The momentum from VivaTech 2025 is clearly contagious. On stage at the event, Mistral AI and Nvidia announced a landmark partnership to build a sovereign European AI cloud powered by 18,000 GPUs, marking a major milestone for the continent’s digital autonomy. Last week also saw Look Up raise €50M to expand its radar network and AI platform for real-time space traffic management, and Wandercraft secure $75M to bring personal exoskeletons and humanoid robots to market. Meanwhile, the Afflelou family launched a bold €100M fund focused on applied AI.

Big tech, robotics, and sovereign AI: a lot to unpack,

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Startup funding news 💸

Rounds of +€15M:

• Robotics company Wandercraft has secured $75 million in a Series D funding round- backed by Renault, Bpifrance, the European Investment Bank, Teampact Ventures, Quadrant Management, and others - to accelerate its global rollout of AI‑powered exoskeletons and humanoid robots .

• Look Up, a SpaceTech startup founded in 2022, has raised €50 million to deploy its global radar network and its Synapse platform for real-time space traffic management and collision prediction. Backed by a mix of equity (from ETF Partners, KFund, MIG Capital, Karista, Expansion, EIC Fund), EU non-dilutive grants, and bank debt, the round positions Look Up to install seven radar stations by 2030 and strengthen Europe’s capability in orbital sovereignty 

• Deeptech company Expliseat, co-founded in 2011 and known for its ultra-light aircraft seats, has completed a €36 million fundraising round led by Crédit Mutuel Innovation and Bpifrance’s SPI fund, with participation from Supernova Invest, Swen Capital, and returning investors BNP Paribas Développement, GO Capital, and NCI. The funding will support the expansion of their Angers assembly plant, diversify into premium ultralight seats and new mobility sectors like rail and electric buses, and reinforce their international push, especially in North America

Rounds €5M to €15M:

• Elkedonia, a Franco-Belgian biotech spin-off from Argobio and Sorbonne labs, raised €11.25 million in seed funding co-led by Kurma Partners and Bpifrance to develop non-addictive, non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogens for treatment-resistant depression. The funding will support preclinical and early clinical trials, with Delphine Charvin appointed CEO.

• Kolet, the travel eSIM startup, has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Daphni - with support from former Expedia CEO Peter Kern, ex-Apple marketing exec Jon Gieselman, and €1 million in non-dilutive debt from Bpifrance - to scale its fully digital eSIM solution.

Rounds €1M to €5M:

• Arlequin AI has raised €4.4 million in a seed round led by Germany’s Vsquared Ventures and backed by investors including Kima Ventures, 10x Founders, Better Angle. The startup is developing HuDEx, a sovereign, unsupervised AI platform (no black‑box, LLMs or prompts) for structuring and interpreting large unstructured multimedia data to bolster Europe’s digital autonomy and resilience against disinformation.

• Olyzon, an agentic CTV advertising startup, secured $5 million in a seed extension round led by Cassius Capital to accelerate its U.S. expansion. The funds will bolster product development and deepen U.S. market penetration with its AI-driven platform that automates campaign planning, program-level targeting, and real-time creative sequencing for major brands.

M&A transactions 🎊

Imagine Human, a Lyon-based QHSE software firm backed by Extens, has acquired Fletchr, a SaaS platform for ESG and CSRD reporting, to expand its integrated compliance suite. This is its second acquisition in 2025, reinforcing its position in the European QSE–RSE market.

VIF, a French ERP/MES/Supply Chain software provider for process industries, has acquired Keendoo, a specialist in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The deal strengthens VIF’s offering with centralized product data management—covering formulations, labeling, and packaging—helping clients accelerate innovation, ensure regulatory compliance, and reduce time-to-market.

Bluemega, the software publisher and distributor known for its KPAX print-management platform and PaperCut integration, was acquired by Groupe Office Automation. With around €8 million in annual revenue, this move marks the wholesaler's second build-up since its 2023 LBO (backed by Amethis), as it expands its offering into smart printing and document digitization services.

Belgian proptech scale-up Nodalview, which offers AI-powered tools for real estate marketing, has acquired French virtual home-staging specialist Flaash to enhance its AI-driven visual solutions for property listings. The move allows Nodalview to integrate instant staging features into its platform with access to Flaash’s 12,000 users, and broaden its reach across Europe.

Optionizr, a platform that boosts conversion rates and cart value for airlines and travel agencies, is set to join SoftNext, a subsidiary of the Baelen group specializing in B2B software aggregation. To mark its tenth anniversary, the company has granted Baelen an acquisition option as it prepares to integrate into the group’s expanding SaaS portfolio.

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

Yaday, the venture spin-off of the Afflelou family office founded by Romain Afflelou and Pauline Bovyn, is transitioning into a VC fund targeting applied AI, aiming to raise €100 million, with a first close of €30 million expected by end-2025. The fund will invest 70% directly and 30% via partner funds, focusing on B2B startups from seed to Series B across Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East, leveraging the Afflelou family’s business network through Yaday Capital and Yaday Partners.

