🧮 Data Point: The Real Deal Deal In The US
As 2025 winds down, many a French entrepreneur is packing their suitcase, or at least thinking about it, for the golden shores of the United States. Understandable. AI has created a yawning gap in the amount of funding being raised between the old continent and the land of Baseball and Apple Pie.
However, pop open the hood and look underneath, and things are not as different as they seem. The top line funding numbers are skewed because the big LLM kingmakers (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, etc.) are sucking up muy mucho bucks.
Otherwise, the number of startups actually raising venture capital is crashing hard pretty much everywhere. As we enter the Yuletide season, here is the deal count in France for 2025, according to Dealroom:
And for the US of A:
And Planet Earth:
Does this mean that fewer people are starting companies? I don't think so. But then, we don't know what this really means. Is there a profound transformation happening in terms of how startups are being funded and their economics? Possibly.
Clearly, there is a qualitative sense that San Francisco is where it's at. There may be ways to leverage that physical presence to accelerate a startup, but it doesn't necessarily seem to increase your odds of raising money.
In today’s high-growth environment, security must be built-in—not a blocker.
Our report, Scaling Security, shows how leading European tech companies embed compliance early and automate smartly to scale faster.
Learn how automation transforms SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR into strategic advantages.
See what security maturity looks like at every growth stage.
Security at scale is possible—with the right approach.
🔬 TechBio's Big Mo'
Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting the second annual TechBio conference in Paris. TechBio is the label for companies that lean toward the AI-data side of the biology side of life sciences. You can seea some details from the mapping presented at the event here.
At the conference, Speedinvest Partner Estelle Botbol also presented a European report the VC firm produced in partnership with Dealroom: "TechBio x AI Drug Discovery: Developing new drugs faster and cheaper." It notes that France is also in the upper tier when it comes to this emerging sector.
Join a unique federation of 25+ Independent and vendor-neutral tech conferences and onboard the largest EU community of builders, innovators, and business explorers. 1 VIP ticket, access to 25+ tech conferences.
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💸 Weekly Funding Recap: December 5
🏆 Key Highlights
Total Raised: €175.35M
Number of Companies: 18
🧬 Sector Diversity
- 💻 AI & Software: €75.75M across 4 deals
(Gradium, 2501.ai, Basalt, Minitap) - 🧠 Medtech & Health Intelligence: €46.90M across 6 deals
(Axoltis Pharma, Innerskin, Ray studios, Kimialys, Annette, Vulgaroo) - 💳 Fintech / DeFi: €22.70M across 3 deals
(Bitstack, ECAIR, Arrago) - ⚙️ Deeptech & Industrial Innovation: €20.00M across 2 deals
(Spark Cleantech, ROB’OCC) - 🌱 AgriFood & NatureTech: €10.00M across 3 deals
(Veragrow, ReSoil, Néosylva)
📇 Company: Gradium
🔍 Description: Paris-born voice AI startup spun out of non-profit research lab Kyutai. Gradium develops next-generation “audio language models” enabling real-time, low-latency conversational voice interactions across multiple languages. The company commercializes Kyutai’s cutting-edge research—including the speech-to-speech model Moshi—to power applications ranging from gaming characters to medical transcription and live interpretation.
💻 Website: Gradium
📍 HQ City: Paris (spinout from Kyutai)
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €60M (≈ $70M)
🏦 Investors: FirstMark Capital (lead), Eurazeo (lead), DST Global Partners, Korelya Capital, Amplify Partners, Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, Eric Schmidt, Liquid 2 Ventures, Drysdale Ventures, plus participation from tech leaders including Yann LeCun, Olivier Pomel, Ilkka Paananen (Illusian Founder Office), Thomas Wolf, Guillermo Rauch, and Mehdi Ghissassi (Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company)
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Neil Zeghidour, Laurent Mazaré, Alexandre Défossez, Olivier Teboul
🗞️ News: Gradium emerges from stealth with a landmark €60M Seed round—one of Europe’s largest—to commercialize Kyutai’s breakthrough speech-to-speech models and build real-time, multilingual conversational AI. Backed by a rare coalition of global tech figures (Niel, Saadé, Schmidt, LeCun), the startup aims to compete with giants like OpenAI and ElevenLabs by offering low-latency, high-quality voice interaction at scale. Early traction includes a dozen paying customers in gaming, healthcare, and language services, with plans to become the leading real-time voice interface layer for next-generation AI agents. | Sifted, FrenchWeb, Maddyness
📇 Company: Axoltis Pharma
🔍 Description: French BioTech developing innovative therapies for neurodegenerative and neurotraumatic diseases. Its lead candidate, NX210c—a cyclic peptide targeting blood-brain barrier repair, neuroprotection, and neurotransmission—has entered Phase 2 clinical trials in ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease.
