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- 🇫🇷 French Tech Updates — April 21, 2026. €45.05M in new funding for French companies.
🇫🇷 French Tech Updates — April 21, 2026. €45.05M in new funding for French companies.
What you need to know this week in France: 🪧 40 entrepreneurs release political manifesto, 🧠 a new €60M VC fund, and 🖲️ AMD jumps aboard the digital sovereignty train.

Welcome to French Tech Updates! Your weekly source of startup, VC, and tech news and insights. I’m James, a startup-obsessed American living in Paris.
What’s new this week in 🇫🇷
On April 16 AMD and the French Ministry of the Economy signed an LOI to deepen their collaboration around France's National AI Strategy. As part of the agreement, AMD will extend its work creating France's first exascale supercomputer and will deploy a Center of Excellence in France later this year to provide hardware access, training, and ecosystem support to researchers and startups. The announcement brings with it a familiar tune of digital sovereignty, or in this case hardware sovereignty, that marks AMD as the only credible non-Nvidia alternative in Europe to handle immense AI workloads.
If the idea behind Newfund’s new fund sounds pretty smart it’s probably because it will focus its investments on braintech companies. The Heka fund, named after the Egyptian deity of medicine, will back up to 25 European companies with seed-stage checks from €1-€3 million tackling problems from neurology to psychiatry which impact 40% of the world. Heka aims to tackle those problems while simultaneously taking on another striking stat: 85%. That’s how much of global braintech funding last year went to companies in the US. As part of their investment strategy the Heka fund will also help European brain health companies expand to the American market.
Forty French business leaders including Hélène Huby of The Exploration Company, Éric Larchevêque from Ledger, and Lucie Basch of Too Good To Go launched "Le Cœur Entreprendre" on April 14 with a coordinated video manifesto published simultaneously across their social channels. Their movement has big aims from influencing L’Assemblée National to the shifting the national culture of France. At it’s coeur, it is essentially a PR campaign for entrepreneurs.
The video adopted a broad definition of entrepreneur which includes the local baker and plumber alongside startup CEOs and ends with this call to action: “It is urgent that we applaud our entrepreneurs as we applaud our athletes and artists. It is urgent that we protect them, support them, and celebrate them. It is also urgent that we accept entrepreneurial failure, which carries within it the seeds of tomorrow's success.”
It’s been a busy month for French tech companies looking to influence European politics. The manifesto dropped the same week that Mistral laid out their playbook for European AI—a white-paper with 22 recommendations for making Europe a friendlier and more competitive place to build global AI companies.
🌍 Headlines from around the world
💰 Sequoia raises $7B for late-stage AI under new leaders Alfred Lin and Pat Grady (TechCrunch)
🧬 OpenAI launches GPT-Rosalind, its first life sciences model, built for drug discovery, genomics, and biological pathway reasoning (Axios)
🤑 Anthropic fields investor offers valuing it at $800B+ but is turning them down, more than doubling its February-round valuation of $350B as October IPO speculation grows (TechCrunch)
🚗 Wayve extends its $1.2B Series D with $60M from AMD, ARM, and Qualcomm ahead of London robotaxi trials and supervised autonomy rollout in 2026 (TechCrunch)
📊 AI captured 51%+ of Europe's Q1 VC funding ($9.2B of $17.6B total) while deal volume dropped 40% year-over-year (Crunchbase)
✂️ Snap cuts 1,000 jobs, 16% of its workforce, citing AI-driven productivity gains (TechCrunch)
😬 Some OpenAI investors are growing nervous as an IPO looms in the future (Gizmodo)
👟 Allbirds sells its shoe business to pivot to AI compute infrastructure as "NewBird AI," raising $50M and briefly sending its stock up 600% (TechCrunch)
💡 Lovable poaches Meta's director of engineering doubling down on European technical talent (Sifted)
🏦 Private equity now accounts for 80% of European tech deals above €50 million (Maddyness)
New Funding 💶
11 companies announced €45.05M in new funding last week including €500K by Oligoplus (🌾 Agritech) as part of Hexa’s Sprint program.

Cap Atlas | €800K | 🚁 Drone Tech
Normandy-based Cap Atlas raised €800K in a Seed round from Normandie Participations, Normandie Littoral, Normandie Business Angels, Crédit Agricole Innove en Normandie, and Groupe Lhotellier, alongside €300,000 in debt for a total of €1.1 million. The company combines drone-based geospatial data collection with a collaborative mapping SaaS platform for industrial and land-surveying use cases.
Hymalaia | €850K | 🗣️ AI Agents
Paris-based Hymalaia raised €850K in a Seed round backed by Akka, BNP Paribas, and Bpifrance. The company is building a secure enterprise AI platform that lets organizations deploy AI agents connected to their internal systems, with full auditability, explainability, and EU AI Act compliance built in ensuring that sensitive data never leaves the company's environment. .
Proclus | €1M | 🏗️ Construction
Proclus raised €1 million from SMA BTP and InvESS Île-de-France. The company specializes in recovering and reselling technical electrical equipment in the construction sector to extend the working life of material that would otherwise be discarded at the end of a project.
Novaleum | €1M | ♻️ Circular Economy
Lyon-based Novaleum raised just over €1 million from business angels complemented by bank financing and Bpifrance subsidies. A spin-off of Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University, the startup has developed a patented two-step process that separates fatty sludge from wastewater treatment plants into three streams: solid material for biogas production, oil for biofuel, and recycled water for industrial use. An industrial demonstrator at the Pierre-Bénite treatment plant near Lyon is planned for 2027.
