Tech Talk

💥👩‍💻 Female entrepreneurship has been getting a serious power boost in Paris recently. At the 2026 Margaret Awards, held at the Hôtel de Lassay, JFD put the spotlight on three women building Europe’s next generation of AI champions: Roxane Laigle for retail AI, Juliette Mattioli for trusted industrial AI, and 22-year-old Koralie Theresine for a digital twin capable of detecting sepsis.

The event, held under the patronage of Nobel Prize-winning economist Philippe Aghion and opened by National Assembly President, Yaël Braun-Pivet, carried a broader message too: if Europe is serious about AI sovereignty, it needs to start backing its own startups. JFD is calling on corporates and public institutions to devote 9% of their innovation spending to European AI companies

The April 9 ceremony was followed on Tuesday by a breakfast at the Ministry for Equality with Aurore Bergé. The room was buzzing with female founders, investors, and executives swapping stories about overcoming the odds in a still stubbornly male tech ecosystem. The mood was less “wait your turn” and more: we’re done asking for permission. | JFD

⚛️💻 France (and Europe, broadly) just unveiled “Lucy,” a photonic quantum computer that officials are billing as the most powerful of its kind. Hooked up to a traditional supercomputer, it’s meant to tackle everything from drug discovery to logistics. Lucy was funded through EuroHPC and France’s €54B France 2030 investment plan, both of which are aimed at building sovereign capabilities in critical technologies like AI and quantum, rather than relying on U.S. or Chinese systems. What makes Lucy notable is its hybrid setup: it’s directly coupled to a classical supercomputer (Joliot-Curie), reflecting a growing consensus that near-term value in quantum computing will come from these HPC–quantum pairings, not from standalone machines. And by making it freely accessible to researchers and companies, Europe is trying to accelerate real-world use cases. | Data Center Dynamics

⚛️💻 ...And speaking of Quantum Computing...Paris-based quantum startup C12 just released a very ambitious roadmap: fault-tolerant, commercially viable quantum computing by 2033. C12 is betting that the unsexy but critical stuff, such as error correction, modular architecture, and scalability, will actually make quantum usable. The plan rolls out in stages, from early logical qubits in 2027 to a full-scale system with ~800 logical qubits by 2033, powered by its carbon nanotube approach. | C12 Roadmap

🎤 🌍 HR tech giant Deel is moving fast in more ways than one. The company, founded in 2019 by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang, went from zero to 7,000 employees, 40,000 customers, and operations in 120 countries in just seven years. Now it wants to give something back. Its new startup pitch competition, called "The Pitch," pulled together in just four months, is touring cities from Paris to Berlin, London, New York, and Tel Aviv, with 40 startups selected from 38,000 applicants worldwide. The Paris kick-off this week had a notable twist: three of the top startups awarded €50K cheques were female-led or co-led: Cleo, Lemrock AI (yes, them again), and Allude. Another reminder that female founders are no longer just pushing at tech’s glass ceiling. They’re beginning to crack it.| J'aime les startups

🏥⏩ Europe’s healthtech scene is getting another accelerator. Doctolib, AP-HP’s Hôtel-Dieu, and Roche are teaming up at Station F to launch “Care Forward,” a program that promises startups not just mentorship but actual access to hospitals, clinicians, and regulatory know-how (a rare combo in a sector that loves complexity). The pitch is to move beyond demos and get real solutions into the messy, real-world healthcare system. Applications are open until mid-May. | Station F

🗳️📣 With the French presidential race looming, 40 founders are trying to rehab the entrepreneur brand before politicians turn them into the usual campaign punching bag. Backed by consultancy Rydge Conseil, names from The Exploration Company, Ledger, and Too Good To Go have launched “Le Cœur Entreprendre”, a coordinated social media campaign arguing that entrepreneurs are builders, employers, and innovators, not just rich people with LinkedIn posts. Translation: after years of admin headaches, rising costs, and political indifference, France’s startup crowd wants a seat at the table before the 2027 debates begin. | Maddyness

💸📈 French fintech may finally be entering its grown-up era. According to the latest Fintech100 ranking, 57% of the country’s biggest fintechs are now profitable, a far cry from the old “grow first, maybe make money later” playbook. Heavyweights like Qonto, Alan, and Ledger still dominate, but the bigger shift is structural: less VC dependency, more bank financing, and nearly half of fintechs now eyeing mergers or acquisitions. Add generative AI rewriting business models, and French fintech looks less like a startup scene and more like an industry. | Maddyness

🚛⚡ A little-known Chinese startup is quietly parking itself on Europe’s doorstep. Windrose Technology plans to build a €175M electric truck factory near Valenciennes by 2027, with ambitions to shake up Europe’s “big seven” truckmakers. Its pitch: a 600km+ range, a central driving position (a European first) and a €250k price tag that could undercut the still eye-wateringly expensive battery trucks from Volvo, Mercedes or Renault Trucks. After EVs, buses, and batteries, China’s next industrial offensive may be coming for heavy trucks too. | Les Echos

