferrer">The company cited</a> "the discovery, after the filing of its offer and at the hearing of the court, of legal, social and technological elements that had been concealed." </p><p>More damning still: Eneris declared that NAAREA was "in a technological impasse on its project of a fast neutron microreactor."</p><p>The accusation sent founder Jean-Luc Alexandre into a fury. "The real reason is that Eneris doesn't have the funds to carry out this operation," he stormed to reporters, insisting his buyer knew "nothing about nuclear." </p><p>His protests fell on deaf ears. Within five days, Eneris, having been forced by the court to complete the acquisition anyway, filed for bankruptcy of NAAREA itself, bringing a definitive end to one of France's most ambitious bets on next-generation nuclear technology.</p><p>How did a company backed by the French government, partnered with industrial giants like Dassault Systèmes and Orano, and celebrated as a flagship of the France 2030 innovation program, collapse so spectacularly? </p><p>The answer lies in a volatile mix of technological ambition, investor skittishness, government bureaucracy, and perhaps the fundamental impossibility of building a revolutionary nuclear reactor on a startup timeline.</p><p>The fallout from this nuclear failure has implications beyond one startup gone awry. As France has positioned itself as a global AI champion, one of its selling points has been its nuclear power base and its backing of innovative nuclear solutions such as SMRs. The nation received record investment last year from foreign investors for new data centers, but it's on the hook to deliver the power. </p><p>An inability to fulfill France's nuclear plans could short-circuit its AI ambitions as well.</p><h2 id="the-engineer-with-a-vision">The Engineer With a Vision</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/NAAREA/blob/main/NAAREA_Feature_Story.md#the-engineer-with-a-vision"></a></p><p>Jean-Luc Alexandre was not your typical startup founder. A graduate of CentraleSupélec, one of France's elite engineering schools, he had spent decades in heavy industry, including railways at Alstom, water treatment at Suez, where he rose to lead the company's global operations. He knew how to run massive infrastructure projects. What he didn't know, initially, was that he would spend the final chapter of his career chasing a dream born at a climate conference.</p><p><strong><em>I reached out to Alexandre for comment this week,</em></strong> <strong><em>but he did not respond to requests for an interview.</em></strong></p><p>The spark came at COP21 in Paris in 2015. Alexandre was working on sustainable development goals when a simple truth crystallized: every one of the 17 SDGs adopted by 193 countries depended on one thing. "The answer was energy, pure energy," he told me in a December 2023 interview. "This is the unique transmitter. So the lever of sustainable works is energy."</p><hr /><p><strong><em>I spoke with Alexandre as part of a feature for Sifted in 2023 about France's ambitions to leverage its nuclear history to create an innovative nuclear ecosystem. You can read that story here. </em></strong></p><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://sifted.eu/articles/france-bets-on-nuclear-tech"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">France bets €1bn on startups building bus-sized nuclear reactors to fight climate change</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">The French government approves six new nuclear reactors and pledges funds for nuclear startups to help meet its climate goals.</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/icon/favicon-427.ico" alt="" /><span class="kg-bookmark-author">Sifted</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Chris O’Brien</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/thumbnail/JIMMY_PAYSAGE_4.png" alt="" /></div></a></figure><hr /><p>But what kind of energy? Solar and wind were intermittent. Natural gas was still a fossil fuel. And conventional nuclear, while carbon-free, came with baggage: massive construction costs, water-cooling requirements, and the seemingly intractable problem of long-lived radioactive waste.</p><p>Alexandre saw a different path. During his years at Suez, he had become intimately familiar with waste-to-energy systems, the circular economy principle of turning one industry's garbage into another's fuel. What if the same logic could apply to nuclear? What if you could build a reactor that literally consumed nuclear waste as fuel?</p><p>The technology existed, at least in theory. Molten salt reactors had been developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee during the 1950s and 1960s. By dissolving nuclear fuel directly into liquid salt, rather than using solid fuel rods cooled by water, these reactors offered inherent safety advantages. The physics of the system meant it would naturally slow down if it overheated, rather than risking a meltdown. Add fast neutrons to the mix, and you could theoretically "burn" the long-lived actinides that make conventional nuclear waste dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.</p><p>France, crucially, was one of only two countries in the world (alongside Russia) that had built and operated fast-neutron reactors. The expertise existed. The academic research, conducted over nearly two decades at IJCLab under the supervision of the CNRS and Université Paris-Saclay, had laid the theoretical groundwork. All that was needed was someone bold enough to commercialize it.</p><p>In 2020, in the depths of the COVID pandemic, Alexandre founded NAAREA: an acronym for Nuclear Abundant Affordable Resourceful Energy for All. The name captured his ambition: not just another nuclear company, but a democratization of atomic energy itself.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-46.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="768" height="521" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-46.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-46.png 768w" /></figure><h2 id="the-xamr-a-reactor-in-a-shipping-container">The XAMR: A Reactor in a Shipping Container</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/NAAREA/blob/main/NAAREA_Feature_Story.md#the-xamr-a-reactor-in-a-shipping-container"></a></p><p>The technology NAAREA proposed was audacious. The XAMR (eXtrasmall Advanced Modular Reactor) would pack a fourth-generation molten salt reactor into a package the size of a 40-foot shipping container. Operating at 700°C with no water cooling required, it would produce 40 megawatts of electricity and 80 megawatts of thermal heat. That's enough to power a medium-sized industrial facility while simultaneously providing the high-temperature heat needed to decarbonize manufacturing processes.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-48.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1720" height="1779" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-48.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-48.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-48.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-48.png 1720w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">A virtual rendering of a NAAREA reactor. (Image courtesy of NAAREA)</span></figcaption></figure><p>"80% of the energy consumed by industry is for heating," Alexandre explained to me. "Industrial processes need heat. Today, a lot of people are saying, 'Let's go for electrifying everything.' That's not correct." </p><p>His pitch was elegant: deliver carbon-free energy directly to factories, in the desert, in the mountains, anywhere an industrial customer needed it, without building new transmission lines or fighting for grid capacity.</p><p>The business model was equally radical. Unlike conventional nuclear vendors who sell reactors, NAAREA would sell energy. The company would design, manufacture, deploy, and operate the reactors itself. The customer would simply pay for the kilowatt-hours consumed. It was the utility model applied to distributed nuclear power, turning a capital equipment sale into a recurring services business.</p><p>On paper, it was brilliant. In practice, it required solving problems that had stymied engineers for seventy years.</p><h2 id="the-government-bet">The Government Bet</h2><p>The political sea change that made NAAREA possible can be traced to a single speech. </p><p>On February 10, 2022, at a General Electric turbine factory in Belfort, President <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2021/10/12/presentation-du-plan-france-2030" rel="noreferrer">Emmanuel Macron announced the most ambitious French nuclear program in decades</a>. After years of political hedging, Macron made an abrupt U-turn. His government had previously committed to reducing nuclear power's share of electricity to 50%. Now, he announced that France would build six new EPR2 reactors, with options for eight more as part of the €58 billion France 2030 program announced the previous year as part of his post-COVID rebuilding program.