💻 Website: Axoltis Pharma
📍 HQ City: Clermont-Ferrand
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €18M (≈ $20.9M), in two tranches
🏦 Investors: FIDAT Ventures (co-lead), Cenitz (co-lead), crowdfunding investors via Capital Cell, business angels, Le Cercle de Chiron; plus legacy investors: Norfoalk, Fonds Régional Avenir Industrie Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, FaDièse 3, Simba Santé 2 (Angelor), and the CEO of Axoltis
👨💼👩💼 Founders: CEO Dr. Yann Godfrin
🗞️ News: Axoltis Pharma closes an €18M Series A to advance NX210c through its Phase 2 “SEALS” clinical trial in 82 ALS patients, with results expected in Q2 2026. The raise comes amid strong European investor interest in neuro-focused BioTech, following €133M in sector funding in 2025 from Augustine Therapeutics, TRIMTECH Therapeutics, and EG 427. The investment will also support research into additional neurological indications where NX210c’s blood-brain barrier repair mechanism could provide a major therapeutic impact. | EU-Startups, PR
📇 Company: Spark Cleantech
🔍 Description: Deeptech startup decarbonizing heavy industry through a patented pulsed plasmolysis process that replaces fossil fuel combustion in high-temperature industrial furnaces, producing on-site clean hydrogen and high-value solid carbon nanomaterials.
💻 Website: Spark Cleantech
📍 HQ City: Paris-Saclay
🧗 Round: Growth round
💰 Amount Raised: €17M (+ €13M debt)
🏦 Investors: 360 Capital (lead), Taranis, Fonds Île-de-France Réindustrialisation (Innovacom), Asterion Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Erwan Pannier, Patrick Peters
🗞️ News: Spark Cleantech raises €30M to scale its breakthrough pulsed-plasmolysis technology, enabling an 85% reduction in industrial emissions and the production of two decarbonized materials (hydrogen + carbon nanomaterial) with a 4x economic value uplift. The funding will complete and operate the first production module, accelerate commercial deployment across metallurgy, glass, polymers, and battery industries, and support 20 new hires across engineering, R&D, and commercial teams.
📇 Company: Innerskin
🔍 Description: French medical-aesthetics group redefining modern skincare and wellbeing through integrated, non-invasive treatments, high-performance technology, and a medical-grade product ecosystem.
💻 Website: Innerskin
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Growth round
💰 Amount Raised: €12.8M
🏦 Investors: IRIS Ventures (lead), Label Capital (existing investor)
👨💼👩💼 Founder: Chrystelle Eid
🗞️ News: Innerskin secures €12.8M to accelerate expansion across France and Europe amid rising demand for accessible, high-quality aesthetic care. The funding supports the group’s integrated model combining in-clinic treatments, preventive face and body care, and a medical-grade skincare line. Founded in 2022, Innerskin already operates 19 centres and aims to set a new European standard for science-based, holistic aesthetic wellness. | EU-Startups
📇 Company: Bitstack
🔍 Description: French Bitcoin investment app with 300,000+ users, known for its automatic roundup savings feature (“arrondi automatique”). The company is now launching its first Visa debit card featuring “stackback,” a Bitcoin-based cashback system.
💻 Website: Bitstack
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €15M
🏦 Investors: 13books Capital (lead), AG2R LA MONDIALE, Plug and Play Ventures, Serena, Stillmark, Y Combinator
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Alexandre Roubaud, Kabir Seti
🗞️ News: Bitstack raises €15M to accelerate its European expansion and launches its first Visa debit card, introducing “stackback”—a 1% cashback in Bitcoin credited directly to users’ accounts. The card will be available in January 2026 to the first 5,000 beta testers. With MiCA approval secured in June, Bitstack will expand into 10 European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, and plans to hire around 20 new team members in France. | Maddyness, PR, EU-Startups
📇 Company: Ray Studios
🔍 Description: Paris-based medical tattoo-removal network combining physician-led treatments, advanced laser technology, and a proprietary clinical protocol (RsAP) to deliver high-precision, medical-grade tattoo removal across Europe.
