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- 🇫🇷 French Tech Updates — February 10, 2026. €178.1M in new funding for French companies.
🇫🇷 French Tech Updates — February 10, 2026. €178.1M in new funding for French companies.
What you need to know this week in France: 🌱 Meet the new €132M climate focused VC, ✂️ France 2030 cuts in 2026, 😎 more Macron memes.
James Saulsky
February 10, 2026
What you need to know this week in France:
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 🇫🇷
Emmanuel Macron broke containment and entered the international memeosphere again over the weekend—but this time for all the wrong reasons.
What was supposed to be a positive announcement about 40 international researchers relocating to France and receiving €30 million to fund their work quickly devolved into a roast of Macron, France, and French startups.
France’s Yann LeCun (Meta / AMI Labs) and the US’ Palmer Luckey (Oculus / Anduril) even got into this super strange “dude” off in the replies section.
All of this is just…weird?
The crux of the criticisms boil down to some variation of “hahaha €30 million?! That’s what Google spends on CapEx in under 2 hours! Have fun finishing last in the AI race losers.”
Which entirely misses the point. Macron didn’t announce €30 million for AI infrastructure, training, or research. The €30 million is part of a broader push to advance scientific research in Europe—directly in response to Trump’s punitive measures against US-based research institutions last year.
Choose France for Science, the initiative this funding comes from, lists seven broad research categories and AI is only one of them.
It seems the AI hype fog has clouded our brains so much that we’ve forgotten there are other forms of valuable research beyond training AI models.
AI is important and we should have a broader discussion about what “winning” looks like (and what state-sourced funding is required to get there). But AI isn’t the only area worth researching. Living healthier lives, growing enough food, combating climate change, and advancing sustainable ways to produce more energy are all worthy causes and are all focus areas for the €30 million in research funding.
And with that, let’s dive into what you need to know from last week.
There’s a new Paris-based climate VC on the scene and they just closed a €132 million fund—a solid number in a venture market where "climate tech" has become something of a forbidden territory. Confirmed LPs include EIF, Bpifrance, and BNP Paribas.
Slate’s plan is to back European companies at the Series A to C stage where going green also shows up as greener better margins. To make this dual mandate, Slate’s founding team is focusing on sectors like energy, industrial decarbonization, and circularity where efficiency gains and emissions cuts can align to contribute to the same goals.
Slate aims to eventually raise a total of €250M and has already made two investments: Fairmat (recycled carbon fiber) and Resourcify (circular economy).
After another lengthy and acrimonious political battle, France finally has passed a budget for 2026. While the worst fears of the startup community were avoided, the new budget cuts France 2030’s funding allocation this year by €1.1 billion— a heavy blow at a time when the pace of innovation and heavy AI spending seems to be accelerating globally. Committed funding for France’s €54 billion innovation fund will remain untouched.
Elsewhere, french tech has dodged several bullets (Matrix style) across a variety of acronyms with the research tax credit (CIR) and Young Innovative Company (JEI) designation remaining untouched, a loosening of the rules for BSPCE employee ownership programs, and an extension of the CICo research tax credit until the end of 2028.
🙋♂️ Quiz: What was the total value of exits in 2025 for French startups and scale-ups?
(answer at the bottom of the newsletter)
A.) €753 million
B.) €2.1 billion
C.) €5.3 billion
D.) €9.6 billion
🌍 Headlines from around the world
🗣️ Voice AI leader ElevenLabs raised $500M at a whopping $11 billion valuation (ElevenLabs)
📡 SpaceX acquires xAI (TechCrunch)
📱 French 2nd hand marketplace Back Market is now profitable (Maddyness)
🚔 French police and Europol searched X's Paris office (TechCrunch)
🔰 French Insurtech Alan is reportedly fundraising at a €5 billion valuation (Bloomberg)
👩⚖️ TikTok’s 'addictive' design breaches EU law, European Commission says (EU News)
🙈 Documents reveal Jeffrey Epstein invested in Coinbase, Thiel venture fund, and other startups (NYT)
💽 Intel is getting into the GPU game (TechCrunch)
New Funding 💶
12 companies announced €178.1M in new funding last week across 10 industries.
Presage | €1.2M | ↔️ B2B Software
Paris-based Presage raised €1.2 million from Kima Ventures, welovefounders, and Boost10x to bring its product into real-world cloud deployments. The startup builds software that lets engineering teams test “what if” scenarios on their cloud systems before making changes, instead of finding out after something breaks. In a world where cloud infrastructure is becoming increasingly complex predicting failures in advance can save companies meaningful downtime and money.
Entent | €2.4M | 🏭 Industrial Tech
The 8-year-old Aix-en-Provence-based startup raised €2.4 million from Team for the Planet, CAAP Création, and Sowefund. The company builds hardware that turns low-temperature waste heat, normally lost in factories, into electricity. Industrial sites typically waste huge amounts of energy every day, and recovering even a slice of it can cut emissions and energy bills at the same time.