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-50.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1853" height="1523" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-50.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-50.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-50.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-50.png 1853w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Happier times: Alexandre (left) on a trade mission to Washington DC with President Macron (center). (Via Alexandre's LinkedIn)</span></figcaption></figure><p>The new nuclear program would extend the life of existing plants beyond 50 years. Crucially for startups like NAAREA, it would invest €1 billion specifically in innovative small modular reactors and advanced nuclear technologies. "What we need is a nuclear renaissance," Macron declared. The speech marked France's definitive break from the post-Fukushima consensus that had seen Germany shutter its reactors and much of Europe turn away from atomic energy.</p><p>NAAREA, alongside the UK-Italian startup Newcleo, became one of the first two winners of the program's nuclear innovation call. The direct funding was a modest €10 million. But the symbolic value was immense. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-49.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="1500" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-49.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-49.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-49.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-49.png 2048w" /></figure><p>"It means that the government gives you a stamp on the credibility of your project," Alexandre explained. For private investors wary of nuclear's regulatory complexity, government endorsement from a country with France's nuclear heritage provided crucial reassurance.</p><p>By 2023, NAAREA had raised approximately €50 million, primarily from Eren Groupe, an energy investment company founded by former EDF Renewables executives. The company had grown to roughly 90 employees and was making technical progress on its digital twin, a sophisticated computer simulation of the reactor developed in <a href="https://blog.3ds.com/industries/infrastructure-energy-materials/naarea-micro-reactor-virtual-twin/" rel="noreferrer">partnership with Dassault Systèmes</a>.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-embed-card"><iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BKBXXZXqqM8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen title="NAAREA - Une énergie décarbonée et durable pour tous ǀ Dassault Systèmes"></iframe></figure><p>The selection opened doors to partnerships with CEA (France's atomic energy commission), formalized research collaborations with CNRS and Université Paris-Saclay, and culminated in June 2024 with the creation of the Innovation Molten Salt Lab, a joint laboratory explicitly designed to make France "the European leader in the field of molten salts research and development."</p><p>NAAREA was flying high. </p><p>The company expanded rapidly, reaching 206 employees by late 2025. It signed cooperation agreements with Assystem, Orano, and other nuclear industry heavyweights. In September 2024, working with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, NAAREA announced it had developed reproducible methods for synthesizing plutonium and uranium chloride fuel salt, a critical milestone that no one else in the West had achieved.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-47.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1920" height="1080" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-47.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-47.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-47.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-47.png 1920w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Virtual twin of the XAMR of NAAREA generated with 3DEXCITE on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.Virtual twin of the XAMR of NAAREA generated with 3DEXCITE on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. (Photo courtesy of NAAREA)</span></figcaption></figure><p>The future, it seemed, was bright. In November 2023, <a href="https://www.nucnet.org/news/french-startup-naarea-looking-to-raise-eur150-million" rel="noreferrer">NAAREA announced plans to raise an ambitious €150 million Series A</a> with Rothschild &amp; Co. advising. The funds would accelerate development toward a prototype by 2027 and commercial production by 2030.</p><p>Then the music stopped.</p><h2 id="the-nuscale-effect">The NuScale Effect</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/NAAREA/blob/main/NAAREA_Feature_Story.md#the-nuscale-effect"></a></p><p>To understand what went wrong, one must first look across the Atlantic. </p><p>In November 2023, the same month NAAREA announced its fundraising goal, NuScale Power, the most advanced small modular reactor developer in the United States, cancelled its flagship project in Idaho. The company that had become the first ever to receive design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a small modular reactor had failed to line up enough customers to make its economics work.</p><p>The news sent shockwaves through the nuclear investment community. If NuScale, with its regulatory approvals and utility partnerships, couldn't make SMR economics pencil out, what chance did earlier-stage companies have?</p><p>For NAAREA, the timing was catastrophic. Venture capitalists who had been circling the nuclear space suddenly remembered why they traditionally avoided it: decade-long development timelines, regulatory uncertainty, and capital requirements that dwarfed typical tech investments. The €150 million Series A never materialized.</p><p>But there were other issues closer to home. </p><p>While Macron was re-elected in 2022, he was politically weakened when his party did not win a clear majority in the National Assembly. Stuck in a political morass, he made a controversial decision to dissolve the legislature in the summer of 2024, only to see his support further erode and cycle through a series of prime ministers who struggled to stitch together support for his programs.</p><p>By October 2024, the increasingly fractured French Assembly was voicing growing doubts about the nuclear program.</p><p><a href="https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/rapports/cion-dvp/l17b0486-tix_rapport-avis#" rel="noreferrer">In a detailed budgetary review presented to the National Assembly's Committee on Sustainable Development</a>, rapporteure Constance de Pélichy delivered a sobering assessment of the country's SMR ambitions. </p><p>While praising France 2030's €1.2 billion nuclear investment, she questioned whether the eleven startup laureates of the "Innovative Nuclear Reactors" competition, including NAAREA among them, could actually deliver on their promises. </p><p>"The arrival of new private actors raises questions about their capacity to ensure the safety of their installations, their capacity to respond in the event of a nuclear accident, their financial solidity given the fragility of the economic model, and their responsibility for managing nuclear waste," she warned. </p><p>The report pointed out that EDF's own SMR project, Nuward, had been suspended just months earlier after receiving €300 million in state commitments, a stark illustration of how even industry giants were struggling with the technology. The CEA had told legislators that the France 2030 funding envelope was "only dimensioned to make one French champion emerge" in SMRs and was "too weak to financially accompany two projects to the end." </p><p>For NAAREA, already hemorrhaging cash and struggling to close its fundraising round, the message from Paris was clear: the cavalry was not coming.</p><p>NAAREA's problem went back to the way the original €1 billion for France 2030's "Innovative Nuclear Reactors" program was structured: a three-phase competition designed to winnow promising concepts into commercial reality:</p><ul><li>Phase I would fund conceptual development and feasibility studies. </li><li>Phase II would support detailed engineering and prototype preparation. </li><li>Phase III would finance actual demonstration reactors. </li></ul><p>NAAREA had been part of Phase I. The implicit promise was clear: perform well in Phase I, and substantially larger government checks would follow.