💻 Website: Ray Studios
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Growth round
💰 Amount Raised: €10M
🏦 Investors: Factory Capital (co-lead), Nickleby Capital (co-lead, existing), Gaingels, international business angels
👨💼👩💼 Founder/CEO: David Rodriguez
🗞️ News: Ray Studios raises €10M to double its European network within two years and reinforce its clinical and technological leadership in medical tattoo removal. The company, already operating 20 studios across France, Spain, and Belgium, continues to scale its physician-only model and advance its proprietary RsAP protocol. New innovations include an AI-powered medical decision-support tool and a dedicated follow-up app to enhance patient monitoring and clinical precision. | EU-Startups
📇 Company: 2501.ai
🔍 Description: Developing autonomous AI agents for IT/Cloud infrastructure maintenance, enabling automated detection, diagnosis, remediation of incidents, compliance checks, and security updates. Its sovereign, modular, and secure platform reduces MTTR, lowers operating costs, and increases system availability.
💻 Website: 2501.ai
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €8M
🏦 Investors: Cusp Capital, Axeleo Capital (AXC), Galion.exe
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Alexandre Pereira, Alex Zhuk
🗞️ News: This round comes just two months after a €2M Pre-Seed round. 2501.ai will accelerate recruitment in AI applied to observability, remediation, and real-time event management, while launching commercial operations across Spain, UK, and Germany. The company positions itself as a sovereign European alternative in IT/Cloud automation for critical infrastructures. | Maddyness, LinkedIn
📇 Company: ECAIR
🔍 Description: French FinTech platform enabling Europe’s energy transition by providing installers with an instant, integrated financing stack that converts renovation and solar quotes into deployable projects.
💻 Website: ECAIR
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €5M (+ €6M debt from Enerfip)
🏦 Investors: Planet A, Übermorgen Ventures, Inco Ventures, Silence, Voyagers, Climate Club, Kima Ventures, Bpifrance; debt provided by Enerfip
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Maxime Bensadoun, Victor Jolly
🗞️ News: ECAIR raises €11M to accelerate deployment of its new lending product and expand across France, aiming to remove financial barriers for solar and energy-renovation projects. The company offers installers a real-time capital stack and recently launched a consumer loan calibrated to a home’s future energy savings, powered by ECAIR’s AI-driven underwriting engine. Its B2B financing solution has already deployed over €8M in working capital to help installers scale energy-transition technologies. | EU-Startups
📇 Company: Veragrow
🔍 Description: Normandy-based agri-biotech developing biostimulants derived from lombricompost using a patented extraction and stabilisation process, delivering bioactive, multi-lever agricultural solutions that improve crop growth, soil fertility, and climate resilience.
💻 Website: Veragrow
📍 HQ City: Val-de-Reuil
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €4.5M
🏦 Investors: Odyssée Venture, Normandie Participations, Caisse d’Épargne Normandie Innovation (CEN Innovation), Groupe All Sun
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Alexandre Bocage and co-founders (three engineer cofounders)
🗞️ News: Veragrow raises €4.5M to expand its sales force, accelerate domestic and international market rollout, broaden its biostimulant product range, deepen research, and increase production capacity. Founded in 2019, the company has conducted over 930 field trials and distributes its biosolutions through more than 30 partners in France, with trials underway in over 20 countries. With demand rising, Veragrow aims to become a leading industrial player in bio-based biostimulants by 2030. | Normandie Incubation
📇 Company: Basalt
🔍 Description: Collaborative AI engineering platform helping enterprises industrialize and scale AI agents through continuous experimentation, evaluation, and production monitoring. Basalt enables teams to compare prompts and models, validate scenarios with business experts, detect failures in real-world contexts, and prevent regressions through a centralized workflow.
💻 Website: Basalt
📍 HQ City: San Francisco (tech team in Paris)
🧗 Round: Seed (not explicitly stated, formatted as funding round)
💰 Amount Raised: €4.25M (USD $5M)
🏦 Investors: Entourage (lead), Peak Capital (lead), Hexa, Alpha Star, Kima Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Guillaume Marquis, François de Fitte
🗞️ News: Basalt raises €4.25M to accelerate development of its collaborative AI engineering platform and expand hiring across France and the U.S. The platform addresses the growing gap between rapid AI prototyping and fragile enterprise-scale deployment by enabling structured testing, scenario validation with domain experts, and deep production monitoring of AI agent behavior. | FrenchWeb
📇 Company: ReSoil
🔍 Description: Mission-driven French platform enabling farmers to adopt agroecological and regenerative practices through guaranteed financing, carbon and biodiversity impact measurement, and monetization of environmental services.
