👋 Inside this week's edition:
👀 French cybersecurity funding is undergoing a structural shift, driven by AI-powered threats, regulation, and U.S. expansion. Q1 2026 alone surpassed all of 2025, signaling the sector’s emergence as a frontline investment priority. Read our full report.
👀 A new government report warns that the country faces a €3 billion funding gap over the next five years for breakthrough technologies that will define future warfare, including drones, AI, space, cybersecurity, and quantum computing. We dig into the findings and what they mean for innovation and startups in France.
Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand
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Tech Talk
💳 📱 Revolut and BoursoBank are leaving traditional banks in the dust in the race for new customers. Between 2021 and 2025, neobanks scooped up over 15 million users in France, while legacy players lost 2.2 million. BoursoBank alone pulled in a hefty 5.5 million. The twist is that incumbents are still posting record profits, fueled by lending rebounds and fee boosts. So while the money’s still flowing, the customers are quietly slipping away. The real battle isn’t margins anymore. It’s the ownership of the user. | Les Echos
💳 🇫🇷 Speaking of Revolut… the fintech is planting its flag right in the heart of Paris’ “Silicon Sentier.” A 2,400 m² Haussmann building, 500 employees, and a 10-year lease kicking off in 2027. The new HQ will oversee 25 million customers across Western Europe, with France as its second-biggest market and growth engine. Bonus move: Revolut is also gearing up to secure a French banking license, doubling down on its local ambitions. | Maddyness
💳 🤝 Still on the fintech front, Qonto is teaming up with Dutch payments giant Adyen to finally crack one of the last headaches for SMEs: getting paid, simply. By embedding Adyen’s infrastructure directly into its platform, Qonto now lets businesses handle everything from invoicing to in-store payments in one place, ditching the usual patchwork of tools. Early adoption is strong, with tens of thousands of companies already on board, and a European rollout underway. The play is clear: own the full financial stack. | Maddyness
🧬 💸 Meanwhile, BioTech is reloading. French investment firm Jeito has just raised over $1.2 billion for its second fund, aimed squarely at backing smaller biopharma companies through the costly clinical stages. With ticket sizes of up to €150 million, the goal is to help promising therapies survive the “valley of death” between research and the market. In a funding environment that’s been tougher for BiotTech, this kind of firepower could be the difference between breakthrough… and breakdown. | BioXconomy
🩺 📊 Doctolib has crossed €400M in recurring revenue, achieved profitability, and closed a ~€300M secondary round to bring in new investors while offering liquidity to early backers and employees. The catch is that it comes at €3.6B valuation, down from its 2022 peak. That confirms the ongoing market reset, even for top performers. From hypergrowth darling to mature operator, Doctolib is trading hype for fundamentals. | Maddyness
🧬🩸 French startup Aima Diagnostics just cleared a key milestone, securing CE marking for its AI-powered platform that detects cancer via a simple blood test. By analyzing circulating DNA, it claims ~85% detection with near-zero false positives. That's well above current standards. The company is still early-stage, with clinical trials and larger fundraising needed ahead before commercialization. | Les Echos
🦄 🔄 Following ManoMano’s lead, a wave of French Tech unicorn founders are stepping back from day-to-day roles. From Mirakl to Vestiaire Collective and PayFit, leadership reshuffles are accelerating across the ecosystem. Behind the scenes: slower growth, valuation drops, and pressure to shift from founders to seasoned operators. Some former unicorns have even slipped below the billion-dollar mark - officially losing their horns. The vibe shift is clear: less founder mythology, more operational reality. | Les Echos
French Cybersecurity Startups Surge: €133M Q1 2026 Funding Tops All of 2025
French cybersecurity startups raised €133.3M across 8 deals in Q1 2026, a 12x increase over Q1 2025's €10.9M from 6 deals. For the full year 2025, the sector logged €115.6M across 15 deals. In other words, Q1 2026 alone has already exceeded the entire previous year.
It reflects a structural shift: cybersecurity has moved from a secondary category in French tech funding to a frontline investment thesis, driven by escalating geopolitical tensions, the EU AI Act's compliance mandates, and the explosive growth of AI-powered attack surfaces.
Despite Growth, French DefenseTech Spending Falling €3BN Short: Report
A funny thing happened on the way to rearming Europe.
France spent the last year orchestrating what a group of industry and government officials is calling an unprecedented mobilization of private capital toward its defense industry. And yet, a new progress report suggests it's essentially admitting the job is only half done.