</p><p>But the gap between presidential ambition and bureaucratic execution proved fatal for NAAREA. While Macron spoke of urgency and renaissance back in 2022, the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI)—the body responsible for actually disbursing France 2030 funds—moved at its own deliberate pace. Phase II of the nuclear innovation program, which would have provided the next tranche of funding for NAAREA and the credibility signal that private investors were waiting for, remained perpetually imminent but never arrived. </p><p>"We are still waiting for phase II; the SGPI is slow," <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/naarea-l-histoire-d-un-pari-perdu-dans-le-nouveau-nucleaire-20260120" rel="noreferrer">an industry expert told Le Figaro after NAAREA's collapse</a>. "The President of the Republic has nevertheless asked in March 2025 for an acceleration of decision-making." </p><p>The irony was brutal: a program designed to help startups move faster than incumbent nuclear giants had itself become a bottleneck, its timelines better suited to state-owned enterprises with decades of runway than venture-backed companies burning through cash. By the time NAAREA entered judicial reorganization, the Phase II funding that might have saved it remained stuck somewhere in the machinery of the French government.</p> <div id="naarea-timeline-widget"> <div class="nt-bg-animation"></div> <div class="nt-container"> <header class="nt-header"> <h1 class="nt-title">The Rise &amp; Fall of NAAREA</h1> <p class="nt-subtitle">A timeline of France's most ambitious nuclear startup — from revolutionary promise to spectacular collapse in just five years</p> <div class="nt-stats-bar"> <div class="nt-stat"> <div class="nt-stat-value">€90M</div> <div class="nt-stat-label">Investment Lost</div> </div> <div class="nt-stat"> <div class="nt-stat-value">100+</div> <div class="nt-stat-label">Jobs Lost</div> </div> <div class="nt-stat"> <div class="nt-stat-value">5</div> <div class="nt-stat-label">Years</div> </div> <div class="nt-stat"> <div class="nt-stat-value">0</div> <div class="nt-stat-label">Reactors Built</div> </div> </div> </header> <div class="nt-timeline"> <div class="nt-item nt-rise"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">2020</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">NAAREA is Born</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">Jean-Luc Alexandre, a former Airbus executive, founds NAAREA with a bold vision: build compact molten salt reactors that can be transported by truck and deployed anywhere. The XAMR (eXtrasmall Advanced Modular Reactor) promises to revolutionize nuclear energy.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Foundation</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-rise"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">February 2022</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">Macron's Nuclear Renaissance</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">President Emmanuel Macron delivers his historic Belfort speech, announcing plans for 6-14 new EPR reactors and €1 billion for innovative nuclear research through the France 2030 program. NAAREA appears perfectly positioned to benefit.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Government Support</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-rise"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">2022</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">Investor Frenzy</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">Riding the wave of nuclear enthusiasm, NAAREA secures major funding rounds. The startup attracts prominent investors including Jacques Veyrat's Impala group and the Bettencourt-Meyers family. Total investment will eventually reach €90 million.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Funding</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-peak"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">2023</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">France 2030 Phase I Victory</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">NAAREA is selected among the winners of France 2030's first phase for innovative nuclear reactors. The company receives initial government backing and validation of its technology approach. The future looks bright.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Milestone</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-fall"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">November 2023</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">The NuScale Shockwave</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">America's most advanced SMR project collapses when NuScale abandons its Idaho plant due to soaring costs. The failure sends shockwaves through global nuclear investment. Private capital for advanced reactors begins drying up worldwide.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Industry Crisis</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-fall"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">October 2024</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">Parliament Sounds the Alarm</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">The French National Assembly releases a damning report on France 2030's nuclear research funding. It reveals that AMR startups are trapped in a "valley of death" — private investors won't commit without government Phase II funding, which remains stuck in bureaucratic limbo.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Warning Signs</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-fall"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">March 2025</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">Too Little, Too Late</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">President Macron orders the SGPI (government investment secretariat) to accelerate decision-making. But the bureaucracy has already consumed precious time. NAAREA's cash reserves are running dangerously low.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Government Delay</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-fall"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">September 2025</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">Filing for Protection</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">NAAREA files for judicial reorganization (redressement judiciaire) at the Commercial Court of Nanterre. CEO Alexandre blames investor hesitancy tied to delays in France 2030's Phase II funding. The clock starts ticking.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Bankruptcy Filing</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-fall"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">Late 2025</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">The Eneris Gambit</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">Polish energy group Eneris emerges as potential savior, offering to acquire NAAREA. But the bid comes with a devastating assessment: NAAREA's technology has reached an "impasse" and would require a complete restart under new leadership.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Acquisition Attempt</span> </div> </div> <div class="nt-item nt-fall nt-final"> <div class="nt-content"> <div class="nt-date">January 2026</div> <h3 class="nt-event-title">The Final Verdict</h3> <p class="nt-event-desc">The Commercial Court of Nanterre rejects the Eneris bid, citing the company's failure to obtain ASN (nuclear safety authority) approval and lack of credible technical pathway. NAAREA is ordered into liquidation. The dream is over.</p> <span class="nt-tag">Liquidation</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="nt-quote-box"> <p class="nt-quote-text">"Le temps du nucléaire est long, mais celui des start-up l'est beaucoup moins."</p> <p class="nt-quote-text-sm">(The time of nuclear power is long, but that of startups is much less.)</p> <p class="nt-quote-source">— Le Figaro, January 2026</p> </div> <div class="nt-legend"> <div class="nt-legend-item"> <div class="nt-legend-dot nt-rise"></div> <span class="nt-legend-text">Rise (2020-2022)</span> </div> <div class="nt-legend-item"> <div class="nt-legend-dot nt-peak"></div> <span class="nt-legend-text">Peak (2023)</span> </div> <div class="nt-legend-item"> <div class="nt-legend-dot nt-fall"></div> <span class="nt-legend-text">Fall (2023-2026)</span> </div> </div> </div> <script></script> </div> <p>"Investors were waiting for the launch of phase II of France 2030," Alexandre would later explain, referring to the next tranche of government funding that would further de-risk the technology. But phase II never came. </p><p>The General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI), the government body responsible for France 2030 implementation, moved at bureaucratic speed while NAAREA's cash runway evaporated.