In this edition:

🧠 Kikleo uses AI-powered cameras to track every uneaten bite in cafeterias. By turning food waste into actionable data, it helps kitchens cut costs, shrink their carbon footprint, and serve smarter, more sustainable meals. Co-founder Vincent Garcia explains: "We want to transform data in the kitchen into action."

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

Headlines

🗞️ French Tech gets a new face in government. Clara Chappaz is out as AI and digital affairs minister after surviving the rise and fall of a couple of governments. The tech baguette is now passed to Naïma Moutchou, the newly named Minister for Transformation, Public Action, AI, and Digital Matters. Most recently Vice President of France's Assemblée Nationale, a seasoned parliamentarian, and a judge, Moutchou brings legal and legislative chops to the role, skills that might come in handy as Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu navigates the 2026 budget and a tricky parliamentary balance. Based on a quick scan of her LinkedIn profile, it's not immediately clear that she has any background in tech or AI or business. On the other hand, these days expertise in anything is just the right ChatGPT prompt away, right? Er, we mean Mistral AI! For the French Tech ecosystem, it’s the fourth point of contact in just three years, following Chappaz, Marina Ferrari, and Jean-Noël Barrot. All we're saying is, don't get too comfortable. | Maddyness, Actu.fr

🗞️ OpenAI shoots past the stratosphere. The ChatGPT creator just hit a mind-blowing $500B valuation, making it the most valuable private company on Earth, beating SpaceX’s $400B. A mega employee share buyback that brought in $6.6B from investors like SoftBank and Thrive Capital. The company is still burning cash, with $5B lost last year, and $14B projected by 2026. But it has bet big on growth: $11.6B in revenue next year and profits sometime after 2029. French exec Fidji Simo is now in charge of OpenAI’s products and applications, including ChatGPT as OpenAI rockets forward. | Maddyness

🗞️ One of the first profiles we wrote when we launched La Machine last year was on Gojob and CEO Pascal Lorne, who went in-depth about the challenges and costs of being an early adopter of generative AI. And lo, comes news this week, that Japanese staffing giant Persol, the country’s No. 2 in temp work with €9 billion in annual revenue, is injecting €120 million to take a majority stake in the Aix-based Gojob, while founder Lorne and his management team are actually boosting their shares to keep control of strategy.

At the heart of the deal is Aglae, Gojob’s AI trained on millions of CVs and work reports to instantly shortlist the top 10 candidates for any role by prioritizing soft skills like adaptability, teamwork, and punctuality over résumés. Already profitable, Gojob hit €200 million in revenue last year, working with heavyweights like La Poste, Stellantis, Carrefour, and CMA CGM. With Persol’s backing, the startup is aiming for €1 billion in revenue by 2030, rolling out its AI across Asia and pursuing acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe. In short: a French AI champion just got the firepower to go global. | Les Echos

🗞️ French ETIs are finally getting serious about AI. Mid-sized companies like Garance are moving fast - from automating document recognition to AI-assisted decision-making- without hiring armies of data scientists. How? Off-the-shelf tools and Salesforce APIs, paired with smart governance and employee upskilling. Generative AI is in play, but under strict control: training, bias checks, and GDPR compliance keep things safe. METI and EY report that 38% of ETIs are now running AI skills programs, proving that France’s mid-sized firms are ready to turn AI into both a productivity lever and a reputational boost. | Maddyness

🗞️ While keeping a low profile, Harmattan AI is eyeing a fundraising round valuing it at over $1 billion. Founded in 2024, the French drone start-up is turning heads both in the military world and among international funds. This summer, it won a contract to deliver 1,000 drones to France’s DGA and later secured a 3,000-drone deal with the British army. Its lightweight, autonomous drones come with electro-optical and infrared cameras, and are designed and assembled in France. The start-up is also partnering with Ukrainian company Skyeton for military sensors aiming to become France’s first defense unicorn. CEO Mouad M’Ghari frames the mission simply: “solving hard problems to defend liberal democracy.” | Les Échos

