In this edition:

🧠 Hexa has appointed Matthieu Gombeaud as its first CEO in its 14-year history — a move it sees as essential to navigating what it calls the “most transformative period in tech.” Under his leadership, the startup studio plans to ramp up towards a goal of launching 30-40 companies annually. Gombeaud believes AI isn’t just a tool but demands a rebuild of how companies are founded, scaled, and managed, with radically shorter feedback cycles, sharper founder selection, and architecture primed for agility. Read our interview here.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

Headlines

🗞️ Cohere, the Canadian AI startup, has formally planted roots in Paris, opening a new office to serve as its “central hub” for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. CEO Aidan Gomez says this move will allow Cohere to scale up its European operations—from technical R&D to commercial teams—and to ride what he calls a growing wave of interest in AI across the continent. The firm currently has about 40 people in Paris, and plans to double its headcount in that office over the next year.

Cohere’s strategy emphasizes “sovereign AI” — offering enterprises greater privacy, control, and the ability to deploy models on customer premises—positioning itself as an alternative to Big Tech. Besides expanding its workforce, the company is bringing in leadership for business, policy, and public affairs to better navigate Europe’s regulatory and competitive landscape. | Sifted, Reuters, Les Echos

🗞️ Deezer has revealed a striking surge in AI‐made music: fully synthetic tracks now make up 28 % of everything uploaded to its streaming platform. The company says this amounts to about 30,000 new AI tracks every single day, up significantly from earlier this year. To protect artists’ earnings and listener experience, Deezer has introduced an AI detection tool and tags all AI content—and crucially, keeps fully AI tracks out of its algorithmic recommendations and curated playlists. The streaming service warns that much of the streaming activity around AI uploads appears to be fraudulent, and pledges to preserve transparency and fairness in how royalties are distributed. | EuroNews, Deezer

Other Headlines

🗞️ A French Startup Launches MedGPT: The First Medical AI Assistant That Outperforms ChatGPT | French healthtech startup Synapse Medicine has unveiled today MedGPT, the first conversational medical assistant designed in France and tailored specifically for healthcare professionals. The tool positions itself as a sovereign alternative to American large language models such as ChatGPT, while offering unprecedented guarantees of reliability, security, and regulatory compliance in the healthcare sector. Notably, MedGPT has already beaten ChatGPT in France’s national medical exams. | DirectIndustry

🗞️ French voice of Lara Croft files complaint over alleged AI use in Tomb Raider remaster | France's most recognizable voice of Lara Croft is taking a game publisher to court, accusing it of using artificial intelligence to recreate her performance without her consent. Cadol, who has dubbed the Tomb Raider heroine in French for decades, has filed a cease-and-desist complaint against Aspyr, the company behind the recently released Tomb Raider IV – VI Remastered. | TechSpot

🗞️ Cegid Retail refines its approach to the challenges of artificial intelligence for commerce | Last year, Lyon-based management solutions specialist Cegid announced that it was bringing its Forward 2026 development strategy into line with generative artificial intelligence. Renamed Forward.ia, the development program continues, in particular for the Cegid Retail division, which is stepping up deployment and experimentation of retail solutions, while taking care not to fall into the trap of multiplying useless generative tools. | Fashion Network

ICYMI

🗞️ VSORA: The French AI Chipmaker Taking on NVIDIA with High-Performance, Cost-Efficient AI Hardware | Backed by €40 million in funding, CEO Khaled Maalej believes the company is set to disrupt the AI hardware market with its Jotunn8 chip, leveraging a fabless model and advanced chiplet architecture to slash the cost of deploying large language models and generative AI at scale. | The French Tech Journal

🗞️ Figma's CPO On Navigating The GenAI Revolution: 'It's A Very Dynamic Landscape.' | Chief Product Officer Yuhki Yamashita discusses how the design company abandoned its traditional planning process to build AI-powered products as it adapts to the rapid evolution of GenAI capabilities. | The French Tech Journal

🧠 Hexa CEO: Charting A Course Through AI's Storm

For the first time in its 14-year history, the French powerhouse behind unicorns like Aircall and Yousign has appointed a Chief Executive Officer. The timing couldn't be more critical.

Matthieu Gombeaud, the newly minted CEO, isn't just taking the helm of any startup studio. He's steering a ship through what he describes as the most transformative period in tech history, where artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how companies are built, scaled, and operated.

"You cannot create a company the same way today as you were doing three years ago," Gombeaud said.

AI Funding News

📇 Company: Finary
🔍 Description: Fintech offering a real-time, consolidated view of personal wealth across bank accounts, investments, loans, and alternative assets, with AI-powered tools to optimize portfolio management.
💻 Website: finary.com
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: €25M
🏦 Investors: PayPal Ventures, LocalGlobe, Shapers, Hedosophia, Speedinvest, Y Combinator
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mounir Laggoune, Julien Blancher
🗞️ News: Finary plans to use the €25M Series B funding to accelerate its European expansion, launch new financial products, and strengthen its AI-powered wealth management tools. The company also intends to recruit around 50 new employees and aims to surpass €5B in assets under management within the next three years. | Les Echos, Maddyness, EU Startups

📇 Company: Vizzia
🔍 Description: The first anti-wild deposits detector in France (detecting illegal waste dumps via AI, camera systems etc.)
💻 Website: vizzia.com
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Early VC
💰 Amount Raised: €16 million
🏦 Investors: SISTAFUND, Made for All, plus business angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Katrin Dimitrova, Alexandre Leboucher
🗞️ News: Vizzia will use the €16M to strengthen its commercial presence across France and prepare for expansion into Germany, the UK, Spain, and Italy. The company also plans to invest in maintaining its technological lead while keeping a “low-tech” approach that ensures compliance with European regulations and sovereignty over infrastructure. In the longer term, Vizzia aims to develop software enabling inter-municipal cooperation to tackle incivilities and petty crime. | Maddyness

📇 Company: Temelion
🔍 Description: AI platform that optimises pre-construction workflows
💻 Website: temelion.ai
📍 HQ City: Les Ulis
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3.20M
🏦 Investors: ISAI Gestion, Kima Ventures, 360 Capital, SE Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Rodolphe Héliot, Jérome Joaug, Sébastien Gilles
🗞️ News: Temelion will use the €3.2M seed funding to expand its engineering team and deepen AI capabilities for technical workflows, accelerate its commercial rollout in France with a focus on building engineering firms, and strengthen customer onboarding, support, and integrations with industry-standard tools like BIM and REVIT. | PR, TechEU

📇 Company: Moodwork
🔍 Description: Paris-based mental health startup offering AI-driven digital tools to prevent workplace stress and burnout. Its platform combines scientific research, psychological support, and AI-based personalization.
💻 Website: moodwork.com
📍 HQ City: Paris, France
🧗 Round: Funding round (undisclosed stage)
💰 Amount Raised: €3.1M
🏦 Investors: Newfund, Grégory Salinger (Co-CEO), Guy Lacroix, Alain Dublin
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Benjamin Brion (Co-founder, Co-CEO), Grégory Salinger (Co-CEO)
🗞️ News: Moodwork plans to use the €3.1M funding to accelerate the development of its AI-driven workplace mental health platform, strengthen its presence in France, and expand internationally. The company will also invest in enhancing its technology and scaling its support services to better address workplace stress and burnout. | Tech.eu

📇 Company: ORIS Materials Intelligence
🔍 Description: Developer of a cloud-based platform using AI, data science, and engineering to design low-carbon, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient transport infrastructures such as roads and railways.
💻 Website: oris-connect.com
📍 HQ City: Paris, France
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €3M
🏦 Investors: LIBERSET
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Nicolas Miravalls (Co-founder & CEO), Renaud de Montaignac (Co-founder & COO)
🗞️ News: Oris Materials Intelligence will use the €3M funding to accelerate the deployment of its AI-driven platform in France, enhance its technology to support the decarbonization of infrastructure projects, and expand its team. The company also plans to strengthen partnerships with public authorities and private stakeholders to drive adoption of low-carbon and resource-efficient transport infrastructure solutions. | FrenchWeb

Events

📆 The BIG Gathering of Entrepreneurs in France | September 23 | BIG is organized by state bank Bpifrance, which describes it as the largest business gathering in Europe. Participating in Big gives you the opportunity to discover a new variety of content, with concrete themes. It is also a unique opportunity to develop your business and understand the major challenges of tomorrow. Features an AI track of sessions. | Register

📆 AI Engineer Paris Conference | September 23 | Join 700+ attendees for the First AI Engineer Edition in Paris - a community-driven conference, inspired and supported by the team behind the AI Engineer World’s Fair. This two-day, three-track technical conference and expo brings together AI engineers, CTOs, and VPs of AI to connect, learn, and engineer the future of AI. | Buy tickets

📆 Fin x Dust: Building AI for Complex Workflows | September 24 | AI is capable of more than single tasks. The real challenge is building systems that can handle complex workflows: orchestrating multi-step processes, providing the right access and controls, connecting across platforms, and adapting to real-world conditions to deliver outcomes teams can trust. This session brings together two perspectives to explore how strategy and execution come together when building AI: ​The CEO’s view: setting vision, ambition, and risk posture for where AI is headed. The Product Lead’s view: translating that vision into product reality, learning from customers as they push AI to handle their hardest workflows. | Join Waitlist

📆 BIG DATA & AI PARIS 2025 | October 1-2 | Europe's most comprehensive AI and Big Data exhibition with +220 exhibitors, including major technology groups, AI & data pure players, specialized consultants, professional training players, and innovative startups. | Buy Tickets

📆 The European AI Championship 2025 - Launch party | November 5 |What is the European AI Championship? ​Coming soon: 15 of Europe’s top AI engineers will battle live on stage, building real-world solutions using AI tools. They will represent their country to win, and you'll be able to watch and cheer for them with 1500 fellow engineers and AI-curious minds. Experience a championship where code meets competition, and AI hype meets AI application, wrapped in a unique entertaining show. Think Eurovision, but for AI builders! | Buy tickets

📆 Data & AI Leaders Summit | November 5-6 | Paris becomes the nerve centre of data and responsible artificial intelligence. Access a program rooted in business reality: case studies, AI audits, governance, industrialisation, and sustainability. France's AI ecosystem is dynamic but under pressure: talent shortages, projects stuck at the POC stage, regulatory uncertainties (AI Act), poor-quality data. Data & AI Leaders Summit Paris helps you move forward with technical content, immediately applicable and designed for the field. | Register

📆 dotAI | November 6 | We’re putting the spotlight on the best engineers in fabulous stages, so that their work is beautifully wrapped, their ideas travel better, and so that future leading engineers can aspire for that recognition. | Register

📆 ai-Pulse | December 4 | Hosted by Scaleway at Station F. Join leaders and engineers for a one-day technical conference dedicated to AI breakthroughs, research, and product demonstrations.| Register

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