</p><h2 id="the-political-climate-that-shifted-too-late">The Political Climate That Shifted Too Late</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/NAAREA/blob/main/NAAREA_Feature_Story.md#the-political-climate-that-shifted-too-late"></a></p><p>The bitter irony of NAAREA's collapse is that it occurred precisely as the political climate for nuclear had become more favorable than at any point in a generation.</p><p>When Alexandre first conceived of the company in 2015, France was in the process of legislating a reduction in nuclear's share of electricity generation from 75% to 50%. Germany had committed to a complete nuclear phase-out. The European Union's taxonomy of sustainable investments explicitly excluded nuclear. Public opinion, shaped by memories of Fukushima, remained deeply skeptical.</p><p>By 2025, everything had changed. Russia's invasion of Ukraine had exposed Europe's energy vulnerability. Germany's electricity prices had soared after shutting down its last reactors. The EU had reversed course and included nuclear in its sustainable taxonomy. President Macron had made nuclear innovation a centerpiece of French industrial policy. At COP28 in December 2023, more than 20 countries pledged to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050.</p><p>But political support doesn't write checks. And the fundamental challenge facing NAAREA remained unchanged: Building technology that had never been commercially demonstrated, on a timeline that would satisfy venture capital return expectations, was proving a tough sell.</p><p>The math was brutal. To go from research to commercial deployment, NAAREA needed at least €200 million, possibly more. Prototype development alone would cost €20-50 million. Regulatory licensing in an evolving framework: another €10-30 million. Industrial-scale fuel production, supply chain development, test operations, and manufacturing scale-up each category demanded tens of millions more.</p><p>The €90 million raised for NAAREA was enough to build a team, conduct research, and create compelling digital simulations. </p><p>It was not enough to actually build a reactor.</p><h2 id="the-final-act">The Final Act</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/NAAREA/blob/main/NAAREA_Feature_Story.md#the-final-act"></a></p><p>On September 3, 2025, NAAREA filed for judicial reorganization in the Nanterre commercial court. The company had accumulated approximately €15 million in debt and could no longer make payroll. The judicial administrators launched an auction process, seeking a buyer willing to take on the company's obligations.</p><p>Only one serious bidder emerged: Eneris, a Polish-Luxembourgish energy company specializing in waste-to-energy systems. The companies had a history. Eneris had considered investing in NAAREA years earlier before backing out. Now, founder Artur Dela saw an opportunity to acquire advanced nuclear technology at a discount.</p><p>Through the fall of 2025, negotiations proceeded. By December, a deal was taking shape: Eneris would acquire NAAREA, retain 108 employees, and continue development of the XAMR technology. The court hearing to formalize the acquisition was scheduled for January 15, 2026.</p><p>What happened in those final weeks remains disputed. </p><p>Eneris claims it discovered, through due diligence, that NAAREA had concealed fundamental legal, social, and most critically, technological problems. Eneris concluded that the molten salt fast-neutron reactor design had reached a dead end, with "absence of any possible sustainability" for commercialization in the 2030s as NAAREA had promised.</p><p>Alexandre vehemently disputes this characterization, insisting the technology was viable and that Eneris simply lacked the funds to complete the acquisition. </p><p>The court's response to Eneris's withdrawal was extraordinary. </p><p>Ruling that the company had not followed proper procedures in attempting to back out, the judge ordered Eneris to complete the acquisition anyway. It was a pyrrhic victory. Five days later, Eneris filed for bankruptcy of the newly-acquired NAAREA subsidiary, bringing the saga to its inevitable conclusion.</p><h2 id="what-remains">What Remains</h2><p><a href="https://github.com/chobrien99-svg/NAAREA/blob/main/NAAREA_Feature_Story.md#what-remains"></a></p><p>In the weeks following the bankruptcy filing, an unexpected silver lining emerged. Most of NAAREA's 206 former employees found new positions quickly, their skills in nuclear engineering, molten salt chemistry, and reactor physics in high demand across France's expanding nuclear sector. The expertise built at NAAREA dispersed into the broader French nuclear ecosystem—EDF, Framatome, and the very startups that will now attempt to carry forward the dream of advanced reactor technology.</p><p>The intellectual property, the research partnerships, and the laboratory work on fuel synthesis, none of this has been entirely lost. It will be sold to creditors, absorbed by other organizations, or continue through academic channels at institutions like Université Paris-Saclay. The knowledge generated by NAAREA's €90 million bet may yet contribute to a future where molten salt reactors finally achieve commercial viability.</p><p>But for France's nuclear innovation strategy, NAAREA's collapse raises uncomfortable questions. </p><p>Was the France 2030 program's €10 million commitment realistic relative to the capital requirements? Did government bureaucracy, in delaying phase II funding, effectively starve a promising venture? Can the traditional venture capital model ever work for technologies requiring decade-long development timelines?</p><p>Perhaps. </p><p>But the employees who lost their jobs, the investors who lost their capital, and the founder who lost his dream might be forgiven for questioning whether the mechanism worked as intended.</p><p>As France continues its nuclear renaissance, including building new EPR reactors, investing in other small modular reactor designs, and racing to maintain its position as a global nuclear leader, the wreckage of NAAREA serves as a cautionary tale. Revolutionary technology, government support, and private capital are necessary conditions for deep-tech innovation. They are not, as Jean-Luc Alexandre learned in the cruelest possible way, sufficient ones.</p><p>The molten salt reactor that was supposed to fit in a shipping container and solve industrial decarbonization now exists only in simulations and patent filings. The vision of nuclear energy abundant, affordable, and available for all remains, for now, exactly that: a vision.</p><p>Whether someone else will pick up where NAAREA left off with better timing, deeper pockets, or simply more luck remains to be seen. The physics hasn't changed. The climate emergency hasn't abated. And somewhere, perhaps, another engineer is looking at the sustainable development goals and asking the same question Alexandre asked a decade ago: How do we deliver carbon-free energy to the places that need it most?</p><p>The answer, it turns out, is still under construction.</p>

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That’s why Vanta has created a straightforward ISO 27001 Compliance Checklist to help you cut through the complexity and take action with confidence. Whether you're starting from scratch or refining your existing program, this resource lays out exactly what you need to do—step by step.</span></p> </div> <a href="https://www.vanta.com/downloads/the-iso-42001-compliance-checklist?utm_campaign=emea-generic&amp;utm_source=french-tech-journal&amp;utm_medium=newsletter" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> Download the checklist </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center>France Vs The Internet ⚔️</center></h1> <p><strong><em>Sharpen the swords, cue the trumpets, and call out the banners. This week, the French government mounted a full-blown crusade against Big Tech, the barbarians of Silicon Valley, and the Evil Troll who occupies the White House. </em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Legions of bureaucrats and politicians charged into battle against Zoom, TikTok, and mysterious algorithms to liberate France, especially its teenagers. They came seeking the Holy Grail of Digital Sovereignty. Whether they are simply tilting at digital windmills remains to be seen.</em></strong></p><p>🗞️<strong> France is finally getting serious about kicking Zoom and Teams out of government offices.</strong> David Amiel, the minister in charge of the civil service, <a href="https://presse.economie.gouv.fr/souverainete-numerique-letat-generalise-visio-sa-solution-de-visioconference-securisee-et-souveraine-a-destination-des-agents-publics/" rel="noreferrer">announced that all state agencies</a> must switch to "Visio" by 2027. That's the government's homegrown video conferencing tool. The reason: Digital sovereignty, baby. No more letting Uncle Sam's tech giants peek at sensitive French government conversations.