🗞️ Literally real fake news! A fake news website called BrutInfo has been impersonating French media outlets Le Monde and Brut, spreading fabricated stories like one claiming Emmanuel Macron was building a €148 million presidential bunker. The site, hosted briefly in Lithuania, featured AI-generated articles and videos, including fake interviews and voice-overs. Investigators link the operation to “Storm-1516,” a pro-Kremlin network known for flooding the web with AI-assisted propaganda targeting Western democracies. While most of its content gains little traction beyond conspiracy circles, the campaign underscores Russia’s evolving playbook of low-cost, AI-driven disinformation. | Le Monde

🗞️ The Shift Project has just unleashed a sobering report: the dizzying rise of AI and data centers is hurtling global electricity demand and CO₂ emissions toward an unsustainable future. Data centers now consume hundreds of terawatt-hours and could quadruple their carbon footprint by 2030—equivalent to twice France’s current emissions. The culprit? Generative AI, bigger models, and cooling systems that gulp power, all largely fueled by fossil electricity sources. While Big Tech is experimenting with efficiency and liquid cooling, the report demands tougher limits, binding carbon-energy caps, and selective deployment to keep AI green. | DirectIndustry e-Magazine | The Shift Project

🗞️ Platform.sh has re-branded, re-baptizing itself as Upsun to reflect a strategic shift toward embedding AI at the core of cloud infrastructure. Based in Paris and SF, the rebrand signals not just a name change, but a broader bet on AI as the next frontier for scalable, sustainable computing: "Upsun is the company's strategic expansion into modern application lifecycle management, accelerating AI-assisted development and AI-augmented workflows. Giving enterprises the tools to keep pace with the rapid adoption of AI, unlocking new opportunities for innovation." | PR

🗞️ Meanwhile, Scality and INRIA have teamed up in the Cyberté project, backed by the France 2030 program, to build AI-driven, sovereign, and eco-responsible data storage systems. The goal is to fuse advanced predictive and anomaly-detection models with energy-frugal architectures, securing France’s critical data while slashing its carbon footprint. | PR

OTHER HEADLINES

🗞️ A swim in the Seine with H Company’s new boss, former Palantir exec Gautier Cloix | The man charged with managing the Paris startup’s lofty expectations isn’t afraid to jump in. | Sifted

🗞️ Generali France rides the wave of Microsoft 365 Copilot and agentic AI with Microsoft | Enhancing both customer and employee experiences stands as one of the key objectives in Generali France’s new strategic plan, “Boost 2027.” With innovation at the heart of its ambitions, the plan outlines the rollout of cutting-edge technologies—Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Azure OpenAI—to power strategic use cases in customer relations and core business expertise. | Microsoft

ICYMI

🗞️ Inside TiHive: How a French Deeptech Startup Is Revolutionizing Quality Control, One Diaper at a Time | The Grenoble-based company just raised €8M to scale its terahertz-AI technology that can see inside products on production lines | The French Tech Journal

🗞️ 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

🧠 AI That Watches What You Don’t Eat: Kikleo Uses Cafeteria Leftover Data to Fight Food Waste

In a bustling corporate headquarters canteen, lunch trays glide along a conveyor belt toward the dishwashing station. Before the plates disappear, a camera captures everything left uneaten: half a chicken breast here, untouched vegetables there.

Within seconds, artificial intelligence identifies each item and calculates not just what was wasted, but how much it cost and what environmental toll it took.

This is the vision that Vincent Garcia and Martin d'Agay have been pursuing since founding Kikleo in 2019. What started as a technology to speed up cafeteria checkout lines has evolved into a sophisticated weapon against one of the food industry's most persistent problems: waste. Now, with a fresh €3.5 million fundraising round led by Newfund, the Lyon-based startup is preparing to take its solution across Europe and the Atlantic.

"We want to transform data in the kitchen into action," Garcia said.

AI Funding News

For the week ending October 3, there were 11 AI French Tech companies that raised €101 million.