At the inaugural VC Under 30 Awards held during VivaTech 2025, five standout young investors were recognized for their contributions to the French venture capital landscape. Axel Badalian, from Alpha Intelligence Capital - a $450 million fund focused on AI and machine learning - won "Deal Hunter of the Year." Natacha Brami, Vice-President at Sistafund, which backs female founders at the early stage, was named "Impact Maker." Martin Crégut, founder of the accelerator and community platform Builders Factory, took home the "Best Community Builder" award. Antoine Barczyk, known for his role at Brakage and co-creating Firstmile, earned the "Content is King" title for his impactful VC communications. Finally, Abel Samot from Red River West was crowned "AI/Data-Driven VC of the Year," spotlighting his data-led approach to venture investing.

La Poste Group has doubled the size of its corporate venture capital fund, La Poste Ventures, from €35 million to €75 million, aiming to support around 30 more startups across pre‑seed to Series A rounds with ticket sizes between €300,000 and €3 million (5–20 % equity). With this capital increase, the fund (managed by XAnge) adds deeptech and cybersecurity to its current investment areas (augmented logistics, health & e‑health, smart cities, digital transformation, and data & AI automation.

The Île‑de‑France region has launched FemTech Île‑de‑France, Europe’s first regional investment fund exclusively dedicated to women's health innovation. Seeded with €5 million, the fund will support around ten startups combining AI, biotech, and medical devices, targeting under-addressed areas such as endometriosis, fertility, menopause, and women’s cardiovascular health .

Startup news 💡

At VivaTech, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced a major cloud initiative in collaboration with Mistral AI, deploying 18,000 Blackwell GPUs to establish a European AI cloud platform (branded “Mistral Compute”) while unveiling plans for 20 AI factories and 200 data centres across Europe to boost sovereign AI infrastructure. Huang emphasized the push for "sovereign AI" as vital for national autonomy and cultural integrity, positioning Europe to reduce its dependence on U.S. hyperscalers and fulfill rising demands for domestic AI compute capacity.

Mistral AI is considering a $1 billion funding round before the end of 2025 - following its rapid growth and a previous $600 million raise last year - according to Maddyness citing the Financial Times. The company is scaling fast: annual revenue is on track to surpass $100 million, fueled by major customer contracts and a new 40 MW data centre near Paris supported by President Macron, reinforcing Europe's bid for AI sovereignty.

H Company replaced co‑founder and CEO Charles Kantor with Gautier Cloix, the former France director of Palantir, signaling a leadership shift while CTO Laurent Sifre stays in place. This change follows earlier departures of three co‑founders in mid‑2024 over “operational differences,” and comes as H Company continues to grow, now with around 70 employees.

Ÿnsect has laid off nearly 140 employees (about 70% of its 200-strong workforce) as part of a major restructuring after entering judicial reorganization in early 2025 due to financial distress. The company, which once raised over $425 million and expanded internationally, is now focused on securing new funding or buyers to stabilize operations and preserve its core production sites.

Syensqo, a Solvay spin-off, a cutting-edge microbiology lab in Lyon, now its largest globally at 550 m². Designed to enhance biodegradability and eco-toxicology testing using advanced tools and machine learning, the lab supports eco-innovation across industries and adopts an open innovation model with clients, partners, and academia.

Big company & policy news 💡

Mistral AI and TotalEnergies have formed a strategic partnership to create a joint AI innovation lab focused on accelerating AI across TotalEnergies’s multi-energy strategy, especially in low-carbon operations. The lab, staffed by teams from both companies, will develop several use cases including AI-powered research assistants for over 1,000 scientists, decision-support tools to optimize industrial asset performance and reduce CO₂ emissions, and customer-facing solutions to promote energy savings. Additionally, it reinforces Europe's commitment to digital sovereignty by evaluating the deployment of local AI infrastructure.

At VivaTech, the French initiative "Je choisis la French Tech" celebrated surpassing €1 billion in commitments from ten major French corporations: ADP, AXA, BPCE, CMA CGM, Capgemini, EDF, FDJ United, Orange, SNCF, and Sopra Steria - to support local startups between 2024 and 2026. Launched to double public and private procurement from startups by 2027, the initiative now includes over 600 companies and has spurred 12,000 connections, with growing ambitions to scale this momentum across Europe.

The French government has selected Mistral AI to deploy a ChatGPT-style conversational assistant to 10,000 civil servants, starting this autumn as part of broader efforts to modernize the public sector. This pilot phase (announced at VivaTech by Prime Minister François Bayrou) will last 3–6 months, enabling employees to use AI for tasks like document drafting, regulatory searches, and text summarization, with plans to eventually extend it to all 5.7 million public-sector agents .

Interesting reads 💡

Maddyness comes back on the story of Pixmania, the iconic French electronics platform founded in 2000 by the Rosenblum brothers, which reached a €345 million valuation before being sold, undergoing turbulent ownership changes, liquidation, and an unexpected revival in 2022 backed by €22 million from investors like Xavier Niel. In 2025, the company has made a remarkable comeback, now focused on the circular economy and reconditioned products, achieving 100% annual growth and joining the French Tech 120 just three years after its relaunch.

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