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/visio_hero-1-.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="1167" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/visio_hero-1-.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/visio_hero-1-.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/visio_hero-1-.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w2400/2026/01/visio_hero-1-.png 2400w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Visio</span></figcaption></figure><p>Visio is built on an open source platform and has been in beta for a year with 40,000 users, and it's about to scale up fast. It's the latest tool in a growing range of open-source alternatives the government is building under its <a href="https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>La Suite</strong></a> umbrella. The CNRS research agency is ditching Zoom for its 34,000 employees and 120,000 affiliated researchers starting this spring. The Defense Ministry and tax authorities are also making the switch.</p><p><strong>Here's where French AI startups enter the chat.</strong> PyannoteAI, which raised $9 million last year, is providing the speaker "diarization" technology. That's basically the AI that figures out who's talking when during meeting transcriptions. Kyutai, the open-source AI lab backed by Xavier Niel and other French tech heavyweights, is powering real-time subtitles coming this summer. The data gets hosted by Outscale, a Dassault Systèmes subsidiary with France's strict SecNumCloud security certification. Translation: your strategy meetings won't be subject to American extraterritorial laws.</p><p><strong>The economics are potentially compelling.</strong> The government estimates it'll save €1 million annually for every 100,000 users who dump paid American licenses. When you're talking about millions of civil servants, that adds up. | <a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/01/26/letat-embarque-kyutai-et-pyannote-ai-pour-son-outil-destine-a-semanciper-de-zoom-et-teams-dans-la-fonction-publique/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a></p><p><strong>But wait, there's more...</strong></p><p>🗞️ France is pushing ahead with one of its most aggressive tech-policy bets yet: <strong>banning social networks for under-15s</strong>, fast-tracked and personally championed by El Presidente Emmanuel Macron. The bill, debated and approved in first reading at the Assembly, would make it illegal for minors under 15 to access social platforms, with only narrow carve-outs for educational sites and private messaging apps. To make that stick, the government is leaning toward mandatory age verification, likely borrowing the same ID checks and algorithmic age estimation already used for porn sites (yes, that debate again). </p><p>Officials insist anonymity can be preserved via third-party verification and “double anonymat,” though critics note the tech still struggles precisely where teens actually sit: the blurry 11–18 zone. The law also tackles phones in high schools, stopping short of a full ban but pushing usage out of classrooms and hallways. </p><p>Politically, the text is broadly supported but legally fragile, walking a tightrope with EU law and the Digital Services Act to avoid becoming another unenforced French tech law. Indeed, yesterday, there was confusion as to whether EU officials had said it was kosher or not. <strong>(</strong><a href="https://x.com/GrablyR/status/2016141753720414502?s=20" rel="noreferrer"><strong>It appears, "No."</strong></a><strong>)</strong></p><p>If it survives the Senate and Brussels, France would join Australia as one of the few countries willing to tell Big Tech: teenagers are officially off-limits. | <a href="https://www.franceinfo.fr/internet/reseaux-sociaux/la-france-est-en-droit-d-interdire-les-reseaux-sociaux-aux-moins-de-15-ans-assure-la-commission-europeenne_7767932.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>France Info</strong></a></p><p><strong>But wait, there's more...</strong></p><p>🗞️ The government took a very on-brand step toward “doing something” about algorithms this week by launching new institutions and a public awareness campaign. At a government-hosted event in Bercy, Digital and AI Minister Anne Le Hénanff unveiled two concrete tools: an <strong>Observatory of Digital Sovereignty</strong> to map France’s tech dependencies, and a <strong>Digital Resilience Index</strong> to measure how exposed public and private actors really are. In parallel, the foreign ministry kicked off a public campaign warning citizens about how recommendation algorithms shape opinions, fuel polarization, and can be exploited by foreign interference. The government also used the moment to remind everyone that, yes, the EU’s Digital Services Act exists and that France plans to enforce it with ARCOM and the Commission. | <a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/politique-etrangere-de-la-france/diplomatie-numerique/actualites-et-evenements/article/algorithmes-et-debat-public-le-gouvernement-presente-ses-initiatives-en-matiere?var_mode=calcul&amp;egn-publisher=Twitter&amp;egn-name=Twitter-RS" rel="noreferrer"><strong>France Diplomacy</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://www.maddyness.com/2026/01/26/souverainete-numerique-la-france-veut-reduire-sa-dependance-aux-geants-americains/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Maddyness</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://dig.watch/updates/france-proposes-eu-tools-to-map-foreign-tech-dependence" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Digiwatch</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://www.euractiv.com/news/france-launches-bid-to-cut-europes-tech-dependence/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Euractiv</strong></a></p> <h1><center>Headlines</center></h1> <p>🗞️ France quietly pulled off an <strong>AI infrastructure flex</strong> in 2025, attracting a whopping $69 billion in foreign investment for data centers. That's more than double the U.S. and triple that of South Korea, according to the UN. The appeal is a rare combo of nuclear-powered clean electricity, dense undersea cable connections, and a government that actually rolls out the red carpet instead of red tape. Much of the cash is flowing into mega-projects like an AI campus backed by Mistral, Nvidia, MGX, and Bpifrance, plus a massive bet from Brookfield. | <a href="https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/01/24/la-france-est-le-pays-qui-a-recu-le-plus-dinvestissements-etrangers-pour-la-construction-de-centres-de-donnees-en-2025/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Le Grand Continent</strong></a></p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-38.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="523" height="688" /></figure><p>🗞️ After years of political drama and regulatory brinkmanship, ByteDance finally closed the TikTok U.S. chapter by spinning it into a new joint venture called <strong>TikTok USDS</strong>. The entity will run the sensitive stuff Stateside: U.S. user data, the recommendation algorithm, source code security, and content moderation, while ByteDance keeps a carefully capped 19.9% stake. The quiet plot twist for French readers: <strong>NJJ, Xavier Niel’s family office, is among the investors</strong>, alongside Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX, and a small club of heavyweight backers. Niel’s presence isn’t entirely random. He’s already been sitting on ByteDance’s board since 2024. But seeing a French telecom billionaire on TikTok’s U.S. cap table still raised eyebrows. The valuation is around $14 billion. | <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-tech/vente-de-tiktok-aux-etats-unis-xavier-niel-fait-partie-des-actionnaires-de-la-nouvelle-entreprise-20260123" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Le Figaro</strong></a></p><p>🗞️<strong> Thales Leads Defense-AI Innovation with 200+ Patents.</strong> The French defense and aerospace giant has been named among the world's 100 most innovative organizations for the 13th consecutive year, with over 200 AI patents filed specifically for critical systems. This highlights how French industrial champions are weaponizing AI in defense and critical infrastructure, a quieter but important part of France's AI story that often gets overshadowed by hype around startups. | <a href="https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/news-centre/press-releases/thales-listed-amongst-worlds-100-most-innovative-organisations-according" rel="noreferrer"><strong>PR</strong></a></p><p>🗞️<strong> L'Oréal Invests €383 Million in AI Technology Center in India.