🧠💰 There’s no shortage of European braintech startups. The problem, says Newfund, is that there hasn’t really been a fund built for them until now. Enter HEKA, a new €60M vehicle dedicated to “digital brain health”, backing everything from AI-powered imaging to video game therapies for depression. The twist? While the startups are European, the real target market is still the US, where eight of Newfund’s nine portfolio companies are already selling. Europe may have the science, but investors increasingly believe the road to braintech scale still runs through Boston and San Francisco.| EU Startups

🥊 ⚖️ Ding ding! Round two! French proptech startup Jinka has just lost round two in its battle with the real estate portals. After being slapped by SeLoger last year, it has now lost on appeal against Leboncoin for scraping and republishing property listings without permission. The court didn’t buy Jinka’s argument that it was “just a search engine”, and raised damages from €50k to €200k. The bigger message for startups is clear: in France, aggregating data may feel like innovation, but the law still tends to see it as someone else’s database. | Les Echos

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From Bottles to Infrastructure: Le Fourgon’s Race to Own Europe’s €Trillion Circular Packaging Shift

Fresh from its merger with La Tournée and its expansion into the Paris region, the Lille-based returnable-bottle startup Le Fourgon is now heading beyond France for the first time, launching in Belgium, and expanding into Spain following its acquisition of a local startup.

The ambition is no longer simply to deliver groceries in glass bottles. It is to become what co-founder and CEO Charles Christory calls “the European leader in reusable packaging.”

Read the interview

💸 Top Funding Deals 💸

📇 Company: Donecle
🏷️ Sectors: Aerospace, AI, Robotics, Drones
🔍 Description: Donecle develops autonomous drone-based inspection systems for aircraft, combining high-resolution imaging and AI to detect defects and anomalies. Its solution significantly reduces aircraft downtime by automating exterior inspections, replacing manual processes with faster, data-driven analysis.
💻 Website: Donecle
📍 HQ City: Toulouse
🧗 Round: Growth Round
💰 Amount Raised: €10M
🏦 Investors: IRDI Capital Investissement, SWEN Capital Partners, GSO Innovation, ARIS Occitanie
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Matthieu Claybrough
🗞️ News: Donecle raised €10M to accelerate international expansion across Europe and the U.S. and scale its autonomous drone inspection platform. Already used by major players like Lufthansa, United Airlines, and DHL, the company reduces aircraft inspection time from up to 16 hours to around 2 hours. The funding will also support the development of new digital services, including a predictive maintenance software expected in 2027. | Maddyness, EU Startups

📇 Company: HrFlow.ai
🏷️ Sectors: HRTech, AI, SaaS, Data Infrastructure
🔍 Description: HrFlow.ai develops an AI-powered platform to orchestrate HR data, enabling recruiters to automate talent matching, improve hiring decisions, and deploy custom AI agents within HR workflows. Its infrastructure processes large-scale candidate data to optimize recruitment efficiency and decision-making.
💻 Website: HrFlow
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Pre-Series A
💰 Amount Raised: $7M
🏦 Investors: 115K, EmergingTech Ventures, Xavier Niel, Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, Thibaud Elzière, Romain Niccoli, Franck Le Ouay, Flavien Kulawik, Allen Penn, Dominique Vidal, Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mouhidine Seiv
🗞️ News: HrFlow.ai raised $7M to scale its AI-driven recruitment infrastructure, targeting expansion in the U.S. and key European markets. The platform has already processed over 50 million candidate profiles and aims to help recruiters manage increasing complexity through data orchestration, explainable AI, and embedded AI agents. The funding will also support the launch of a new version of its platform tailored to evolving HR needs. | Maddyness, HrFlow

📇 Company: Mirabelle
🏷️ Sectors: Fintech, Insurtech, WealthTech, Silver Economy
🔍 Description: Mirabelle is a regulated lending platform specializing in prêt viager hypothécaire (reverse mortgage loans) for senior homeowners. It enables retirees to unlock the value of their property without selling their home or making repayments during their lifetime, combining financial innovation with a strong regulatory and risk-management framework.
💻 Website: Mirabelle
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €6M
🏦 Investors: Groupe Renée Costes, OCIRP, Groupe Intériale, Groupe Elvest, Christophe Eberlé, Groupe Edgide, Eric Viet, Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Hugo Jenny, Bastien Davalos
🗞️ News: Mirabelle raised €6M in seed funding while securing ACPR regulatory approval as a financing company, enabling it to directly issue loans. The startup is launching its reverse mortgage offering for seniors in France, aiming to become a leading player in financing aging populations. The funds will support commercial rollout, hiring, and regulatory capital requirements, as the company builds a fully regulated, tech-enabled platform to structure and scale this emerging market. | Finyear

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