🇫🇷 A Quiet Week in French Tech... Except in Paris! ⚽

It’s been a relatively quiet week in French tech, perhaps the four-day weekend had something to do with it? That said, Paris was anything but calm, thanks to PSG’s thunderous Champions League win.

Here’s what did happen,

Welcome to Dealflow France!

Subscribed

Startup funding news 💸

Rounds €5M to €15M:

• Ankar, a UK-based startup founded by two French former Palantir employees, has raised £3 million to streamline the patent filing process using AI. Backed by investors including Index Ventures, Daphni, Motier Ventures, and key tech figures, Ankar automates memo drafting and patentability checks to help researchers and legal teams file higher-quality patents faster.

• Kyron.bio has raised €5.5 million from HCVC, Verve Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Saras Capital, and several business angels to industrialize its glyco-engineering platform, which enhances therapeutic antibodies by precisely controlling glycan structures. Backed by the EU’s EIC Transition program, the Paris-based biotech aims to improve drug safety and efficacy, especially in oncology and autoimmune diseases.

Rounds €1M to €5M:

• Dastra has raised €4.3 million in a round led by C4 Ventures and Adnexus to enhance its SaaS compliance platform for GDPR and the upcoming EU AI Act. The French startup, which serves over 5,000 organizations including France Télévisions and SNCF, plans to develop a semi-autonomous AI assistant for risk analysis and expand its presence across Europe.

• Danim has raised €2 million from business angels to expand its AI-powered digital communication platform for real estate agents. With 4,000 clients and 150,000 videos created in the past year, the Paris-based startup aims to become an all-in-one solution for real estate marketing and grow internationally, targeting Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

• Mobile.club is raising €2 million as an extension of its Series A to scale its flexible smartphone rental model, which provides reconditioned devices with insurance and upgrade options. With 30,000 active contracts and €15 million in annual recurring revenue, the startup is now opening its capital to the public via Sowefund to boost European expansion and add laptops to its rental offering.

M&A transactions 🎊

SaaSOffice has acquired Welcomr, a French cloud-based access control specialist, to expand its modular smart workplace platform with secure physical entry solutions. This strategic move positions SaaSOffice as a European contender in digital building management by combining software and hardware in an interoperable, privacy-compliant suite tailored for hybrid and multi-site office environments.

Osmosun has signed a strategic agreement with Greek water treatment group Unibios, which will acquire a 65% stake in the French solar desalination startup. The deal aims to secure Osmosun’s financial future, integrate its solar desalination IP with Watera’s industrial strengths, and eventually position Osmosun as the head of Unibios’s water treatment division, expanding its footprint across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

Cathay Innovation has closed a $1 billion fund to back “AI-first” solutions across energy, fintech, consumer, and digital health sectors, emphasizing its industrial partnership model over traditional VC approaches. With half the fund earmarked for Europe, the firm aims to foster transformative AI platforms such as agents and task-based solutions by connecting startups with major corporates like Sanofi, TotalEnergies, and Valeo to drive Europe’s industrial reinvention.

Startup news 💡

Insurtech unicorn Alan has secured a landmark contract to provide health insurance for 130,000 agents at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, one of the largest public tenders in France. Beating legacy players like Mgéfi, this win reinforces Alan’s growing presence in the public sector, though unions voice concern over entrusting such a key service to a still-unprofitable startup.

Kyutai, the open AI lab backed by Iliad, CMA CGM, and Schmidt Sciences, has unveiled Unmute, a modular, open-source voice interface that brings real-time speech capabilities to any large language model. Designed as a sovereign European alternative to tools from OpenAI or Google, Unmute enables low-latency, natural voice interactions—configurable from short audio samples, while remaining fully interoperable and independent of proprietary infrastructure.

OpenClassrooms has laid off around 50 employees (18% of its workforce) in January 2025, marking its second workforce reduction in two years amid mounting pressures in the EdTech sector. Citing regulatory uncertainty, declining apprenticeship enrollments, and upcoming funding cuts for distance learning, the company is shifting further from hypergrowth toward profitability in a tightening policy environment.

Big company & policy news 💡

PSG’s Champions League victory not only thrilled fans but also generated major financial gains, drawing over 11.5 million viewers on M6 and Canal+ and driving ad prices as high as €200,000 per spot. For PSG, the win caps a record-breaking season with more than €200 million in revenue, fueled by €144.5 million in UEFA and TV rights and €60 million from ticket sales, making it a triumph both on the pitch and in the balance sheet.

Interesting reads 💡

The European Commission will officially present its startup and scaleup strategy this Wednesday, but Maddyness obtained an early look at the plan. Centered on five pillars, regulation, funding, market access, talent, and infrastructure, it introduces major proposals like the “28th regime” for a unified startup framework and a “Scaleup Europe Fund” to bridge deeptech financing gaps, aiming to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty.

Thanks for reading Dealflow France! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribed