Tech Talk

🚀 🤑 Fun with Funds: Seems like there are lots of Gloomy Guses out there when it comes to startup funding these days. But VCs still seem to be making it rain.

🇪🇺 🥷The European Investment Fund just anchored Jolt Capital V with a hefty €260 million, part of the EU’s push to build billion-euro deeptech funds under the Tech Champions Initiative. Jolt is gunning for late-stage plays in AI, chips, cybersecurity, and other sovereignty-critical sectors. And not to be outdone, C4 Ventures has launched a fresh €100 million fund with a clear mission: fuel European AI sovereignty. (We'll have more on C4 in the La Machine newsletter on Monday)

🇫🇷💰 Meanwhile in Paris, Ventech, the pan-European fund, closed its biggest fund yet at €175 million. Fund VI will back around 35 startups, with half of the capital earmarked for AI-native ventures, alongside bets on digital health, industrial software, and cybersecurity. The message is clear: Europe wants to double down on tech sovereignty and scale-up muscle—and the money is finally following the rhetoric. | EU Startups, Maddyness, EINews

💥💸 And more funds are raising funds... of slightly bigger amounts. Five Arrows, the alternative‐assets arm of Rothschild & Co with offices across the States and Europe, has successfully closed its fourth direct lending fund, Five Arrows Debt Partners IV, with €2.4 bn in commitments, exceeding its €2 bn target and outpacing its predecessor’s €1.4 bn size. The fund invests across the capital structure (from senior loans to mezzanine/PIK) in mid-market companies in Europe and North America. Five Arrows this past summer scooped up French MedTech HR platform Hublo. | Alternative Credit Investor

💾 🌍 Etix raises €170M to double down on edge. Forget hyperscale: Nantes-based Etix is betting on “edge data centers.” With €170M from a five-bank syndicate, the company wants to double its footprint from 15 to 30 data centers by 2030. That means more regional sites to reduce latency for things like gaming, streaming, and social media — and an alternative to Paris/Marseille’s saturated hubs. CEO Louis Blanchot insists the European sovereignty card is Etix’s ace against U.S.-backed rivals like AtlasEdge. The edge wars are heating up. | Forbes France, Les Echos

⚡🔌 Waat plugs into €100M. The low-key heavyweight of EV charging just closed one of the year’s biggest rounds: €100M from DWS (Deutsche Bank) and Bpifrance. Already pulling €70M in revenue, this FT120 member installs chargers in housing projects, social housing, and businesses. Next stop: 250,000 stations by 2030 and a serious push across Europe. Its app MyWaat is even getting an AI glow-up to act as an “energy coach.” Not so discreet anymore. | Les Echos, Journal Auto

💸📱Lydia spills the tea on its numbers. The fintech, once shy about money, is suddenly transparent. In 2024, Lydia booked €22.6M in revenue (+28%) while still losing €19M. The good news? Its original P2P payments are profitable after 11 years. The catch? All the money is being funneled into Sumeria, its new banking brand, complete with savings accounts and investment plans. With 2M users already on board (most inherited from Lydia), Sumeria is the make-or-break bet. Cyril Chiche promises to share results every six months now - let’s hold him to it. | Les Echos

❤️😗 French dating app Happn has swiped right on a new partner: it’s been acquired by China’s Hello Group, the company behind Momo and Tantan. With more than 170 million users worldwide—including 16 million in France—Happn now gains a powerful backer to fuel expansion across Africa and Asia. Founded in 2014 with its geolocation-driven twist on dating, Happn has been reshaping itself under CEO Karima Ben Abdelmalek, especially as users tire of endless swiping and “dating burnout” sets in. Earlier this year, the company even unveiled a feature built with Mistral AI. While the financial details remain under wraps, the deal highlights a trend of French dating apps being swept into global consolidations—remember Fruitz’s sale to Bumble and eventual buy-back? Now, Happn’s story continues with an international, East-meets-West twist. | Maddyness

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Phenix and the Fight Against Food Waste: Scaling Passion into Impact

When Simon Baldeyrou joined Phenix as Director General last year, it was less a career pivot than the continuation of a theme.

The former CFO of Deezer and ex-CEO of Getaround Europe has built a reputation as the operator brought in to take ambitious companies to the next level. For him, success lies in transitions: scaling, structuring, and finding momentum.

“I’ve always worked with companies in universes of passion,” Baldeyrou explained. “It’s actually easier to lead a business when you haven’t founded it. You can bring a new perspective to the company without being too emotionally tied.”

Now, the passion he is scaling is food waste.

Dive into Phenix

Europe’s Secret Sovereignty Weapon Against China: Recycled Magnets From MagREEsource

Magnets are not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about breakthrough innovations. But as it turns out, magnets are everywhere and in everything.

Take transport and mobility, for instance. Magnets are used in electric motors. Not just the main motor, but also the motors that move the seat, the side mirrors, and the windshield wipers. Zoom out, and you'll find magnets in bicycles, e-scooters, trains, planes, and boats.