</strong> While headquartered in France, L'Oréal is building a massive AI research hub in India, signaling that even French luxury tech innovators are looking to emerging markets for computational talent and infrastructure. <strong>| </strong><a href="https://www.modaes.com/global/companies/loreal-invests-383-million-in-ai-technology-center-in-india" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Modaes</strong></a></p><p>🗞️<strong> Joëlle Pineau Joins Cohere as Chief AI Officer.</strong> Following in the footsteps of fellow French AI pioneer Yann LeCun, Joëlle Pineau has left Meta to lead AI efforts at Canadian startup Cohere. The former vice president of Facebook AI Research is bringing her world-class credentials to focus the company on practical AI applications for businesses rather than the hype-driven race for artificial general intelligence. | <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/01/22/cohere-s-joelle-pineau-we-aim-for-ai-that-creates-value-for-businesses-not-superintelligence_6749676_19.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Le Monde</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ As ChatGPT gears up to allow explicit conversations at a massive scale, a new Ifop survey for Gleeden suggests the real action is already well underway, especially in France. While sexual or romantic chats with AI are still a minority practice overall, they’re gaining real traction among young people, particularly men under 35, and not just for porn: think flirting advice, emotional support, and relationship management. The catch is that more than half of users of “AI companions” say they’ve felt genuinely addicted, and nearly half admit it’s sometimes replaced real intimacy with a partner. In short, AI is quietly moving from novelty to emotional infrastructure, with all the dependency, tension, and awkward questions that come with it. | <a href="https://www.ifop.com/en/article/ai-and-sex-from-attraction-to-addiction-observatory-of-the-sexual-uses-of-ai" rel="noreferrer"><strong>IFOP</strong></a></p><h3 id="icymi"><strong>ICYMI</strong></h3><p>🗞️ <strong>Europe's AI Reckoning: Caught Between Regulation, Rivalry, and Risk</strong> | As 2026 begins, France and the European Union find themselves at the center of a perfect storm, facing diplomatic confrontation with Washington, urgent safety crises, and mounting questions about whether their regulatory approach can survive first contact with geopolitical reality. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/europes-ai-reckoning-caught-between-regulation-rivalry-and-risk/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>From Tesla to Paris: UMA's Audacious Bet on European Robotics</strong> | A new French startup believes Europe—not Silicon Valley—is the best place to build the robots of tomorrow. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/from-tesla-to-paris-umas-audacious-bet-on-european-robotics/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><p>🗞️ <strong>Gradium Wants To Make Voice The New Operating System for AI | </strong>The Paris startup, spun out of research lab Kyutai, just emerged from stealth with a $60M seed round to become the global foundation layer for real-time voice interactions. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/gradium-wants-to-make-voice-the-new-operating-system-for-ai/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><p>🗞️<strong> How HyprView Is Using Photonics And AI To Bring Cancer Diagnostics Into the Light</strong> | Thanks to developments in AI, photonics is stepping out of the lab and into the clinic. HyprView uses light to uncover the invisible biology inside tumors - information microscopes miss entirely - opening the door to faster, smarter, and far more predictive cancer diagnostics. | <a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/how-hyprview-is-using-photonics-and-ai-to-bring-cancer-diagnostics-into-the-light/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>The French Tech Journal</strong></a></p><hr /><h3 id="%F0%9F%A7%A0-prenatal-ultrasound-reinvented-how-brightheart-ai-catches-90-of-deadly-fetal-heart-defects-before-birth">🧠 Prenatal Ultrasound, Reinvented: How BrightHeart AI Catches 90% of Deadly Fetal Heart Defects Before Birth</h3><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/prenatal-ultrasound-reinvented-how-brightheart-ai-catches-90-of-deadly-fetal-heart-defects-before-birth/"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-45-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1200" height="583" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-45-1.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-45-1.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-45-1.png 1200w" /></a></figure><p>For decades, prenatal ultrasound has been one of medicine’s most reassuring rituals. A grainy image. A heartbeat. A moment of relief.</p><p>But beneath that reassurance hides a brutal truth: <strong>most fetal heart defects are never detected before birth</strong>.</p><p>Congenital heart defects affect roughly <strong>3% of all pregnancies</strong>—making them more common than many conditions that <em>are</em> routinely screened for. Yet historically, only about <strong>one in three</strong> are caught during pregnancy. Not because clinicians don’t care or aren’t skilled—but because the task itself borders on impossible.</p><p>At just three months, a fetal heart is barely a centimeter wide. It moves constantly. The anatomy is complex. And most obstetricians are not pediatric cardiologists.</p><p>This is where AI is quietly changing the rules.</p><p>Over the last few years, medical imaging has become one of AI’s most commercially successful frontiers, growing into a multi-billion-dollar market driven by early detection and clinical decision support. But nowhere are the stakes higher than in prenatal medicine, where <strong>minutes and millimeters can change a life</strong>.</p><p>Enter <strong>BrightHeart</strong>, a Paris-born startup that set out to solve one of the hardest problems in screening: making expert-level fetal heart exams routine, not exceptional. Instead of trying to replace clinicians, BrightHeart’s AI guides them—step by step—through the ultrasound exam, ensuring completeness, flagging subtle anomalies, and dramatically reducing missed diagnoses.</p><p>The results are startling. Detection rates jump from ~30% to <strong>over 90%</strong>. Exam times shrink. Recalls drop. And for the first time, severe heart disease can be identified <em>before</em> birth—when care pathways, delivery plans, and outcomes can still be changed.</p><p>But building AI for medicine isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s a regulatory, clinical, and cultural one. BrightHeart’s journey—from a pediatric hospital in Paris to U.S. deployment and an €11M Series A—reveals what it really takes to turn AI into <strong>standard of care</strong>, not just another tool.</p><p>👉 <strong>In the full story</strong>, we dive into the clinical insight behind BrightHeart, how its technology actually works, why screening (not diagnosis) is the real AI wedge in healthcare, and what this case tells us about the future of medical AI at scale.</p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/prenatal-ultrasound-reinvented-how-brightheart-ai-catches-90-of-deadly-fetal-heart-defects-before-birth/" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">See How AI Is Saving Babies Before Birth</a></div><hr /><div class="kg-card kg-cta-card kg-cta-bg-blue kg-cta-immersive kg-cta-centered"> <div class="kg-cta-content"> <div class="kg-cta-content-inner"> <div class="kg-cta-text"> <p><i><b><strong class="italic" style="white-space:pre-wrap">Want to reach an audience of more than 30,000 readers each month?</strong></b></i> <i><b><strong class="italic" style="white-space:pre-wrap">The French Tech Journal is the leading English-language media platform covering France's dynamic tech ecosystem. With 31,000 + engaged readers across key global markets and consistently high engagement rates, our sponsorships provide unparalleled access to decision-makers in French tech.