🇫🇷 French Tech Wire: Rewriting Accounting Books With AI
👋 In this week's French Tech Wire:
👀 Bootstrapped, profitable, and powered by AI, Dougs now has more than 14,000 clients and strong growth. The Lyon-based startup is aiming to become France’s leading firm — and make life easier for entrepreneurs along the way. Co-founders Patrick Maurice and Florent Galland explain the vision and strategy.
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Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand
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Tech Talk
🪓😓 Prime Minister François Bayrou unveiled a new budget roadmap aimed at trimming €43–44 billion in savings while also trying to maintain support for the French startup scene. While the budget offers fewer subsidies, Bayrou promised less red tape. Bayrou also introduced a solidarity contribution on high earners and beefed up penalties—up to 1% of turnover—for companies delaying payments to entrepreneurs. | Maddyness
📉🇫🇷 French startups have faced a sharp funding freeze in the first half of 2025, with venture capital raised plunging 35% year-on-year compared to the first six months of 2024, and deal count dropping by 24%, according to EY's funding barometer. That's the lowest for both metrics since 2020. Investors are pivoting toward mature Series B and beyond, with AI emerging as the lone standout sector, claiming nearly a quarter of all invested capital, while fintech and health struggle for scraps. | Les Echos
🏦✊ Eurazeo has closed the first €650 million of its ambitious €1 billion Growth Fund. The news comes after a delayed campaign triggered by a management shake-up in 2023. The fund, spearheaded by Hala Fadel and bolstered by fresh hires, has already drawn strong interest from returning and new LPs. It is expected to reach its full target within the next year. The capital raise comes as Europe’s push for AI and scaling local unicorns heats up, setting Eurazeo up to back large-scale Series C and beyond rounds with serious firepower. | Sifted, Maddyness
🕵️⚖️ Meta has been officially hit with a "statement of objections" by France’s competition watchdog, signaling a formal investigation into potential abuse of its dominant position in online advertising—a probe stemming from a 2022 complaint by ad-tech firm Adloox. Critics include French media giants like TF1, France TV, and BFM TV claim Meta has unfairly throttled ad verification partners via opaque terms. This French scrutiny joins a mounting wave of European enforcement: Meta is set to face trial in Spain this October over a €551 million ad-related complaint, and it was recently fined alongside Apple by EU antitrust regulators. | Reuters
🍽️👨🍳 Zenchef is taking a giant leap south as it merges with Spain’s CoverManager to create a powerhouse in restaurant tech across Europe and Latin America. The merger, to be completed by Q3 2025, forms an AI‑powered, commission‑free platform boasting over 36,000 venues (including nearly 800 Michelin‑starred restaurants) in more than 20 countries. Both brands will retain their identities and headquarters—Paris for Zenchef, Seville for CoverManager—with current Zenchef CEO Thomas Jeanjean leading the combined group and CoverManager José‑Antonio Pérez joining the board. The deal comes almost three years after PSG acquired Zenchef with the goal of consolidating the sector and creating a restaurant booking giant. | Les Echos
🪫🏃 Verkor, the French battery startup favored by the Élysée, is facing turbulence as two of its co-founders—Sylvain Paineau and Gilles Moreau—jumped ship in early July, shaking up the company’s founding team. Despite the exits, the company says it remains firmly on track with its Dunkirk gigafactory, which has just begun trial production ahead of a full ramp-up in early 2026. The shake-up comes as Verkor, backed by Renault and the French state, leans into its multi-billion euro war chest to hit its ambitious target of 16 GWh in annual battery output. | La Tribune
🌿💸 Paris-based impact investment club Keenest has deployed more €5 million into climate‑tech startups just 18 months after its launch. The brainchild of Jérémie Sicsic and Renan Labrunie, supported by Team for the Planet’s Mehdi Coly, Keenest has grown from 300 to 3,500 citizen‑investors, making sustainable investing accessible from just €500. Keenest uses an innovative “climate dividends” model that ties returns to CO₂ avoided. So the greener the project, the richer the reward. The team wants to double its fund to €10 million and launch a transparent impact dashboard by spring 2026. | EU Startups
🏗️🌱 Thibaud Elzière, a co-founder of Startup Studio Hexa, is set to launch “WAT,” a Belgian version of Station F, in Brussels in 2027. The massive 10,000 m² incubator will rise in a former brick power plant in Ixelles, targeting 150–200 startups across AI, health, energy transition, mobility, and agri-tech, with €25 million backing to create a buzzing innovation hub. Designed not just for work but as a true “place to live," WAT will have kitchens, fitness studios, auditoriums, and podcast spaces. It aims to host around 1,000 community members and 250 events annually, uniting entrepreneurs, creatives, and researchers under one roof. | Maddyness
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How Dougs Is Building A French Accounting Powerhouse Through AI And Automation
In the crowded world of fintech, it's not every day you come across a startup that set out to revolutionize a centuries-old profession from a kitchen table. But that's exactly what Dougs did.
