🧮 Data Point: Hugging Face $$$
In the wake of the Nvidia deal for Hugging Face, the good folks at Dealroom attempted to wrestle with the question who made what from this deal? These seven charts offer some approximation of just how much the AI registry has increased in value over the years...
...and who should be picking up your bar tab, well, forever. That is, assuming the deal closes as expected some time early next year.
Relationship context is the richest data your team owns, but contacts and conversations are scattered across Gmail, LinkedIn, calendars, and WhatsApp.
folk captures that context across channels and turns it into a shared memory for every relationship.
Using folk’s MCP, your team can chat with your CRM data like a conversation: ask folk which deals stalled, who last spoke to a lead, or what happened on an account.
5,000+ companies use folk to close more deals. Start for free today with a 14-day trial.
💸 Weekly Funding Recap: September 4
📇 Company: Lupin Dental
🏷️ Sectors: MedTech, Robotics
🔍 Description: Lupin Dental develops supervised robotic systems for minimally invasive dental procedures. Its Lupin Robotic System combines treatment-planning software with a robotic workstation that automates tooth preparation for aesthetic veneers, aiming to improve precision, clinical workflows, and patient outcomes.
💻 Website: https://lupindental.com/
📍 HQ City: Montpellier
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €15 million
🏦 Investors: Fynveur, Bpifrance
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Dr. Galip Gürel, Dr. Stefen Koubi
🗞️ News: Lupin Dental has closed a €15 million Series A to accelerate development and adoption of its robotic technology for dental procedures. Fynveur led the round with a €10 million investment, alongside existing shareholders and private investors, with additional loan financing from Bpifrance. The company’s flagship Lupin Robotic System uses software to design a patient's final smile and treatment plan before a robotic workstation executes the required minimally invasive tooth preparation for veneers. The system received UKCA certification in June 2026, enabling commercialization in Great Britain, following earlier regulatory clearance in India, although it is not yet approved for clinical use in the EU or US. Lupin Dental will use the financing to expand partnerships with academic and medical institutions, dentists, and Dental Service Organizations as it works toward broader adoption of its technology. | EU-Startups
📇 Company: Lys Therapeutics
🏷️ Sectors: BioTech, HealthTech
🔍 Description: Advanced preclinical biotech developing LYS241, a humanized monoclonal antibody designed to block the tPA-NMDAr pathway in neurodegenerative and neurovascular diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, synucleinopathies and ischemic stroke.
💻 Website: https://lys-tx.com/
📍 HQ City: Lyon, Caen
🧗 Round: Growth Equity
💰 Amount Raised: €13M
🏦 Investors: Normandie Participation, TCD Capital, FIDAT Ventures, ZCUBE
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Manuel Blanc, Philippe Dujardin, Thibault Honegger
🗞️ News: Lys Therapeutics said its cumulative funding since its 2021 founding has passed €25M, including equity, non-dilutive public funding and foundation support. The company has previously disclosed €12M in fuding across seven previous rounds, including a €3M seed round, Bpifrance and France 2030 grants, and Michael J. Fox Foundation awards. It will use the resources to complete regulatory studies, secure industrial manufacturing and prepare a biomarker-rich Phase 1a/1b trial for LYS241. | PR
📇 Company: Huscarl
🏷️ Sectors: InsurTech, AI, SaaS
🔍 Description: Huscarl develops an AI-powered actuarial platform for corporations, self-insured companies, insurance captives, and risk retention groups. Its autonomous AI actuary ingests unstructured data and automates workflows, including risk modeling, pricing, reserving, and capital analysis, with studies reviewed and signed by credentialed human actuaries.
💻 Website: http://huscarl.io/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €4.82 million
🏦 Investors: FRST, Y Combinator, MS&AD Ventures, Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Alexandre Musy, Paulien Jeunesse
🗞️ News: Huscarl has raised $5.6 million in Seed funding led by FRST to accelerate development of its AI actuarial platform and expansion in the United States. The Y Combinator-backed startup helps companies use self-insurance and captive structures by automating actuarial work, including modeling, pricing, reserving, and capital analysis. Huscarl offers one-off actuarial studies, appointed-actuary services for captives, and outsourced underwriting for group captives and risk retention groups, while keeping credentialed human actuaries responsible for reviewing and signing its studies. The company says it has already worked with a risk retention group and a single-parent captive belonging to a company generating more than $2 billion in revenue. Huscarl was founded by former Descartes Underwriting employees Alexandre Musy and Paulien Jeunesse, who previously worked together on cyber parametric insurance. | LinkedIn, Coverager
📇 Company: ColibriTD
🏷️ Sectors: Quantum Computing, DeepTech
🔍 Description: ColibriTD develops a hardware-agnostic quantum-powered multiphysics simulation platform built around H-DES, its proprietary hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for solving partial differential equations. The company targets computationally intensive applications across defense, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, automotive, climate science, and quantitative finance.
