👋 Inside this week's edition:

👀 Profitable, ambitious and betting big on AI, Planity has entered a new era. In an exclusive interview, co-founder Antoine Puymirat explains how the decade-old company crossed €80 million in ARR and why the best is still to come. Check out the story here.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

Tech Talk

🚨 🇫🇷 France’s digital sovereignty debate just got a lot more radical. A parliamentary report is calling for 100% open-source public procurement by 2030, a “zero Microsoft” policy in schools, a moratorium on data centers serving US hyperscalers, and even state veto rights in strategic AI champions like Mistral. Framed as a response to growing geopolitical tensions and dependence on US tech, the proposals would mark one of Europe’s boldest attempts to rewrite the rules of public-sector IT. Whether they become law is another question entirely. | L’Usine Nouvelle

🛒 🇫🇷 The final curtain is falling on PriceMinister. Rakuten will shut down its French marketplace by the end of 2026 after failing to find a buyer, bringing to a close one of France’s pioneering e-commerce stories. While Pixmania accuses Rakuten of never seriously intending to sell the business, the Japanese group insists none of the takeover bids could guarantee jobs or the platform’s long-term future. Either way, the closure underscores just how hard it has become for homegrown marketplaces to compete against the likes of Amazon, Temu and Shein. | Le Monde / Maddyness

💰 📈 After two rounds of layoffs and a painful reset, PayFit has reached profitability as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Now at €80m ARR with 22,000 customers, the French HR tech scale-up is reinventing itself from a payroll software provider into a full-stack HR platform, betting heavily on AI agents to automate everything from payroll checks to employee queries. The next target? Nearly doubling ARR to €150m by 2028. | Maddyness / Les Echos

☁️✈️ France just scored a major sovereign cloud win. Scaleway, Iliad’s cloud arm, has been selected to host Airbus’ critical cloud infrastructure, covering everything from aircraft design to industrial production. The deal is another boost for Europe’s digital sovereignty push, with Airbus opting for a provider that is entirely EU-owned and operated—and one that already integrates Mistral AI to accelerate its AI ambitions. | Maddyness

🩺 ⚖️ Medtech LivMed’s is getting a second life - but not as an independent startup. The French medicine delivery startup, which collapsed into liquidation after a long legal battle with the pharmacists’ association, has been acquired by rival Nexum Pharma through the commercial court. The deal closes the chapter on one of France’s most closely watched healthtech disputes—and highlights how regulatory hurdles can prove just as fatal as funding shortages for digital health startups. | Les Echos 

🚀🗳️ As if France’s 2027 election wasn’t lively enough, Elon Musk has entered the chat. The X owner has publicly endorsed Marine Le Pen as the country’s “last hope”, extending his now-familiar habit of weighing into European politics after similar interventions in Germany and the UK. Expect the debate over platform power, algorithms, and foreign influence to get even louder. | Le Monde

How Planity built a beauty tech leader that competitors struggle to copy

French beauty-booking platform Planity has reached a milestone that few European software companies achieve. Ten years after its launch, the company has surpassed €80 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), reached profitability, and now serves more than 60,000 beauty businesses across France, Germany, and Belgium.

For founder and CEO Antoine Puymirat, however, the numbers tell only part of the story.

Speaking to The French Tech Journal, Puymirat argued that Planity's success came not from chasing growth at all costs, but from building a business that competitors would struggle to replicate. As the company prepares to expand into wellbeing services and invest heavily in AI-powered tools, he believes the principles that fuelled its first decade remain unchanged.

💸 Top Funding Deals 💸

📇 Company: Syntetica
🏷️ Sectors: DeepTech, Circular Economy
🔍 Description: A deeptech company developing a low-temperature chemical recycling process for mixed nylon textile waste. Its technology can recycle Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 together without separating them first, while preserving other materials such as elastane for potential reuse.
💻 Website: https://syntetica.co/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: $30 million
🏦 Investors: Bpifrance, SWEN Capital Partners, EQT Ventures, Lululemon, MAS Holdings, Family Offices
👨‍💼👩‍💼 Founders: Marco Bertone, Louis Monsigny
🗞️ News: Syntetica has raised $30 million to build its first commercial demonstration plant with Michelin at the Center for Sustainable Materials in Clermont-Ferrand. The facility is expected to begin producing commercial volumes of recycled nylon within 18 months. The company also plans to expand its team from around 22 employees to 30 by year-end and 45 by the end of 2027, while extending its technology into automotive and specialty chemicals markets. | Tech Funding News

📇 Company: NeoCem
🏷️ Sectors: ClimateTech, DeepTech
🔍 Description: A developer and producer of low-carbon binders for the cement, construction and public-works industries, designed to reduce the sector’s carbon footprint.
💻 Website: https://www.neocem.com/
📍 HQ City: Hallennes-lez-Haubourdin
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: €17 million
🏦 Investors: Crédit Mutuel Impact
👨‍💼👩‍💼 Founders: Christophe Deboffe, Benjamin Constant
🗞️ News: NeoCem has raised €17 million to accelerate the industrial deployment of its low-carbon binder technology. The company has begun large-scale production at its first operational facility near Chantilly, in the Oise department, and is ramping up toward an annual production capacity of 200,000 tonnes. | FinYear

📇 Company: Engo
🏷️ Sectors: SportsTech, Augmented Reality
🔍 Description: A smart-glasses company developing lightweight augmented-reality eyewear for runners, cyclists and triathletes. Its glasses use an integrated Micro OLED display to project real-time performance data directly into the athlete’s field of vision.
💻 Website: https://fr.engoeyewear.com
📍 HQ City: Grenoble
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €5.1 million
🏦 Investors: Ventech, Odyssée Venture, Bpifrance
👨‍💼👩‍💼 Founders: Éric Marcellin-Dibon and Fabrice Berger Duquene
🗞️ News: Engo has raised €5.1 million to accelerate its international expansion and R&D in miniaturization and embedded display technologies. The company generates 90% of its revenue outside France, including half in the United States, and plans to hire around 20 additional employees across optics, mechanical engineering, software and data. | Maddyness

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