The year 2024 was marked by the explosion and the creation of a few nuggets “made in France”. Impossible to miss Mistral AI and its raising of 600 million euros, in debt and equity. Another vintage of the 2024 vintage: the startup H, highlighted at the Elysée dinner, organized the day before Vivatech. They then announced a funding round of 220 million euros. Flex AI also launched this year. The two former NVidia employees, founders of this promising young company, chose to settle in Paris.
Several figures from the ecosystem also revealed their new projects: Nicolas Rieul created Actionnable, with his partner Nans Thomas. Maxime Liebens, ex-Jobteaser and Maki People, has raised 3 million euros for his new startup Freqens. Thierry Vignal, ex-Masteos, presented Atom and Cedric O saw, despite himself, his project revealed in broad daylight: The Marshmallow Project.
What will be the nuggets to follow in 2025? Maddyness interviewed venture capitalists: Roxanne Varza, the director of Station F and scout for the Californian fund Sequoia, Guillaume Houzé and Nicolas Essayan, the co-founders of the family office Motier Ventures, Eric Gossart, partner at Serena and Alexis du Peloux , partner of the XAnge fund.
Le choix de Roxanne Varza, Sequoia Capital
Spore.bio : This startup is developing a solution to detect bacteria in consumer products, both food and cosmetics, without having to send them to the laboratory. Co-founded by three engineers, Amine Raji, Maxime Mistretta and Mohamed Tazi, the startup has a majority of PhDs in its ranks. Launched in 2023, Spore.bio raised an €8 million pre-seed round.
Dottxt : This AI startup specializes in improving LLMs, it is developing a solution that allows companies to integrate LLMs into their critical systems, automating the extraction of structured data and complex documents. Dottxt, sometimes written .txt, is based in Paris and raised nearly 11 million euros last October. It has around fifteen employees.
Entalpic : Here again, this startup relies on generative AI. It applies this technology to the creation or generation of new carbon-free materials for the chemical industry. Accelerated at 21st by Centrale Supelec, Entalpic was co-founded by Mathieu Galtier, CEO and former chief data and platform officer of Owkin. The startup completed its first funding round in September. It raised 8.5 million euros from Cathay Innovation and Breega among others.
The nuggets of Guillaume Houzé and Nicolas Essayan, the co-founders of Motier Ventures
Anchor : Founded by two Palantir alumni, one from Telecom Paris and the other from HEC, Ankar allows the most innovative companies to better create, protect and promote their intellectual property (patents, designs, trademarks). For example, with Ankar’s Innovation Copilot, R&D teams can quickly and accurately identify research opportunities and generate patents in a secure-by-design environment. Ankar is one of the first investments of Booom, the fund launched by German entrepreneur Felix Plapperer.
Anyshift : This is another nugget still under the radar that the Motier Ventures team selects. Anyshift is an infrastructure management solution for dev and engineering teams. It allows you to control your cloud architecture while taking into consideration the acceleration of generative AI. The Anyshift method relies on digital twins – a virtual representation of an organization’s infrastructure, with all dependencies and configurations, which allows teams to test changes, migrations and more. This startup was founded by a polytechnician, Roxane Fischer, and by Stéphane Jourdan who has twenty years of experience in infrastructure and the cloud.
Les greentechs d’Eric Gossart, Serena
Kelvin : This startup is developing a software solution that allows you to plan your energy renovation work. This subject, energy renovation, is a structuring subject for the real estate sector in the coming years. This greentech founded by Clémentine Lalande and Pierre Jolly, repeat founders, raised 5 million euros last summer and is part of the Future 40, Station F’s selection of startups.
Jimmy Energy : Another nugget of the Future 40, it is developing micro-nuclear reactors. Supported by France 2030, Jimmy Energie wants to participate in the decarbonization of 500 industrial sites. “This sector is little looked at and yet strategic for low carbon energy sovereignty”, comments the investor.
CarbonFarm : This agritech is tackling the decarbonization of rice farming. Rice represents 12% of methane emissions, a very carbon-intensive gas. Carbon Farm’s solution makes it possible to measure and monitor emissions from rice crops and aims to support farmers for more sustainable agriculture. It also relies on satellite data and artificial intelligence. Founded by Vassily Carantino and James Hastwell, it completed a first seed round in 2023 of 2.5 million euros.
The choice of Alexis du Peloux, partner of XAnge:
Swords : Obviously in generative artificial intelligence, Gladia is a voice recognition and transcription solution with very fine and advanced technology. Created in 2022, Gladia has 600 corporate clients. “Communicating by voice with an AI in a reliable manner is a major technical challenge. With a great Serie A in 2024, Gladia will try to become one of the international leaders, starting with the US. confides Alexis du Peloux.