📇 Company: Vibe
🔍 Description: French adtech platform enabling brands to easily launch, target, and optimize streaming TV ads, with AI-powered creative tools and partnerships with 500+ apps and channels (Disney+, Roku, Paramount+).
💻 Website: https://www.vibe.co/
📍 HQ City: New York City and Paris
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: $50M (€42M)
🏦 Investors: Hedosophia (lead), Elaia, Singular, QuantumLight (Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut), Illusian (Supercell founder), other historical investors
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Franck Tetzlaff (ex-Doctolib, Frichti), Arthur Querou (ex-Appinest, MotionLead, Adikteev)
🗞️ News: Funding will fuel U.S. expansion, accelerate AI integration in ad creation and performance optimization, and scale revenues beyond $1B by 2028. The company expects more than $100M revenue in 2025 and to be profitable by year-end. | EU-Startups, FrenchWeb, Maddyness, Sifted

📇 Company: Edflex
🔍 Description: SaaS platform for corporate digital training, aggregating and curating learning content from over 10,000 publishers across 300+ topics. Serves 300+ corporate clients and 1.5M users worldwide.
💻 Website: edflex.com
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series C
💰 Amount Raised: $18M
🏦 Investors: Bpifrance (Digital Venture fund), Educapital, Ternel, Wille Finance
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Clément Meslin, Philippe Riveron, Raphaël Droissart, Rémi Lesaint
🗞️ News: Edflex will use the funding to strengthen its AI-powered smart learning content (conversational features, real-life simulations, personalization, automated skills assessment), expand internationally (new languages, local teams in Europe and North America, structured go-to-market partnerships), and pursue its ambition to become a global leader in corporate learning. | Edflex Blog

📇 Company: Qovery
🔍 Description: SaaS platform that automates DevOps, simplifying application deployment across all major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Scaleway) while reducing complexity, costs, and reliance on DevOps talent.
💻 Website: https://www.qovery.com/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: $13M (€11M)
🏦 Investors: IRIS (lead), Speedinvest, Crane Venture Partners, Techstars, Irregular Expressions, business angels including Olivier Pomel & Alexis Le-Quoc (co-founders of Datadog), Sebastian Pahl (co-founder of Docker), Ott Kaukver (CTO of Checkout.com, ex-CTO Twilio)
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Romaric Philogène (CEO, co-founder).
🗞️ News: Qovery has grown 115% YoY with 100+ customers (incl. Alan, Didask, Talkspace, RxVantage). Half of its revenue already comes from the U.S. The funds will accelerate U.S. expansion, product innovation (including AI integration), and team growth. | EU-Startups, FrenchWeb, Journal du Net

📇 Company: TiHive
🔍 Description: Industrial deeptech company developing terahertz-on-silicon imaging and AI-powered inspection solutions for real-time, non-destructive quality and process control on production lines. Applications span hygiene, textiles, recycling, agriculture, and space.
💻 Website: tihive.com
📍 HQ City: Grenoble, France
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €8 million
🏦 Investors: Karista, Wind, EIC Fund
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Hani Sherry (CEO), Carlos Prada (CIO)
🗞️ News: TiHive will use the funds to accelerate commercialization of its patented terahertz-AI vision solutions, expand internationally (Europe, LATAM, Asia-Pacific), reinforce its footprint in hygiene, textiles, recycling, agriculture, and space industries, and advance R&D for next-gen terahertz chips with extended frequencies and AI features.

