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Inside this edition:

🌞 Deep Dive: A pair of French entrepreneurs in Texas have launched Growl, a connected fitness startup that reimagines the traditional boxing bag as an AI-powered, interactive home coach. As the company moves towards commercialization, CEO and co-founder Léo Desrumaux explains the vision.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

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Headlines

🗞️ French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, inaugurated the research division of the Agence ministérielle pour l'intelligence artificielle de défense (AMIAD) at the École Polytechnique campus in Palaiseau. This initiative aims to bolster defense-related artificial intelligence (AI) by fostering collaborations with academic and industrial partners, attracting emerging talent, and enhancing France's international standing in AI research. During the event, Lecornu announced a €15 million investment to construct a Defense Institute on the same campus, reinforcing the historic military association of the École Polytechnique. Additionally, a memorandum of understanding was signed between AMIAD and Mistral AI, a French AI company, to develop advanced technologies and ensure technological sovereignty in defense. | Ministere des armées, Ministere des armées, ActuIA, l’École polytechnique

🗞️ Appier, a specialist in AdTech and MarTech, has announced the acquisition of French startup AdCreative.ai for a total of $38.7 million, including a base of $27.3 million. This marks Appier's fifth acquisition since 2018 and aligns with its strategy to expand in the European market. Founded in 2021 in Paris, AdCreative.ai specializes in using generative AI to optimize advertising creatives, enabling businesses to produce visuals and content tailored to expected performance. The startup's clientele includes notable companies such as Snapchat, Pernod Ricard, Reckitt, and BNP Paribas. | FrenchWeb

🗞️ The AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers) – France's financial markets regulator – released a report exploring the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in automating the processing of regulatory reporting, specifically in the context of sustainable finance disclosures: "AI and Supervision: Insights Learned from AMF Experiments on the Possibility of Automated Processing of Regulatory Reporting." The study focuses on two key reports: the EU Green Taxonomy reports and the SFDR annexes, highlighting the challenges AI faces in extracting data due to inconsistent document formats and technical encoding issues. The findings suggest that while standardization improves machine readability, even XHTML-formatted documents often lack the necessary structure for optimal automation. The AMF's experiments reveal that PDFs can sometimes be easier to process than improperly formatted XHTML files, and AI accuracy is highly dependent on the standardization of reporting templates. To enhance automation, the report recommends stricter regulations on document formatting, adherence to W3C XHTML standards, and the inclusion of structured tagging to improve machine readability. | AMF

🗞️ A French senator has proposed increasing taxes and regulations on data centers operating within France. This initiative aims to establish a more equitable taxation system for these infrastructures, addressing concerns about their environmental impact and significant energy consumption. The proposal seeks to balance the rapid growth of data centers with sustainable development goals, ensuring that their expansion does not adversely affect local communities or the environment. | Le Figaro

🗞️ Publicis Groupe has agreed to acquire data and identity technology company Lotame, integrating it into its targeted marketing unit, Epsilon. This acquisition will expand Publicis' individual consumer profiles from 2.3 billion to nearly 4 billion, enabling engagement with 91% of adult internet users. By combining Lotame's extensive data assets with Publicis' existing profiles, the company aims to enhance its AI-driven marketing capabilities, delivering more personalized and precise messaging at scale. This move underscores Publicis' commitment to leveraging artificial intelligence and big data to maintain its leadership in the advertising industry. | Reuters

Other headlines

🗞️ Europe Needs AI Infrastructure. Cleyrop Wants To Build It | Can Europe power its digital future without relying on non-European cloud providers? And if so, what kind of AI infrastructure does Europe need? These are the challenges that Arnaud Muller, co-founder of Cleyrop, has dedicated himself to solving. His company provides European public and private organizations with sovereign, AI-ready data storage and management solutions. | The French Tech Journal

🗞️ Digital Diplomats: AI is Making Silicon Valley Startups Leaner and Meaner. Can French Founders Keep Up? | U.S. Startups are reaching $100M ARR with less than 50 employees. French startups risk being squeezed if they don’t adapt. | The French Tech Journal

🗣️ Growl's AI Boxing Bag Delivers A Knockout Fitness Experience 🥊

In a fitness market saturated with stationary bikes and rowing machines, French-founded startup Growl is landing a different kind of blow.

Emerging from stealth mode in December 2024 with $4.75 million in Seed funding, this Austin-based company with two French co-founders has reimagined the ancient boxing bag as a high-tech, AI-powered fitness coach designed for the home. Growl is entering the $110 billion U.S. fitness market to make boxing's transformative power accessible to families, not just gym enthusiasts.

Growl combines projection technology, infrared sensors, and 3D motion tracking to create what the founders describe as "a life-sized interactive coach" that feels physically present during workouts. Pre-sales begin in April 2025, and first deliveries are expected in early 2026. Growl's wall-mounted system offers everything from technical boxing instruction to yoga and strength training, all displayed on an impact-resistant surface that can withstand millions of punches.

Backed by Skip Capital (the private fund of Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar), former UFC Heavyweight Champion Ciryl Gane, and several notable French tech entrepreneurs, Growl represents the latest chapter in the globalization of French tech talent—with engineering based in Paris and commercial operations in Texas. The company aims to capture a share of the growing premium fitness market by targeting educated professionals over 35 who have "more money than time" but still want engaging, family-friendly workouts at home.