A chance encounter between an accountant with a flair for entrepreneurship and a robotics engineer with an eye for automation has turned into one of France's most quietly ambitious success stories.
Today, with over 550 employees, €37 million in revenue, and 50% year-over-year growth, Dougs is on track to become the largest accounting firm in France. And they’ve done it largely without venture capital, just a lot of grit, product focus, and an unconventional approach to growth.
💸 Top Funding Deals 💸
📇 Company: Stellaria
🔍 Description: French deep‑tech startup developing compact molten salt fast reactors (MSFR) — branded “Stellarium” — capable of renewing 100% of its fuel during operation, incinerating high‑level waste, and providing low‑carbon heat and electricity to industrial sites and utilities. Emphasizes safety (4‑barrier containment), waste‑burning, and flexible output for heavy industry.
💻 Website: https://www.stellaria.fr/en/
📍 HQ City: Grenoble, France
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €23 million (continuation of a larger Series A totaling €38 M, with €15 M raised in early 2025)
🏦 Investors: CEA Investissement, Schneider Electric, Orano, Technip Energies, Supernova Invest, Audacia (following early €1.7 M seed), with continued support from France 2030 initiative and consortium partners
👨💼👩💼 Founders & Leadership: Nicolas Breyton (CEO; ex‑Schneider Electric), co‑founders from CEA, including Guillaume Campioni, Lucas Tardieu, Bruno Desbrière, Antoine Gerschenfeld
🗞️ News: Maddyness
📇 Company: Spiko
🔍 Description: Offers fully tokenized, AMF‑regulated UCITS money market funds investing in euro and US Treasury Bills. Funds operate 24/7 on public blockchains (Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos via Etherlink), with APIs and integrations (e.g., Pennylane, Revolut) for SMEs, freelancers, fintechs, and individuals.
💻 Website: spiko.io
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €20M
🏦 Investors: Index Ventures, Angel investors include Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky, Wise CTO Harsh Sinh
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Paul‑Adrien Hyppolite (ex‑Deputy Head, French Treasury markets; CEO); Antoine Michon (ex‑digital transformation advisor to French government; COO)
🗞️ News: Maddyness
📇 Company: Dillico
🔍 Description: Deeptech biopharma startup developing All‑ScaleFlow™, an integrated, digitized, GMP-compliant platform for ultra-flexible, scalable manufacturing of mRNA vaccines and therapies. Aims to accelerate development, reduce costs, and enable personalized immuno-oncology treatments.
💻 Website: https://dillico.com/
📍 HQ City: Meylan
🧗 Round: Seed / Series A hybrid (equity + non-dilutive)
💰 Amount Raised: €7.5 million in equity, complementing €2.4 million non-dilutive France 2030 funding + additional bank financing.
🏦 Investors: Angelor (via For Good fund), Fonds Régional Avenir Industrie Auvergne‑Rhône‑Alpes (advised by UI Investissement), French Tech Seed (Bpifrance, for France 2030), GP Compas, Deepbright One, Private investors & Family Offices, including historic investor Deeperly.
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Three industry experts; leadership includes Christophe Bonneville, President & CEO (co-founder)
🗞️ News: Lyonbiopole
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