The report, "Financement de la Base Industrielle et Technologique de Défense," jointly released by the Ministry of Armed Forces and the Ministry of Economy, is a one-year stocktaking of the dialogue de place, a structured conversation between bankers, asset managers, defense primes, and the state that kicked off at Bercy in March 2025 under then-defense minister (now Prime Minister) Sébastien Lecornu.
The headline numbers are genuinely worrisome. But they are intended to drive home a larger message: French officials are publicly telling their own financial sector that the current effort, as remarkable as it's been, still isn't enough to meet the country's industrial and technological needs by 2030.
💸 Top Funding Deals 💸
📇 Company: Aura Aero
🏷️ Sectors: Aerospace, Mobility, ClimateTech, DefenseTech
🔍 Description: Aura Aero is a French aircraft manufacturer developing next-generation electric and hybrid-electric aircraft for pilot training and regional passenger transport. Its portfolio includes the Integral training aircraft and ERA, a 19-seat hybrid-electric regional plane designed to significantly reduce emissions on short-haul routes. The company is also expanding into defense with a line of military drones.
💻 Website: Aura Aero
📍 HQ City: Toulouse
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: €50M equity
🏦 Investors: Safran Corporate Ventures, EDF, European Innovation Council (EIC Fund), Innovacom, Florida Opportunity Fund, Bpifrance, Blast Club
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Jérémy Caussade, Fabien Raison, Wilfried Dufaud
🗞️ News: Aura Aero secured €340M in funding to accelerate industrial production of its electric and hybrid aircraft, including a €50M Series B round complemented by €120M in subsidies and €170M in debt. The Toulouse-based company is preparing to scale manufacturing with new factories in France and the U.S., targeting an annual production of up to 150 aircraft. Its flagship ERA aircraft, expected to enter service by 2030, aims to reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 80% and has already attracted around 700 letters of intent from global operators. The funding will support certification, first flight milestones (targeted for 2027), and industrial scale-up, positioning Aura Aero as a potential new European aerospace leader. | Maddyness,
📇 Company: NeuroClues
🏷️ Sectors: HealthTech, MedTech, AI, Diagnostics
🔍 Description: NeuroClues is a Franco-Belgian medtech startup developing a non-invasive diagnostic device based on eye movement analysis to detect neurodegenerative diseases at an early stage. Its solution, often described as a “stethoscope of the brain,” uses infrared imaging and AI to identify biomarkers for conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and multiple sclerosis years before clinical symptoms appear.
💻 Website: NeuroClues
📍 HQ City: Brussels / Paris
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €10M
🏦 Investors: Teampact Ventures, White Fund, European Innovation Council (EIC Fund), Invest BW, Leansquare, Wallonie Entreprendre (+ LITA retail tranche)
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Antoine Pouppez, Pierre Daye, Pierre Pouget
🗞️ News: NeuroClues raised €10M in a Series A round to accelerate the commercial rollout of its brain diagnostics device across Europe and prepare expansion into the U.S. Already CE-certified and deployed in 7 European countries, the company has installed around 30 devices in hospitals and research centers. The funding will support distribution scaling, hiring, and the development of a large normative database targeting 25,000 participants to improve diagnostic accuracy. Positioned at the intersection of AI and neurology, NeuroClues aims to transform the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases, a growing global health challenge. | Maddyness
📇 Company: Cobl.ai
🏷️ Sectors: AI & Machine Learning, SaaS & Enterprise
🔍 Description: Cobl.ai is a French startup developing a multi-agent AI platform designed to automate and optimize the creation of commercial documents. Its system orchestrates multiple specialized AI agents to generate proposals, RFP responses, and client presentations, leveraging internal company data to ensure consistency, personalization, and compliance. Positioned as a “copilot” for sales teams, the platform reduces time spent on repetitive documentation while improving quality and relevance.
💻 Website: Cobl.ai
📍 HQ City: France
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €6M
🏦 Investors: Eurazeo, SuperCapital-Side Angels, Apok Invest, Station F
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Damien Hontang, Quentin Marquet
🗞️ News: Cobl.ai raised €6M in a round led by Eurazeo to accelerate the commercial launch of its multi-agent AI platform for sales teams. Originally launched as Thinkeo, the company pivoted to automate the production of commercial documents, a major pain point for sales organizations. Its platform integrates with tools like Salesforce, Teams, and Notion to generate tailored documents in minutes, while keeping humans in the loop for validation. Already used by clients such as Orano, Free, and Econocom, Cobl.ai plans to expand product capabilities and scale go-to-market efforts as it positions itself in the fast-growing AI productivity software space.
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