👋 Inside this week's edition:

👀 At VivaTech, founders and corporate leaders agreed that AI is changing the rules of innovation. But the biggest obstacle may still be how slowly large organizations make decisions.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

Tech Talk

💰📈 French startup funding is back, but the recovery isn’t lifting everyone. Startups raised €4.6B in the first half of 2026, up 65% year-on-year, according to EY, marking the strongest first half since 2022. But the rebound was driven by just seven mega-rounds exceeding €100M, which accounted for nearly half of all capital raised, while the number of deals continued to fall. The message? Investors are doubling down on proven scale-up bets, making fundraising tougher for earlier-stage startups despite the headline boom. | EY

🏭📱France is giving data centers a starring role in its industrial strategy, officially bringing them into the country’s digital infrastructure roadmap through 2030. The new plan positions data centers alongside telecoms networks as critical national infrastructure, with a focus on sovereignty, resilience, innovation and greener operations. While AI is accelerating demand for computing capacity, the roadmap also underlines the broader role of data centers in supporting France’s digital economy - even if it stops short of announcing fresh funding or concrete targets. | Usine Digitale

⚖️ 🇫🇷 The French Competition Authority is turning up the heat on Meta in its long-running fight over paying publishers for news content. The French Competition Authority has ordered the owner of Facebook and Instagram back to the negotiating table, demanding greater transparency in how it values media content. Beyond the immediate dispute, the ruling could shape how publishers are compensated when their content powers AI features, with France pushing to extend neighboring rights to chatbots and AI-generated summaries across Europe. | Le Monde

🛍️ 🇪🇺 France has suspended its €2 levy on low-value parcels after Chinese e-commerce platforms rerouted shipments through neighboring EU countries to sidestep the measure. The government will now rely on the EU’s new €3 customs duty, arguing that only bloc-wide rules can effectively regulate cross-border giants like Shein, Temu and AliExpress. | Le Monde

🏥 📈 Turenne Santé is betting that France’s next HealthTech winners won’t fail for lack of technology but for lack of scale-up capital. Its new Next Health Capital fund has reached a first close of more than €60M and aims to raise up to €150M to help startups bridge the “valley of death” between venture capital and private equity. | Les Echos

💇📊 Ten years after its launch, French beauty booking platform Planity has reached profitability and surpassed €80M in annual recurring revenue, putting it within striking distance of coveted “centaur” status. Now active across France, Germany and Belgium, the company is expanding into the wider wellness market while rolling out AI-powered tools to help salons automate bookings and improve business performance. | Maddyness

French Corporates Can No Longer Afford to Treat Startups as Experiments

Since its launch in 2016, VivaTech has positioned itself as the place where startups and large corporations come together to turn innovation into business. That ambition has produced tangible results.

Through initiatives such as Je Choisis la French Tech, more than €2 billion in contracts have now been signed between startups and public and private organizations, while nearly two-thirds of French startups count large companies among their customers.

Yet beneath those encouraging numbers, the reality remains uneven. Some corporates have made startups a core part of their innovation strategy, with dedicated budgets and teams. Others are still stuck in an endless cycle of proofs of concept and procurement processes that rarely lead to deployment.

To explore why, the French Tech Journal brought together two startup founders - Thor Philogen, CEO and co-founder of Stravito, and Rachel Delacour, CEO and co-founder of Sweep - and two corporate leaders, David Sabban, Partner at IBM Consulting, and Philip Marais, Global Startup Program Director at OVHcloud.

While the discussion centered on AI, the panel quickly converged on a broader conclusion: French corporates can no longer afford to treat startups as experiments. As innovation cycles accelerate, the greatest risk may no longer be partnering with the wrong startup - but waiting too long to partner at all.

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