💻 Website: https://www.colibritd.com/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €4 million
🏦 Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital, SymbiaVC, Medin VC
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Laurent Guiraud, Hacène Goudjil
🗞️ News: ColibriTD has raised €4 million in Seed funding to accelerate development of its quantum simulation platform and expand internationally. Earlybird Venture Capital led the round, which previously backed the company’s €1 million pre-Seed round, with participation from SymbiaVC and Medin VC. Founded in 2019, ColibriTD has completed seven co-construction projects across six industrial sectors, including work with groups such as Thales, ESA and BMW. The company will use the funding to invest further in H-DES R&D, recruit quantum researchers and domain experts, expand hardware and academic partnerships, and scale client deployments. ColibriTD currently employs around 20 people and is positioning its platform as a software layer that can translate advances in quantum hardware into practical industrial applications. | EU-Startups, La Revue Digitale
📇 Company: Viraj Aero
🏷️ Sectors: ClimateTech, Aerospace, Aviation, Propulsion
🔍 Description: Toulouse-based startup developing an onboard steam-injection turbine system that recovers water from aircraft exhaust and reinjects it into the engine, aiming to reduce fuel use, CO₂, NOx emissions and non-CO₂ climate effects.
💻 Website: https://virajaero.com/
📍 HQ City: Toulouse
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €4.5M
🏦 Investors: IRDI Capital Investissement, Climate Founders, OCSEED, ARTS Aero, Business Angels, Bpifrance
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mathilde Bouilloux, Joseph Brisson
🗞️ News: The funding will finance flight testing of Viraj Aero’s Ailefroide demonstrator, scheduled for 2027, and grow its engineering team at Toulouse airport. The company targets a 2029 commercial launch of its EYJA system for light aviation, before adapting the technology for regional aircraft. | Les Echos, PR, La Tribune
📇 Company: ArcSpace
🏷️ Sectors: SpaceTech, DeepTech
🔍 Description: Developer of a compact electron-beam system for welding and cutting metal in orbit, initially targeting satellite servicing and repair before expanding to orbital manufacturing and space infrastructure.
💻 Website: https://arc-space.com/
📍 HQ City: Toulouse
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €2M
🏦 Investors: DEPO Ventures, SCE Freiraum Ventures, IRDI Capital Investissement, Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Guillaume Mohara and Adam Abdin
🗞️ News: ArcSpace will use the funding to qualify its flight hardware and carry out an autonomous in-orbit demonstration in 2027. | The French Tech Journal
📇 Company: Swiftask
🏷️ Sectors: Artificial Intelligence, SaaS
🔍 Description: Enterprise software platform for building, deploying and governing AI agents across business workflows. Hosted in France, it offers access to more than 80 AI models and aims to provide a vendor-neutral control layer for enterprise AI use.
💻 Website: https://swiftask.ai/
📍 HQ City: Nantes
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €1.55M
🏦 Investors: Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Stanislas Randriamilasoa, Matthieu Lardillet, Gaël Brisson
🗞️ News: Swiftask closed its first funding round in August 2026 to expand direct sales and its distributor network in France, Europe and Africa. Launched in late 2024, the company says its platform already serves more than 100 customers and supports 14,000 active AI agents. | FinYear
📇 Company: TheraSonic
🏷️ Sectors: MedTech, HealthTech, NeuroTech, Robots
🔍 Description: CEA/CNRS spin-off developing a robot-guided focused-ultrasound device that temporarily and non-invasively opens the blood-brain barrier to improve delivery of drugs to targeted brain regions.
💻 Website: https://www.therasonic.fr/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Crowdfunding
💰 Amount Raised: €1.52M
🏦 Investors: Capital Cell
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Benoît Larrat, Anthony Novell
🗞️ News: TheraSonic’s Capital Cell campaign closed on July 31, 2026, surpassing its €1.2M target and raising €1,523,874 at a €5.8M pre-money valuation. The company plans to use the funding to industrialize and prepare the regulatory path for its clinical device, following a first-in-human programme at Gustave Roussy. | Capital Cell
📇 Company: Sensing Atmospheric Intelligence
🏷️ Sectors: SpaceTech, ClimateTech
🔍 Description: Toulouse-based satellite operator providing atmospheric-intelligence data, initially focused on equipment-level detection and quantification of industrial methane emissions. Its GESat satellites combine hyperspectral sensing with physics-guided AI.
💻 Website: https://sensing-ai.eu/
📍 HQ City: Toulouse
🧗 Round: Growth Equity
💰 Amount Raised: Undisclosed
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Tristan Laurent
🗞️ News: The company has rebranded from Absolut Sensing to Sensing Atmospheric Intelligence and appointed Nicolas Fabre as managing director and partner. In disclosing the funding news, it describes it as a "capital increase to finance a €12M investment plan." It will develop and launch its GEN2 hyperspectral satellite, designed to measure methane emissions below 50 kg/hour, with launch planned for late 2027 or early 2028. | Company announcement
👋🏻 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: chris@frenchtechjournal.com / helen@frenchtechjournal.com 👋🏻