AI Funding News

📇 Company: Faks
🔍 Description: An application linking pharmacy professionals, including pharmacies, groups, and laboratories using AI.
💻 Website: http://faks.co
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Early VC
💰 Amount Raised: €6M
🏦 Investors: Seedcamp; Speedinvest; Connect Ventures (Europe); FJ Labs
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Corentin Geoffray; Clément Goupy; Félix Pignard
🗞️ News: JDN

📇 Company: Kleio
🔍 Description: AI-driven conversational software specialized in boosting sales conversion.
💻 Website: https://www.kleio.ai/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3M
🏦 Investors: Serena; Julien Bellanger; Daphni; Houman Behzadi; Raphael Simon; Dave Kellogg; Fred Hessabi
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Philippe Wellens; Adrien Mathieu; Louis Poirier
🗞️ News: LinkedIn

Events

☀️ Sponsors' events ☀️

📆 Viva Technology | June 11 - 14 | VivaTech is Europe's biggest startup and tech event. The ninth edition is taking place in Paris, at the Expo Porte de Versailles venue. VivaTech contributes to the acceleration of innovation by connecting startups, technology leaders, large companies, and investors addressing the world's greatest challenges. | Buy Tickets

The calendar:

📆 Builders Weekend | March 15 | What is Builders Weekend? It’s the grand finale of the AI Startup School—a four-week program where we bring together top European CEOs and CTOs, with 40 sharp, ambitious builders. No panels, no BS—just real conversations about the hard parts of starting a company and the hacks that they've found to make it work. The Builders weekend is only for participants of the AI Startup School. | Learn more and apply here.

📆 The French State of AI | March 19 | We are excited to invite you to a special event celebrating the launch of The French AI Report 2024, the most comprehensive mapping of the French AI ecosystem to date. Over the past months, we have identified more than 400 startups across five key sectors and interviewed leading AI experts in France to provide a detailed analysis of the challenges, trends, and investment landscape shaping the industry. The full report, published in early February, is available at thefrenchreport.ai. | Register

📆 Techinnov | March 27 | The 19th edition of Techinnov is back. Led by the CCI Essonne and the CCI Paris Ile-de-France, and under the high patronage of the President of the Republic, Techinnov is in line with the “France 2030” plan. Objective: to generate meetings between startups and clients to promote the financing of innovation. | Register

📆 Café du Numérique | April 4 | Discover how AI can revolutionize your business and boost your competitiveness. Connect directly with innovation experts. Get inspired by the success stories of companies pioneering the use of AI. | Registration

📆 AgentX | April 7 | AgentX is pioneering the first fully agent summit, designed to showcase the transformative power of AI and Decentralization. Co-created by two of the leading events in their domains, Paris Blockchain Week and RAISE, this revolutionary event will bring together the brightest minds, cutting-edge projects, and global visionaries to tackle the most pressing moments of the ongoing AI revolution: Agents and Decentralization. | Tickets

📆 AWS Summit Paris | April 9 |AWS Summit Paris 2025 is a free one-day event focused on generative AI, data, security, sustainability, and more. Customize your experience with a keynote featuring leading speakers, over 150 interactive sessions and workshops, one-on-one consultations with our experts, an exhibition area showcasing the latest cloud innovations, as well as numerous networking and training opportunities. | Register

📆 Data & AI Summit | April 10 | The Data & AI Summit 2025 will bring together IT decision-makers and AI experts to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with data and artificial intelligence. This event will highlight the impact of generative AI on business models, as well as best practices for maximizing the value of data within modern organizations. | Register

📆 MKIA 25 | April 29 | The Maddy Keynote, organized by Maddyness, announces its special edition: the MKIA, the event that transforms the broad guidelines on AI into concrete initiatives for the economic leaders of tomorrow. Far from abstract tech-symbol discourse, MKIA deciphers AI in a concrete and educational way through round tables, keynotes, case studies, and a zone for startups. It enables all actors – start-ups, corporations, investors, and institutions – to take ownership of the challenges, opportunities, and challenges of its adoption. | Register

📆 GOSIM AI Paris 2025 | May 6-7 | The Global Open-Source Innovation Meetup will spotlight the latest advancements in 6 Conference Tracks: AI Model, AI Infra, AI Apps, Embodied AI, AI for Science, and Global Open-Source AI Collaboration, driving significant progress in global open-source AI collaboration. A highlight of the event is the introduction of GOSIM AI Spotlight, a global initiative to select 10 outstanding open-source AI projects for showcase and technical exchange, further accelerating AI innovation. | Registration

📆 Google Cloud Summit France 2025 | May 22 | Join the annual Google Cloud event to discover the latest technological innovations in generative AI, security, application development, collaboration, and more. | Register

📆 The Paris AI Conference 2025 | June 16 | The Paris AI Conference 2025 gathers 250 of France's AI Experts, Founders, Investors, and Enthusiasts, for an evening of content and networking. This event is hosted by Startup Network Europe. | Register

📆 Stripe Tour Paris | June 17 | Join us for Stripe Tour, our global roadshow that brings together business leaders in major cities to discuss the most important trends in payments and financial technology. | Register

📆 RAISE Summit 2025 | July 8-9, 2025 | RAISE Summit is the premier event for professionals seeking to disrupt, build, and connect in the AI landscape. This summit is the ultimate destination to validate AI strategies through real-world use cases, define a winning AI playbook, and find the right partners to deliver cutting-edge solutions. | Register

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