👋 Inside this week's edition:

👀 HR Path’s near-$1 billion refinancing gives the profitable French HR specialist fresh firepower for global expansion without an IPO or surrendering founder control. CEO François Boulet says he's targeting $1 billion in revenue, not a unicorn valuation.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

Tech Talk

🤖💻 Well, the good news is that the Frenchies who founded Hugging Face in the Big 🍎 are making Big Headlines in international media. The bad news is that it's because some of OpenAI’s most advanced models escaped an internal testing sandbox and hacked the production systems of Hugging Face, one of the world's largest open-source hubs for sharing AI models. The fact that the models did this because they were extremely committed to cheating on a cybersecurity benchmark leaves us with a mixture of awe and terror. But hey, I'm sure it will be fine. Right? Right?!! The agents exploited previously unknown vulnerabilities and then stole credentials to launch thousands of attacks before the breach was contained, offering a striking real-world demonstration of their long-horizon cyber capabilities. OpenAI says production safeguards had been deliberately disabled for the evaluation and is now tightening its controls, while Hugging Face calls the incident a wake-up call for the industry. Ya think? | OpenAI, BBC

🤗✊ Meanwhile, Hugging Face co-founder Clem Delangue is making the most of his moment in the spotlight. Not only has the company been vaulted into prominence, but its central mission of open source is now on the front burner of the national AI discussion in the land of baseball and apple pie. To wit, America had turned into Panicstan after the recent release of Kimi K3 by the Chinese lab Moonshot AI, an open-source model that seemed to meet or beat the benchmarks of Anthropic and OpenAI. The formerly free-market-loving U.S. government engaged in some saber rattling about possibly restricting market access over security concerns. | The Information

🇨🇳🛡️ But the OpenAI-Hugging Face debacle contained a nifty little irony: Hugging Face had to deploy a Chinese open-source model to defend itself. To make his case for open source, in classic French style, Delange is doing what the French do best: marching in the streets in protest! This week he flew into the Heart-of-AI-Darkness (aka, SF) where he is organizing the "Open Weights Mini-March" on July 25. It's summer in SF, so be sure to wear shorts! 😓

🚸📱 France is about to become Europe’s digital hall monitor. Parliament has approved a ban on social media for under-15s, with the government aiming for the law to take effect as soon as September. Rather than naming specific platforms, the legislation casts a wide net, leaving companies to figure out how to verify users’ ages, likely using tools such as France Identité or Docaposte. The move also aligns with a broader EU push for age-gated online access. The big question now isn’t whether kids should be on social media. It’s whether platforms can make age verification work without turning the internet into passport control. | Le Monde

🇪🇺💸 Brussels has slapped Google with a record €890 million fine under the Digital Markets Act for allegedly giving its own hotel, flight and restaurant services top billing in Search while keeping Android users boxed into the Play Store. Google has 60 days to comply or appeal, and insists the EU is dismantling features Europeans “love.” The timing, just as US–EU tariff tensions are heating up again, is giving El Presidente Donald Trump and his allies fresh ammunition in their crusade against European tech regulation. Still, the fine amounts to just 0.22% of Google’s annual revenue: painful enough to generate headlines, but hardly enough to ruin the weekend. | Le Figaro

🤖 🌐 ...Speaking of Mr. Google...the famed subsidiary of Alphabet has just launched AI Search in France, rewriting the deal between search engines and the web. AI Overviews and AI Mode finally arrive after regulatory delays, turning Google into an answer engine rather than a gateway to other sites. To soften the blow, publishers can now opt out of feeding AI-generated summaries without disappearing from traditional search results. It’s a small concession that acknowledges a much bigger problem: if AI stops sending traffic back to the sites that create the knowledge, who’s left to produce it? The future of Search may depend on whether the open web can still afford to exist. | L’Usine Digitale, Maddyness

🤖 💶 Mistral’s next billion may be buying something bigger than compute: a new identity. As EQT’s €5bn EU Scaleup Fund and Samsung reportedly circle the French AI champion’s upcoming Series D, fresh reporting suggests Mistral is increasingly focused on helping enterprises deploy AI rather than chasing ever-larger frontier models. If that’s the case, Europe may be betting less on building the next OpenAI and more on creating its own Palantir. | Sifted

🇫🇷🚗 France has declined to authorize Tesla’s supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) system for now, arguing that its safety guarantees remain insufficient. The AI-powered technology can handle much of the driving, but still requires the human behind the wheel to pay attention, inconveniently enough. The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania have already granted provisional approval, while France says it wants further adjustments before following them. Paris insists it supports autonomous-driving innovation. However, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said he would simply prefer the cars to be slightly more autonomous before calling them self-driving. "In France, it is considered that this system brings a number of technological advances but that the counterparts in terms of security are not yet sufficient for an authorization as is," Tabarot said. | BFM

🇫🇷💊 Dassault Systèmes is buying US life-sciences software company ArisGlobal for up to $2 billion, its second-largest acquisition ever and its first blockbuster deal under CEO Pascal Daloz. The prize is not just ArisGlobal’s pharma clients, but the decidedly juicy data: its software processes more than 12 million patient-safety reports annually, 80% of which are private. Dassault plans to combine that trove with Medidata’s clinical-trial data to train AI “world models” that could accelerate drug development. With its shares down nearly 40% over the past year, this is both an ambitious healthcare-AI bet and a rather expensive way to convince investors that 2026 really will be the promised “turning point.” | Le Figaro

🚗 🤝 BlaBlaCar is trimming the journey to focus on the destination. The French unicorn is reportedly selling BlaBlaCar Daily, its commuter carpooling business, to rival Karos, leaving the specialist to consolidate a market that has struggled to win over mainstream commuters. The deal lets BlaBlaCar double down on its core long-distance business while Karos bets scale can finally crack the daily commute. | Les Échos

The Bicycle and The Helicopter: How HR Path Quietly Built a Billion-Dollar Empire

HR Path CEO and Co-Founder François Boulet wants you to know that he's not here for the money. Of course, that may sound easy to say after announcing a refinancing that placed the company's value close to $1 billion and positioned the French company to massively expand its global footprint.