Zoom even further out, and you'll find magnets in most electronics, robots, refrigerators (and not just ones for holding notes or pictures of cats on the door), air-conditioners, and MRI machines.

Earlier this year, French utility EDF built a wind farm with 80 wind turbines, each containing about 80 tons of magnets, so about 800 tons of magnets for the whole project.

The problem for Europe in general, and France in particular, is that 98% of all magnets currently come from China. Over the past four decades, the region has shifted its focus away from mining iron and other materials (an environmentally detrimental industry) needed for magnets and processing the raw materials (a resource-intensive process with costly labor) by outsourcing these activities to Asia.

As demand for magnets soars thanks to more innovations, Europe is increasingly beholden to the trade demands of China. Beyond the geopolitical implications, the disruptions to supply chains for a wide range of products have catalyzed the desire for greater economic sovereignty across Europe, most notably in the realm of technology.

And so, this brings us to the small factory in the city of Grenoble, operated by a modest startup with the clunky name of MagREEsource. I had the opportunity to visit MagREEsource as part of a journalist tour of Grenoble's innovation ecosystem.

During the visit to the factory, co-founders Erick Petit, CEO, and Sophie Rivoirard, CTO, explained the hidden power of the magnet industry and how MagREEsource has developed technology and machines that address this issue through a recycling process that allows the company to harvest magnetic material from discarded items like old e-scooters and then refine it to be used in new products.

Only about 1% of magnets are currently recycled. MagREEsource's modest factory is effectively demonstrating the capability of its process to open a larger factory in 2027.

"When we talk about dependence on critical metals for the energy transition, we're right in the middle of it," Petit said during the visit. "This is what the European market needs today. Using our recycled material means we're independent of the Chinese."

Go inside MagREEsource

💸 Top Funding Deals 💸

📇 Company: Waat
🔍 Description: French startup specializing in the installation and management of electric vehicle charging stations in co-owned buildings, social housing, and office complexes. Waat has deployed over 20,000 charging points and offers a proprietary app to simplify use, optimize charging costs, and enable smart features such as load shifting and solar integration.
💻 Website: https://waat.fr/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Growth
💰 Amount Raised: €100M
🏦 Investors: DWS Group (lead), Bpifrance, Raise Impact, existing investors
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Patrick Kic (President)
🗞️ News: With 300 employees and €70M in annual revenue, Waat has been EBITDA positive for three years. The company plans to expand into the UK, Belgium, Poland, and Switzerland, accelerate digitalization and AI adoption, strengthen customer services, and invest in energy storage solutions with Renault’s second-life batteries. The fresh capital will fund international expansion, new hiring (including maintenance roles), the integration of AI for enhanced services, and the development of advanced charging solutions aligned with renewable energy production. | Le Figaro

📇 Company: Nxtfood (brand: Accro)
🔍 Description: French foodtech startup producing 100% plant-based meat and seafood alternatives using wet extrusion technology. Its brand Accro offers over 20 products, from nuggets and charcuterie to plant-based sole meunière, available in major supermarkets and 10,000+ foodservice outlets across France.
💻 Website: https://accro.fr/
📍 HQ City: Vitry-en-Artois, Hauts-de-France, France
🧗 Round: Growth
💰 Amount Raised: €49M
🏦 Investors: Creadev (lead, now majority shareholder), Roquette Ventures, Clay Capital, IRD Invest
👨💼👩💼 Founders/Leadership: Renaud Saïsset (President)
🗞️ News: The company tripled its revenue in 2024 and aims to reach profitability within 12–18 months. With this round, Nxtfood will triple the size of its production site, accelerate commercial and marketing efforts in France and Europe, and continue expanding its product line. The funding will boost industrial capacity, strengthen R&D, expand international sales, and support Nxtfood’s mission to make plant-based alternatives more accessible, tasty, and competitively priced with meat.| Maddyness

📇 Company: Lithium de France (subsidiary of Arverne Group)
🔍 Description: French pioneer in low-carbon geothermal heat and lithium production. The company develops geothermal solutions to supply heat to businesses, farmers, and local authorities while producing lithium for electric mobility, supporting the energy transition.
💻 Website: www.lithiumdefrance.com
📍 HQ City: Haguenau, Alsace, France
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: €40M
🏦 Investors: Arverne Group, Equinor Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Pierre Brossollet (Founder & CEO of Arverne Group; parent company)
🗞️ News: The funding supports Lithium de France’s entry into the pre-industrial phase, including first drilling operations, a Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) demo plant, and Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) as part of its Definitive Feasibility Study. The capital structure post-transaction: Arverne Group (64.58%), Equinor Ventures (24.40%), Hydro Energy Invest AS (9.25%), Management (1.86%). The financing will help scale Lithium de France’s geothermal and lithium projects, advance DLE technology deployment, and mature the supply chain for sustainable lithium production in Europe. | PR

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