DermaScan | €2.5M | 🏥 Health Tech
Paris-based DermaScan raised €2.5 million in a Seed round from Hexa, Ring Capital, Kima Ventures, Techmind, and several business angels to expand early skin cancer screening in France. The company runs dedicated screening centers that quickly check patients for suspicious skin lesions and refer only the risky cases to dermatologists— a model that is gaining traction because it tackles the bottleneck of long wait times for cancers where early detection is critical for survival.
Geolinks | €6M | ⚡ Renewable Energy
Geolinks raised €6 million from InnoEnergy, Bpifrance, BRGM Invest, and Calderion to industrialize its subsurface modeling software. The company helps industries “see” underground in near real time to improve how mining projects, CO₂ storage sites, and natural hydrogen resources are managed.
Dionymer | €7M | 🏭 Materials Manufacturing
Bordeaux based Dionymer raised a €7 million Seed round to bring its biodegradable plastics closer to industrial scale. The company turns biowaste into polymer materials that can replace traditional petrochemical plastics in products like cosmetics packaging, coatings, and textiles.
Bobine | €7.5M | ♻️ Circular Economy
Bobine raised €7.5 million in equity funding as part of a €13 million round to industrialize its plastic recycling technology. The company uses electricity instead of fossil-fuel heat to recycle plastics that are currently burned or buried because they are too hard to process.
UBEES | €8M | 🚜 Agritech
UBEES raised €8 million in a Series A round co-led by Starquest and Capagro, with Newtree Impact also participating. Founded in 2017, the company helps farmers increase crop yields by placing and managing beehives on their fields and tracking how well crops are being pollinated. It’s an attempt to turn pollination, often ignored in farming strategies, into a measurable and profitable lever at a time when nearly half of the world’s bee population has disappeared.
Linkup | €8.5M | ↔️ B2B Software
Linkup raised €8.5 million ($10 million) in a Seed round led by Gradient to build a web search system designed specifically for AI systems. Instead of returning links like Google does for humans, Linkup gives AI models fresh, structured information they can actually use. As more AI tools depend on real-time data, fixing the “AI airplane mode” problem where models are stuck referencing outdated information is becoming a critical infrastructure need.
MyC | €10M | 🩺 Medtech
MyC raised €10 million in funding led by Hi Inov, with participation from IXO, Elaia, and OSS Ventures. The company provides software that helps large, multi-site industrial employers manage employee health, medical records, and regulatory compliance in high-risk environments.
Apmonia Therapeutics | €10M | 🧬 Biotech
Reims’ Apmonia Therapeutics raised €10 million in a funding round to move its lead cancer drug into early clinical trials. The startup is developing new treatments for solid tumors by targeting how cancer cells protect themselves inside the body, rather than attacking the tumor directly. .
Hublo | €40M | 🏥 HealthTech
Paris-based Hublo received a €40 million reinvestment from Revaia to support its next phase of growth. Founded in 2016, Hublo builds software that helps hospitals and care facilities manage staffing more easily, covering everything from recruitment to shift scheduling and internal mobility.
newcleo | €75M | ☢️ Nuclear Energy
Paris-based newcleo raised €75 million in new funding, bringing its total funding to €645 million raised since 2021. The company is developing advanced nuclear reactors and fuel systems with plans to build facilities in Nogent-sur-Seine and Chinon. The round stands out for its strong backing from industrial groups, underlining the broad commercial interest in next-generation nuclear.
Upcoming Events 🗓
France Digitale AI Day 2026 – February 10
🆕 Climat et municipales, Paris 2026 @ Climate House – February 10
Neurons and Peppers #3 AI Research Meetup – February 12
Modern Revenue Club #1 - Revenue Forward 2026 – February 12
World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF) – February 12-13
Paris Hardware Meetup | The New Defense Stack – February 17
🆕 OpenAI talk on HEC campus – February 17
Maddy Invest Awards – February 19
Interesting Jobs 👩💻
What Else I’m Reading 📚
Discover Magazine interview archive (Discover Magazine) – so much good stuff here across multiple disciplines. Found this after it was recommended by legendary investor Peter Kaufman.
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 (Rick Atkinson)
A Momentarily Comprehensive Guide to Prediction Markets (Aaron Miller) – especially relevant after the blitz of predictions market ads during the Super Bowl.
Techpresso Why you’ll like it: Daily updates on the latest tech and AI news in an easy-to-read format. Stay in the know while finishing your morning coffee. | A Smart Bear: Longform Why you’ll like it: Practical insights from building two unicorn companies, covering product, growth, prioritization, and much more. |
Quiz Answer: C.) €5.3 billion
According to Alexandre Dewez’s The State of the French Tech Ecosystem for 2025, this figure marks a 5 year low and a 65% decline vs. 2024.