💻 Website: ReSoil
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €4M
🏦 Investors: Banque des Territoires, InvESS Île-de-France Amorçage (Île-de-France Region), Generali Impact Investment (INCO Ventures)
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Grégoire Alston, Yohann Vrain, Luc Bailly
🗞️ News: ReSoil secures €4M to scale regenerative agriculture projects across France and expand its ReSoil Carbon digital platform. The company provides guaranteed revenue to farmers adopting low-carbon practices — via sector-based premiums and Label Bas-Carbone certified carbon credits — while equipping agricultural cooperatives and corporate clients with ISO-aligned decarbonization measurement tools. ReSoil already monitors more than 100,000 hectares and has enabled over €3M in corporate funding to support France’s agroecological transition. | Maddyness
📇 Company: Kimialys
🔍 Description: French deeptech specializing in advanced surface-chemistry technologies for highly sensitive molecular detection and in-vitro diagnostics, built around its patented K-One platform for functionalising gold nanoparticles and biosensor surfaces.
💻 Website: Kimialys
📍 HQ City: Paris-Saclay
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3.6M
🏦 Investors: Relyens Innovation Santé (lead, advised by Turenne Santé), Octalfa, Evolem, business angels; existing investors Odiem Capital, BADGE, Angels Santé
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Cyril Gilbert, Claude Nogues
🗞️ News: Kimialys secures €3.6M to industrialise its K-One technology, expand production capacity, launch its first catalogue of ready-to-use kits, and scale commercial efforts internationally. Developed over ten years within CNRS and ENS Paris-Saclay, K-One improves ligand orientation, density, and non-specific binding protection on gold nanoparticles and flat surfaces, significantly enhancing diagnostic test sensitivity. The company’s offerings include functionalised gold nanoparticles, gold chips for SPR, and analytical services for pharma and diagnostic players. Funding will accelerate Kimialys’ transition into a fully industrial, globally oriented biotech supplier. | LinkedIn
📇 Company: Minitap
🔍 Description: Paris-based AI-powered mobile development platform enabling engineering teams to automate mobile feature development, testing, and iteration through agentic-AI infrastructure.
💻 Website: Minitap
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3.5M
🏦 Investors: Moxxie Ventures (co-lead), Mercuri (co-lead), EWOR, Tekton Ventures, Amigos Venture Capital, Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face), Stefan Glanzer & Michael Breidenbrucker (Last.fm), Paul Muller (Adjust), Petter Made (SumUp), Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert & André Schwämmlein (FlixBus), Saturnin Pugnet (Worldcoin), plus operators from OpenAI, DeepMind, LangChain, LlamaIndex
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Nicolas Dehandschoewercker (CEO), Luc Mahoux-Nakamura (co-founder)
🗞️ News: Minitap raises €3.5M Seed to expand its agentic-AI infrastructure, enabling mobile teams to ship features 10x faster by automating code generation, testing, iteration, and bug resolution across thousands of real devices in parallel. The company’s open-source framework topped Google DeepMind’s AndroidWorld benchmark within 40 days and now has 1,900 GitHub stars. This funding comes amid a broader €31.6M wave of early-stage AI-infrastructure investment across Europe, positioning Minitap as a leading player in AI-native mobile development tooling. | EU-Startups
📇 Company: Arrago
🔍 Description: French FinTech specializing in Prêt Viager Hypothécaire, offering Prêt 60®, a flexible, no-monthly-payment alternative to traditional life annuity loans, enabling seniors to unlock home equity while retaining ownership.
💻 Website: Arrago
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €2.7M
🏦 Investors: The Moon Venture (lead), French business angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders / Leadership: Alexis Rouëssé, Nathanaël Le Moal, Guillaume Ruhlmann, Thomas Bodereau,
🗞️ News: Arrago raises €2.7M to accelerate deployment and awareness of its Prêt 60® solution, aiming to streamline loan approval times, expand eligibility, and support high-value financings above €1M. The FinTech has already enabled €84M in financing for seniors across 62 French departments through a fully digital process. Its ambition: surpass €100M loaned by end-2025 and scale to €1B per year within five years, addressing the growing financial needs of an aging population facing rising home-care costs and limited access to credit. | SilverEco
📇 Company: Annette
🔍 Description: Paris-based medical support platform for chronic obesity care, providing supervised GLP-1 treatment follow-up through a multidisciplinary clinical team coordinated via a companion app.