Cosmyx | €1.3M | 🧱 Materials Manufacturing
Based in Épinay-sous-Sénart, Cosmyx raised €1.3 million in a Seed round with Paris Business Angels. The company makes high-speed industrial 3D printers purpose-built for sectors where standard machines are too slow or not robust enough like defense, aerospace, medical, and nuclear. They already hold contracts with the French armed forces and several industrial partners to use the technology. The funding will support commercial development, team-building, and international expansion.
Glimpact | €2.6M | 🌡️ Climate Tech
Based in Paris, Glimpact raised €2.6 million from Sparkalis in a Seed round that also formalizes a strategic partnership with Puratos, which already uses the platform internally. The company builds scientific-grade tools for measuring environmental impact across complex supply chains to give food manufacturers, textile companies, and other industrials auditable and reliable data instead of rough estimates. The funding will accelerate R&D and international expansion in Europe and the U.S
Plume | €3.3M | 🌡️ Climate Tech
Franco-American startup Plume raised €3.3 million in a seed round from AENU, Kima Ventures, RAISE Sherpas, Collaborative Fund, and Y Combinator. Founded at the end of 2024 by an ex-Palantir engineer, the company is building a geospatial AI platform that helps renewable energy developers find, assess, and permit project sites. The aim is to centralize regulatory documents and satellite data in one tool to compress a process that currently takes years down to weeks.
HrFlow.ai | €6M | 👥 HR Tech
Paris-based HrFlow.ai secured €6 million in a Pre-Series A round led by 115K (La Banque Postale's venture fund) and EmergingTech Ventures,with existing backers Xavier Niel and Jean-Baptiste Rudelle (Criteo) participating. The company runs an API-first platform that processes, parses, and standardizes HR data using AI to power more than 1,000 customers including HR software publishers, staffing agencies, and large employers. The round targets aggressive US commercial expansion alongside deepening its European footprint in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, and Italy.
Mirabelle | €6M | 💳 Fintech
Paris-based Mirabelle raised €6 million in seed funding from Inter Invest, Mindstone, Renée Costes, OCIRP, Intériale, and business angels and simultaneously received its ACPR license (Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution) as a financing company. The startup offers prêts viagers hypothécaires: mortgage-backed loans that let retirees unlock the value of their property without selling, financing retirement projects and home adaptation. Half the capital goes to commercial deployment and hiring while the other half will bolster the equity base the ACPR license requires.
Hepta Medical | €10M | 🩺 Medtech
Hepta Medical closed a €10 million Series A round led by UI Investissements and Supernova Invest with M&L Healthcare, Cléry, and MD Start joining the round. The company makes a flexible microwave ablation catheter with a patented built-in tissue temperature sensor that gives surgeons real-time feedback during treatment of early-stage lung cancer.
Donecle | €10M | 🚁 Drone Tech
Toulouse-based Donecle raised €10 million from IRDI Capital Investissement and SWEN Capital Partners with GSO Innovation and ARIS Occitanie joining, to grow its drone-and-AI aircraft inspection platform. The ten-year-old company operates 40+ drones across 15 countries with certifications already in hand from Airbus, Boeing, EASA, and the FAA and a customer lift that includes United, Lufthansa, DHL, LATAM, and the French and Royal Air Forces. Donecle claims inspections using their tools are up to ten times faster than manual methods. The round will fund international expansion into Europe and the US.
Agriodor | €15M | 🌾 Agritech
Rennes-based Agriodor raised €15 million in a Series A round led by Crédit Mutuel Impact alongside Région Sud Invest, CAAP Création, and existing investors Capagro, Ambra Capital, and SWEN Capital Partners. A spin-off of INRAE, the company protects crops from aphids and fruit flies by diffusing fragrances that mimic the natural scent signals plants use to repel insects as an alternative to chemical pesticides. With 42 employees, 8 PhDs, and 8 patents across three families, the funding will go toward international expansion of a technology now ten years in the making.
Upcoming Events 🗓
Building your MVP in the age of AI – April 21
AI Circle Paris: Kill the PR? How AI is Rewriting the SDLC – April 22
Build Your First AI Agent | Dust x Paatch – April 22
FIA x Microsoft x Avalon (5ᵉ Afterwork FIA) – April 23
Claude Code for Everyone | Building The Agentic Company of the Future – April 23
Paris Fintech Hackathon: Solve with AI – April 25
🆕 AI in GTM: Steal the playbook from SF's fastest-growing startups — April 27
🆕 Paris | Claude Code for Developers — April 27
James Vincent: The power of storytelling for founders – April 28
🆕 Levée de fonds vs Bootstrap — Etienne Genvrin (Emma) vs. Wilfried Granier (Superprof) — April 28
🆕 Pitch Roast #1: Pitch your startup to a Kima Ventures investor — April 30
🆕 Physical AI Happy Hour: Paris — May 4
🆕 MCP Connect Paris — May 6
European Defense Tech Meetup, Paris – May 19
Contech Connect @ Station F – May 28
VivaTech 2026 – June 17-20
INSEAD AI Forum, Paris – June 22-23
INSEAD LaunchPad Demo Day – June 30
Interesting Jobs 👩💻
What Else I’m Reading 📚
Numb at Burning Man (Sam Kriss)
The Ozempicization of the Economy (Kyla Scanlon)
How to engineer luck (George Mack)
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