📇 Company: DJUST
🔍 Description: European SaaS leader in modular B2B commerce platforms, helping distributors, retailers, and manufacturers digitize manual processes, streamline procurement, and modernize the B2B customer journey with AI agents and integrated payments.
💻 Website: https://djust.io
📍 HQ City: Paris, France
🧗 Round: Series A Extension
💰 Amount Raised: €7M
🏦 Investors: New Enterprise Associates (NEA, lead), Elaia Partners (existing), Speedinvest (new)
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Arnaud Rihiant (ex-Mirakl founding member), Eric Gaudin
🗞️ News: This new funding follows DJUST’s €12M Series A in 2023 and will fuel R&D acceleration, the rollout of AI agents and DJUST Pay (a 100% B2B payment module), and European expansion into Spain, Italy, Germany, and the UK. The company already manages €1.5B in annual transactions for ~50 clients (including Eiffage and Franprix) and aims to double that to €3B by 2026. | Maddyness

📇 Company: Clarifeye
🔍 Description: Paris-based platform that transforms expert knowledge into scalable AI agents by turning tacit expertise into operational intelligence. Clarifeye enables organizations to build GenAI agents that reason like their best human experts, addressing challenges in complex industries such as law, life sciences, and manufacturing.
💻 Website: https://www.clarifeye.ai/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Pre-Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €4M
🏦 Investors: EQT Ventures (lead), Drysdale Ventures, Olivier Pomel (CEO & founder of Datadog), Jean-Luc Robert (ex-CEO Kyriba), Alexandre Berriche (Fleet), and other angel investors
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mathieu Grisolia (CEO) and seasoned ex-Dataiku leaders & serial entrepreneurs
🗞️ News: Clarifeye plans to expand its platform, hire top talent, and accelerate its vision of building expert AI agents that capture and scale human expertise into collective intelligence.

📇 Company: Synboli
🔍 Description: Deeptech materials startup combining AI and synthetic chemistry to design and produce novel polymers. Its proprietary photo-activation technology enables the synthesis of vinyl polymers, while its AI platform designs new polymer structures and predicts their properties.
💻 Website: synboli.com
📍 HQ City: Camblanes-et-Meynac, France
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3.5m
🏦 Investors: Bordeaux Technowest, Wind Capital
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mathieu Pucheault
🗞️ News: The funding will help Synboli accelerate the development of its AI-driven polymer design platform, speed up time-to-market for new materials, and expand its range of high-performance, custom-engineered polymers. | Les Echos

📇 Company: Popsink
🔍 Description: Developer of real-time data infrastructure using Change Data Capture (CDC) technology to continuously capture changes from legacy systems (ERP, CRM, Oracle/IBM mainframes) and replicate them to modern platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, and Iceberg. Popsink enables enterprises to build reliable foundations for AI and analytics without heavy migrations.
💻 Website: https://www.popsink.com
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3M
🏦 Investors: IRIS (lead), XAnge, Seedcamp, Irregular Expressions, and several business angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Benjamin Djidi (ex-Sixt, Amazon – Alexa, data & analytics), Alexandre Colella (ex-Primaa, Gérerseul.com, Quable, deeptech startups)
🗞️ News: Popsink will use the funds to double its team, accelerate product development, and expand across Europe and North America, addressing the growing demand for real-time data access to power AI and modern analytics. | Blog Post, FrenchWeb

📇 Company: Metreecs
🔍 Description: Franco-American startup using AI to transform supply chains through demand forecasting and digital twins, helping retailers reduce overstocks, shortages, and waste.
💻 Website: https://www.metreecs.com/
📍 HQ City: Paris & San Francisco
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: $2.7M
🏦 Investors: Monte Carlo Capital, Founders Future, Kima Ventures, Bpifrance, Y Combinator
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Thibaut Pellegrin (CEO), Martin Dimitrov (COO), Elie Dufeu (CTO)
🗞️ News: The funding will accelerate R&D to enrich its AI-driven logistics platform and support international expansion, with new offices planned in Italy and the US.