💻 Website: Annette
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Funding round
💰 Amount Raised: €2M
🏦 Investors: Redstone, Ring Capital, AFI Ventures (Ventech), Clover VC, Gfund
👨💼👩💼 Founders: François-Xavier Trancart, Gwen Le Calvez
🗞️ News: Annette raises €2M to scale Europe’s first GLP-1–focused chronic obesity care platform, combining medical oversight with behavioral, nutritional, and emotional support. The funding will accelerate product personalisation, expand its clinical network, and strengthen prevention and education efforts. Founded in 2024, Annette already supports more than 1,000 patients, reporting outcomes above clinical-trial benchmarks, 90% retention at three months, and an NPS of +70. | EU-Startups
📇 Company: Néosylva
🔍 Description: Nantes-based forestry investment and management company enabling long-term, sustainable renewal and valorisation of French forests through a model that finances reforestation without requiring land acquisition.
💻 Website: Néosylva
📍 HQ City: Nantes
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €1.5M
🏦 Investors: Entrepreneurs from the Loire region, partners from the forest–wood value chain (incl. Bonnin Charbonneau), historical investors including Banque des Territoires via France 2030
👨💼👩💼 Founders / Leadership: Jean-Guénolé Cornet (President)
🗞️ News: Néosylva raises €1.5M to accelerate its sustainable forestry strategy, tripling managed forest areas from 3,000 hectares in 2025 to 10,000 hectares by 2029. The funding strengthens its mission-driven model (the company became “société à mission” in 2025), supporting forest renewal, local wood production, and ecosystem preservation. To date, Néosylva has planted over 1 million trees and secured backing from regional actors and institutional investors committed to a resilient French forest–wood sector. | LinkedIn
📇 Company: ROB’OCC
🔍 Description: French sovereign-robotics startup developing ROC-E, an eco-designed, AI-powered mobile assistant robot designed to automate internal flows, improve working conditions, and boost productivity for companies of all sizes — including TPEs and SMEs.
💻 Website: ROB'OCC
📍 HQ City: Brens
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3M
🏦 Investors: OCCIBOT Industrie, Tarn Capital Investissement, Franco-Swiss business angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Team of eight robotics experts and two industrial partners (including DG Patrick Dehlinger)
🗞️ News: ROB’OCC raises €3M to accelerate commercial deployment of ROC-E, its plug-and-play autonomous indoor robot requiring no Wi-Fi, IT integration, or site adaptation. Built with 84% European components and manufactured in Occitanie, ROC-E is gaining traction through more than 60 successful POCs with customers such as Safran, Orange, BIC, Mecaprec, and Actia. The funding will support hiring (15 new roles), scale-up of production, and expansion into European markets as ROB’OCC positions ROC-E as a leading solution for sovereign, simple, and sustainable robotics. | MtoM
📇 Company: BiPER Therapeutics
🔍 Description: Strasbourg-based biotech developing first-in-class oral small molecules that selectively inhibit BiP (GRP78) to overstress and destroy pathological cells, with an initial focus on gastrointestinal cancers.
💻 Website: BiPER
📍 HQ City: Strasbourg
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €1M
🏦 Investors: MEDIN Fund Management Company (SAFE), Regional France 2030 (Bpifrance), plus a loan
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Stéphane Rocchi, Rachid Benhida, Cyril Ronco, Mehdi Chelbi
🗞️ News: BiPER Therapeutics secures €1M to advance its lead candidate BPR001-615 toward a Phase 1/2a clinical trial in gastrointestinal cancers. The funding completes toxicology studies, supports CMC activities, and launches a new AI-powered R&D center in Tunisia to accelerate the company’s broader small-molecule pipeline. BPR001-615, a selective BiP inhibitor, has shown strong safety, a broad therapeutic window, and the potential to outperform first-line chemotherapy in preclinical studies. A Clinical Trial Application (CTA) is planned for Q1 2026. | Pharmiweb
📇 Company: Vulgaroo
🔍 Description: Bordeaux-based deeptech startup developing generative-AI–powered software that automatically produces medical memos and presentation-ready analyses to simplify reporting for pathology and diagnostic laboratories.
💻 Website: Vulgaroo
📍 HQ City: Bordeaux
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €500K
🏦 Investors: Angels Santé (lead), health-focused business angels; Bpifrance (support)
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Christophe Lelong, Victor Stanzel
🗞️ News: Vulgaroo raised €500K to launch the commercial rollout of its medical-report automation software and continue technological development. The startup has signed a major distribution agreement with Dedalus, Europe’s leading health and diagnostics software provider, enabling deployment across more than 4,000 pathology and biology labs in France. Vulgaroo plans to hire and relocate to the PariSanté Campus as it scales. | Journal des Enterprises
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