</strong></b></i></p> </div> <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.com/sponsors/" class="kg-cta-button " style="background-color:#000000;color:#ffffff"> Learn more about sponsorships </a> </div> </div> </div><hr /> <h1><center>🗣️ Announcements 🗣️</center></h1> <p>🚀 <strong>€1M AI Challenge for Space Data Innovation</strong> | <strong>Apply by March 9</strong> | The Île-de-France Region and CNES officially launch a €1 million AI Challenge to accelerate innovation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space data. Continuing the Region’s AI Challenge series started in 2019, this initiative aims to foster future national champions and strengthen France’s technological and economic sovereignty. Two tracks are open: (1) AI-powered applications leveraging satellite data for use cases such as security, energy, environment, and risk management; and (2) advanced vision-language models for automatic interpretation of high- and very-high-resolution satellite imagery. CNES will provide data, technical expertise, and project oversight. | <strong>Apply via the Île-de-France Region platform:</strong> <a href="https://www.iledefrance.fr/aides-et-appels-a-projets/challenge-ai-space" rel="nofollow"><strong>Challenge AI for Space</strong></a></p> <h1><center>📆 Events 📆</center></h1> <p>📆<strong> Ray Meetup at Criteo Paris: Building Scalable AI &amp; Data Platforms | February 5 | </strong>​Join us at the <strong>Criteo office in Paris</strong> to learn how Ray simplifies building and scaling modern AI and ML workloads. We will walk through how teams use Ray to move from a single machine to distributed compute, run training and inference at scale, and power production AI platforms. Hear from experts at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/joinanyscale/" rel="nofollow noopener"><strong>Anyscale</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/criteo/" rel="nofollow noopener"><strong>Criteo</strong></a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/h-company-ai/" rel="nofollow noopener"><strong>H Company</strong></a> on distributed training architectures, scaling reinforcement learning agents, and real-world lessons from migrating production systems to Kubernetes. <strong>| </strong><a href="https://luma.com/oyv1oqw5" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Request to join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>Neurons and Peppers #3 | datacraft AI Research Meetup</strong> | <strong>February 5</strong> | Attend this Paris-based AI research meetup to dive into cutting-edge discussions on domain-specific modeling (quantitative finance) and retrieval-augmented generation benchmarking, alongside presentations like the LLM Pro Finance Suite and ViDoRe V3, finished with food &amp; drinks. | <a href="https://luma.com/ehna1sny" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Request to join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>AI Day 2026 | France Digitale</strong> | <strong>February 10</strong> | At Station F in Paris, this flagship AI event gathers ~2,000 founders, C-level leaders, investors, researchers, and operators from across Europe. Explore <em>AI &amp; Research</em>, <em>AI &amp; Business</em>, and <em>AI &amp; Operations</em> tracks through high-level talks, hands-on workshops, demos, exhibitions, and structured matchmaking between startups and investors — all under the high patronage of the French President. | <a href="https://ai-day.org/ticket/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Get tickets</strong></a></p><p>📆<strong> World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF)</strong> | <strong>February 12 and 13</strong> | Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes | With more than 10,000 expected participants, 320 international speakers, and 180 exhibitors, the WAICF is the European event dedicated to the innovations and strategic challenges of artificial intelligence. | <a href="https://www.worldaicannes.com/en-gb/book-your-pass.html" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Buy tickets</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>Paris Hardware Meetup | The New Defense Stack</strong> | <strong>February 17</strong> | Join Paris-area hardware builders — founders, engineers, designers, and investors — for talks and community networking focused on defense hardware and physical product innovation at Hexa (eFounders) in Paris. Speakers include leaders from Harmattan AI, Helsing, Landroval, and more, with structured talks followed by open mic and networking. | <a href="https://luma.com/oq94zfvf" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Request to join</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>OpenText Summit Paris 2026</strong> | <strong>April 15 | Palais Brongniart</strong> | AI is everywhere and full of promise — but without contextualized data, governance, and security, AI fails. Join OpenText Summit Paris 2026 to discover how to unlock the intelligence of your enterprise data and activate AI with confidence. Expect visionary keynotes, French customer success stories, real-world use cases, in-depth small-group sessions, live demos, expert meetings, and peer networking. Explore the latest innovations in content management, cybersecurity, service management, business networks, and more — and learn how to deploy responsible, compliant AI with full control and freedom of choice. | <a href="https://events.opentext.com/paris-summit-2026" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Register</strong></a></p><p>📆 <strong>RAISE Summit 2026</strong> | <strong>July 8–9, 2026 | Carrousel du Louvre, Paris</strong> | Join one of Europe’s most influential AI gatherings bringing together thousands of builders, investors, executives, and innovators to shape the future of artificial intelligence. Learn from global leaders through keynotes, panels, workshops, a hackathon, startup competitions, and high-impact networking — all curated to accelerate AI strategy, investment, and real-world deployment across industries. | <a href="https://www.raisesummit.com/tickets-2026" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Tickets</strong></a></p><hr /><p>👋🏻 If you’re enjoying <a href="https://frenchtechjournal.substack.com/?ref=frenchtechjournal.com" rel="noopener">The French Tech Journal</a>, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> / <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noopener">[email protected]</a> 👋🏻‌ </p>

<p>One of the most tangible ways artificial intelligence is already reshaping healthcare is through medical imaging</p><p>Over the past decade, MRI, CT, and ultrasound technologies have progressed dramatically, generating images of unprecedented quality and detail. But richer images also mean vastly more data. Interpreting billions of pixels at scale, consistently and accurately, remains a challenge no human can meet alone. That is where AI comes in.</p><p>By last year (2025), AI-enabled imaging solutions had become a $2.4 billion global market, driven largely by early disease detection and real-time clinical assistance. According to Global Growth Insights, the market should reach $26.5 billion by 2035.</p><p>From oncology to cardiology, algorithms are increasingly being used not to replace clinicians, but to augment them - spotting subtle anomalies, ensuring exam completeness, and reducing the margin for error.</p><p>In prenatal medicine, where timing can change a life, those gains are particularly critical. </p><p>Enter BrightHeart. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/BrightHeart-team.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="800" height="418" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/BrightHeart-team.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/BrightHeart-team.png 800w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">The BrightHeart team</span></figcaption></figure><h2 id="turning-complex-fetal-heart-screening-into-a-routine-exam"><strong>Turning complex fetal heart screening into a routine exam</strong></h2><p><a href="https://www.brightheart.ai/" rel="noreferrer">BrightHeart</a> is an AI-powered medical device designed to support gynecologists, obstetricians, and sonographers during prenatal ultrasound exams. Its focus is on one of the most complex and most frequently missed areas of prenatal screening: congenital heart defects (CHD).</p><p>Founded in 2022 within Sofinnova Partners’ MD Startup Studio, BrightHeart was built at the intersection of clinical expertise and deep-tech execution. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ceciledupontredon/" rel="noreferrer"><strong>Cécile Dupont</strong></a>, CEO of BrightHeart and Partner at Sofinnova Partners, led the company. Her background combines engineering and medical training.</p><p>“Detecting cardiac anomalies in utero is extremely difficult for clinicians who are not pediatric cardiologists,” Dupont said. “At three months of pregnancy, the fetal heart is about one centimeter in size, and historically, only around one third of cardiac anomalies are detected.”</p><p>BrightHeart’s workflow solution uses AI to guide clinicians through the ultrasound exam, helping them capture the right views, validate exam completeness, and flag potential abnormalities without disrupting existing workflows.</p><p>The impact is significant: fetal cardiac anomaly detection rates by those using the solution have improved from roughly 30% to over 90%, and in some settings exceeded 96%.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-39.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="1125" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-39.