📇 Company: MyFit Solutions
🔍 Description: Lyon-based startup specializing in 3D body scanning technology via smartphone, combining computer vision and AI for applications in healthcare (orthopedics) and retail personalization.
💻 Website: https://myfit-solutions.com/
📍 HQ City: Lyon
🧗 Round: Seed / Early stage
💰 Amount Raised: €2 million
🏦 Investors: Acer Finance, Provence Angels, Key Ventures, Bpifrance
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Founded in 2018 (names not disclosed in sources)
🗞️ News: Funding will accelerate the commercial rollout of its 3D scanning solution, enhance R&D to improve precision and robustness, and scale deployments across medical and retail markets. | Le Progres

📇 Company: Sonar Clarity (rebranded as Avanoo)
🔍 Description: SaaS Management platform helping enterprises regain control over their software and AI ecosystem. It automatically detects all applications (including Shadow IT & Shadow AI), measures usage, identifies unused licenses, optimizes costs, and highlights security risks. It also supports compliance with DORA, NIS2, AI Act, and GDPR.
💻 Website: avanoo.com
📍 HQ City: France
🧗 Round: Seed (first fundraising)
💰 Amount Raised: €1m
🏦 Investors: Auriga Cyber Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Tanguy Duthion (CEO), Etienne Elouvrier
🗞️ News: The funding will support Avanoo’s new growth strategy in France and internationally. The company will strengthen its R&D, expand its sales operations, recruit partners, and onboard new experts to improve service quality. This milestone also marks its rebrand from Sonar Clarity to Avanoo, reflecting its ambition to become a leading SaaS and Shadow IT management solution. | PR

🗣️ Announcements 🗣️

🗣️ Orange has launched its 2025 Agentic AI Challenge to identify startups developing innovative autonomous AI solutions in fields such as customer service, cybersecurity, smart industry, and financial services. Selected startups will test their products at scale with Orange, receive mentorship from Orange Fab, gain visibility through global tech events, and connect with strategic partners like NVIDIA and key investors. | Apply to the Agentic AI Challenge

🗣️ NeoStartups & Growth Startups | The Paris Chamber of Commerce (CCI Paris) has opened applications for two complementary startup support programs starting October 17, 2025. NeoStartups helps early-stage founders build solid foundations with expert workshops and coaching, while Growth Startups targets companies with initial traction, offering a year-long program to scale sales, expand into new markets, prepare for fundraising, and access CCI Paris’s powerful business network. | Apply to NeoStartups | Apply to Growth Startups

📆 Events 📆

📆 Vibe Coding Paris Meetup #1 | October 6 | Join us for an evening exploring the world of Vibe Coding with cross-functional professionals, including PMs, designers, GTM experts, and developers. Learn from industry experts about the latest trends and tools shaping the future of coding and product development. | Join Waitlist

📆 AWS Gen AI Loft Paris at Station F | October 7 - 21 | The AWS Gen AI Loft is not limited to technology, it brings together start-ups, developers, investors and industry experts. Whether you are looking for in-depth knowledge or expert answers, our Gen AI Lofts offer you all the support you need to make your projects a reality. | Registration and details

📆 MCP Connect with Alpic, Alan & Mistral | October 14 | MCP Connect is for developers, practitioners, researchers, and enthusiasts working with the Model Context Protocol and AI agents. We share best practices, new tools, and real-world use cases for building MCP servers and integrating them into agentic workflows. Whether you are building MCP servers for your internal or external use cases or just exploring how agents connect to applications, MCP Connect is a place to exchange ideas, learn, and help shape the future of AI workflows. | Request to join

📆 Inclusive hiring in the age of AI | October 16 | Roundtable discussion & breakfast in Paris | How do we ensure the integration of artificial intelligence tools promotes fairness, rather than multiply bias, when businesses hire? Join the European non-profit Sistech, recruitment experts from LinkedIn and Ekino, as well as French government officials and scholars to tackle this timely question. Participate in a candid conversation about how AI has transformed talent acquisition already and leave with concrete HR strategies your company can implement to foster opportunity | Register (FREE)

📆 CODE + MATTER Opening | October 21 | CODE + MATTER brings together Alexis André, Julien Espagnon, William Mapan and Florian Zumbrunn. Four artists who write programs rather than prompts, transforming algorithms into paintings, sculptures, reworked prints and installations. | Register

📆 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), and 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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