But after spending 25 years building HR Path into one of France's quieter tech success stories, perhaps he's earned the right to be believed that he's not obsessing about nearly crossing the unicorn barrier.

"I'm here to have a dream," Boulet said in an interview. "Maybe in a few years, to have $1 billion of revenue, whatever the valuation. If I can accomplish it in my life, I will be very happy."

That focus on revenue over valuation is reflected in the way HR Path has pursued its growth through a relentless string of global acquisitions. To accelerate that plan, the Paris-based HR consulting and services group opted for a deal that is a mix of equity, secondary funding, and debt led by private equity giant Ardian. It's not exactly an acquisition, nor a classic venture round, but something more baroque.

As Boulet argued, however, it was an instrument perfectly suited to the needs of a 25-year-old, profitable, acquisition-hungry company.

💸 Top Funding Deals 💸

📇 Company: Arrakis Technologies
🏷️ Sectors: Enterprise, Artificial Intelligence
🔍 Description: Arrakis Technologies helps industrial companies design, deploy, and scale custom AI agents across core operational workflows. Its model-agnostic platform combines forward-deployed engineers with applied AI research tailored to sectors including aerospace, energy, logistics, manufacturing, construction, and telecommunications.
💻 Website: http://arrakistechnologies.ai/
📍 HQ City: London, Paris, New York City
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: $30 million, bringing total funding to $38 million
🏦 Investors: Blossom Capital, Accel, GFC, MainObject, Rerail, Olivier Pomel, Olivier Godement, Junaid Hussain, Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Rafael Fernandez-Quintanilla Loeillet-Rouzier (London), Haroun Beltaifa (Paris), Romain Fouilland (Paris), Mikhail Galkov (Germany)
🗞️ News: Arrakis Technologies has emerged from stealth with a $30 million Series A led by Blossom Capital, just six months after its founding, bringing total funding to $38 million. The company embeds engineers with industrial customers and uses a model-agnostic platform to deploy AI agents into procurement, logistics and other operational systems without replacing existing software. Arrakis says it has already signed customers including NYSE-listed companies across the energy, logistics and industrial sectors, with one customer reducing procurement cycle times by 90%. The funding will support a tripling of headcount, further platform and security development, and the opening of offices in New York and the Middle East. Founded in January 2026, the company is positioning itself as a fast-deployment alternative for industrial groups seeking measurable AI outcomes while retaining control of their data and intellectual property. | Fortune, Tech EU

📇 Company: Carsup
🏷️ Sectors: Artificial Intelligence, Mobility
🔍 Description: Carsup operates a concierge platform for collector and exceptional vehicles, covering secure storage, maintenance and restoration, transport, buying and resale support, and owner experiences. The company also uses AI to analyze vehicle data and generate personalized maintenance recommendations.
💻 Website: https://www.carsup.io/
📍 HQ City: Orléans
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: €12 million
🏦 Investors: Ferrari family
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Samuel Lelarge
🗞️ News: Carsup has raised €12 million from existing investors, including the Ferrari family, which increased its participation in the company. Founded in 2019, Carsup manages the full lifecycle of collector and exceptional vehicles, from secure storage and maintenance to transport, resale support and events. The company currently operates 25 concierge locations across France and Europe and manages more than 2,000 vehicles representing over €400 million in assets. The funding will support further international expansion, including entry into a new European market in the fourth quarter of 2026. Carsup expects to double revenue to €30 million this year and surpass 3,000 vehicles under management by year-end. | Maddyness

📇 Company: Brenus Pharma
🏷️ Sectors: BioTech
🔍 Description: Brenus Pharma develops off-the-shelf immuno-oncology therapies for hard-to-treat solid tumors. Its proprietary platform is designed to mimic tumor protein expression, expose tumors to the immune system, and trigger a multi-specific in vivo immune response that adapts as the cancer evolves.
💻 Website: https://www.brenus-pharma.com
📍 HQ City: Lyon
🧗 Round: Series A Extension
💰 Amount Raised: €11 million
🏦 Investors: Sambrinvest, Korea Omega Investment Corp, Angelor, UI Investissement through FRAI, Crédit Agricole through CACE Création and CACF Capital Innovation, Noshaq, Orsa, BIO JAG, Bpifrance through non-dilutive funding
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Benoit Pinteur, Jacques Gardette, Gilles Devillers
🗞️ News: Brenus Pharma has raised an €11 million Series A extension to advance its clinical-stage immunotherapy pipeline and expand its proprietary platform. The financing brings total capital raised since inception to €38 million and introduces Sambrinvest and Korea Omega Investment Corp as new international investors. The company will use the funding to complete the Phase I program for STC-1010, its lead in vivo immunotherapy candidate for microsatellite-stable metastatic colorectal cancer. Brenus also plans to advance its next drug candidate and broaden the platform into a multi-asset pipeline. The round included continued support from existing investors and marks the company’s first institutional backing from the Asia-Pacific region. | LinkedIn

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