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-39.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-39.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w2400/2026/01/image-39.png 2400w" /></figure><h2 id="a-clinical-problem-hiding-in-plain-sight"><strong>A clinical problem hiding in plain sight</strong></h2><p>The idea behind BrightHeart originated at Necker Hospital in Paris, one of Europe’s leading pediatric centers. Pediatric cardiologists <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilyne-levy-19897760/" rel="noreferrer">Marilyne Lévy</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bertrand-stos-438aa46b/" rel="noreferrer">Bertrand Stos</a> witnessed firsthand the consequences of missed prenatal diagnoses.</p><p>Around 70% of congenital heart defects are not detected during pregnancy, even though they affect approximately 3% of births, making them more common than chromosomal conditions such as Down syndrome. While the fetus initially benefits from the mother’s circulation, the condition is often discovered only after birth, when oxygen deprivation can already have caused irreversible damage.</p><p>“These babies arrive without warning,” Dupont said. “If severe heart disease is detected too late, the consequences can be devastating.”</p><p>The clinicians believed artificial intelligence could help close this diagnostic gap and approached Sofinnova with the concept. BrightHeart was created to translate the clinical reasoning of expert cardiologists into an intelligent algorithm capable of interpreting highly complex ultrasound images.</p><p>The original clinicians remained involved as advisors, while continuing their hospital practice.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-40.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1338" height="762" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-40.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-40.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-40.png 1338w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Marilyne Lévy and Bertrand Stos providing online training on detecting heart malformations </span></figcaption></figure><h2 id="a-tablet-a-checklist-and-eight-critical-markers"><strong>A tablet, a checklist, and eight critical markers</strong></h2><p>BrightHeart’s technology is designed to fit seamlessly into existing clinical environments. The system relied on a tablet placed next to the ultrasound machine, connected securely to the cloud. During the exam, the software guides the sonographer through a structured checklist, ensuring all required views are captured.</p><p>“The system doesn’t allow you to stop until the exam is complete,” Dupont explained.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-41.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="763" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-41.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-41.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-41.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w2400/2026/01/image-41.png 2400w" /></figure><p>The AI analyzes eight key pathological markers, using a color-coded system to indicate whether findings are normal, abnormal, or require further attention. This not only improved detection, but also reduced the need to recall patients due to incomplete exams - a major operational and emotional burden in prenatal care.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-42.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="706" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-42.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-42.png 1000w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/image-42.png 1600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w2400/2026/01/image-42.png 2400w" /></figure><p>Importantly, BrightHeart does not provide a diagnosis. It functions as a clinical decision-support tool. If warning signs appear, patients are referred to pediatric cardiologists for definitive diagnosis and care planning, including decisions about delivery in specialized Level 3 maternity units when needed.</p><p>The next version of the software is expected to operate in real time. “The tablet was a technical choice to standardize deployment and maintenance,” Dupont said. “But the solution itself is hardware-agnostic.”</p><h2 id="from-regulatory-hurdles-to-real-world-impact"><strong>From regulatory hurdles to real-world impact</strong></h2><p>As a regulated medical device, BrightHeart faces long development and validation timelines, including technical and clinical validation for FDA clearance.</p><p>Like many French AI imaging startups, the company has chosen to expand first into the United States, where regulatory pathways are more predictable. Between early 2024 and mid-2025, BrightHeart began commercial deployment.</p><p>One of its earliest adopters is Carnegie in New York, the city’s largest obstetric ultrasound center. After one year of use, the results were striking: exam completion rates improved by 34%, liability risks were reduced, and exam time was shortened by at least five minutes. That efficiency gain compounded significantly across daily workflows.</p><p>In Europe, however, regulatory timelines are more challenging. The introduction of the Medical Device Regulation (MDR) has required all devices certified under the old CE mark to be re-certified, causing delays across the sector.</p><p>“The process is extremely frustrating,” Dupont said. “But we are nearing approval.”</p><p>Once obtained, the company planned to prioritize France while evaluating other European markets where it could deliver the most impact.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-43.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="666" srcset="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-43.png 600w, https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-43.png 1000w" /></figure><h2 id="building-the-standard-of-care-not-just-another-tool"><strong>Building the standard of care, not just another tool</strong></h2><p>BrightHeart’s ambition is not incremental improvement, but standardization.</p><p>The company aims to make expert-level fetal heart screening as routine as Down syndrome screening is today. Its cloud-based platform covers the full workflow - from image acquisition to reporting - and is built on four pillars: clinical accuracy, workflow optimization, seamless integration with all ultrasound machines, and strong peer-reviewed clinical evidence.</p><p>So far, BrightHeart is the only company in its category with published peer-reviewed clinical results in leading obstetrical journals.</p><p>The long-term roadmap extended beyond the heart. “We started with the most complex organ,” Dupont said. “But our goal is to expand to all critical organs and make the prenatal exam both complete and faster.”</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.frenchtechjournal.com/content/images/2026/01/image-44.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="400" height="250" /></figure><h2 id="a-subscription-model-with-measurable-roi"><strong>A subscription model with measurable ROI</strong></h2><p>BrightHeart operates on a monthly subscription model, bundling both the tablet and the software. Pricing was not publicly disclosed due to competitive sensitivity, but the value proposition was clear.</p><p>By saving time, improving exam quality, and reducing recall rates, the platform allowed clinicians to increase throughput - even in healthcare systems without direct reimbursement for AI tools. In practice, the solution positively impacts both workflow efficiency and practitioner income.</p><p>While competition in AI imaging is intensifying, BrightHeart remains uniquely focused on screening rather than diagnosis.</p><p>“It’s becoming a very hot space,” Dupont said. “But the clinical need is real, and the bar for evidence is high.”</p><h2 id="%E2%82%AC11-million-to-scale-globally"><strong>€11 million to scale globally</strong></h2><p>BrightHeart has just announced the close of an €11 million Series A round co-led by Odyssée Venture and GO Capital, with participation from the Mussallem CHD Alliance, Lift Value, IDAHO HealthTech Club via Side Angels, Sofinnova Partners, and numerous clinicians and medtech entrepreneurs.</p><p>The funding was earmarked for product expansion, U.S. and European growth, and continued clinical validation. At the time, the company employed 10 people across France and the United States, spanning R&amp;D, clinical affairs, and sales.</p><p>“Our mission is to make AI the new standard of care in prenatal ultrasound,” Dupont said. “If we can detect severe heart disease before birth, we can change outcomes for babies and families at scale.”</p>

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