🧮 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.
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💸 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
📇 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
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