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.

Love for France on Valentine’s Day ❤️

Maybe it’s fitting that a country famed for its romanticism got a lot of love last week. Sifted identified their list of 12 French “soonicorns”, current French unicorn Alan surpassed €350M in revenue, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai visited Paris to open Google’s new AI research lab.

Elsewhere in Europe and around the world, OpenAI hit a $2 billion revenue run rate and launched a new text-to-video model, Dutch SME and freelancer neo-bank Finom raised €50M amid plans to expand further into France, and EV progress takes a “volt-face” complete with new car troubles and an ongoing global EV sell-off.

Lastly, Sequoia’s 7-week-long Arc program is accepting applications for the Spring ‘24 cohort until next Sunday. Don’t miss the chance to apply!

Before we get into the latest updates I have one small personal request. This newsletter takes 3+ hours each week to write. If you enjoy it, I would greatly appreciate if you could forward this edition to anyone who may also find it interesting 🙏.

Now, let’s jump into this week’s update!

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

• 🤖 Google-backed AI research lab opens in France: CEO Sundar Pichai even attended the opening, but the move is a bit of a PR stunt to show Google is taking AI seriously. The institute will host 300 researchers who were already working at smaller Google offices around Paris dating back to 2018.

• 📱iMessage dodges the EU’s Digital Markets Act: which means you can still give your non-iPhone friends a hard time for the green bubble chats. Along with Microsoft Edge and Bing, iMessage will not need to become interoperable with other messaging systems. Meta’s WhatsApp and Messenger weren’t so fortunate and will have to comply with the new regulation.

• 🌍 STATION F launches international startup program: The world’s largest startup campus will welcome international startups from as little as 2 weeks up to a year. The first ten participants have already arrived through a partnership with South Korea.

• 🇫🇷 Marina Ferrari announced as new Secretary of State in charge of Digital: with AI regulation looming and pressure to protect and develop France’s emerging tech ecosystem her work is cut out for her. This excellent article linked above from Maddyness goes into all of the details.

Startup To Watch – Roundtable 👀

Despite a population 1.5X the size of the US and a higher number of new startups founded last year, European companies only managed to raise €48 billion in 2023 compared to €128 billion in the US. There are many factors at play behind this 62% difference, but one of them is the US’ thriving angel investor community.

US-based companies like 14-year-old AngelList simplify the angel investing process, making it quicker to raise and deploy capital and manage investments. This streamlining enabled 6,000 startups to raise €2B through AngelList year.

While that’s great for American investors and startups, AngelList does not support deals in Europe and has no plans to change that. 

Roundtable is a 3-year-old French startup aiming to fill this gap and then some with its community-based platform for private market investments. With Roundtable, investors can raise and deploy capital, manage documentation, collect carried interest, and distribute gains all in one place. Roundtable supports special purpose vehicles for 1-off investments, syndicates for multiple deals, new VC funds, and tools for founders to raise capital or clean up their existing cap table.

Co-founders Evan Testa, Julien Fissette, and Simon Ternoir within startup studio Hexa in 2021. Since then, they have supported over 350 deals across 12 countries and even raised their own €3M seed round through the platform. 

What excites me about Roundtable isn’t just the vital capital gap they’re helping to close for European startups. They’ve gone one step further in embracing the community aspect of investing—enabling investors to share ideas and deal flow and strengthen the presence of angels, syndicates, and emerging funds across Europe. All of which makes Roundtable a startup to watch in 2024.

New Funding 💶

Two companies raised €12M in announced funding last week. Eversend (payments) Bfore AI (cybersecurity), elba (cybersecurity), and DIAGNOLY (health-tech) also raised unknown amounts.

Events This Month 🗓

• February 21, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM: Software Engineers of Station F Meetup

• February 27, 6:45 PM —10:00 PM: FoodHack Paris, The Future of Food Innovation

What Else I’m Reading 📚

More links than usual. Blame it on the Olympics 🤷‍♂️. The metro line 14 in Paris is closed—doubling the length of my commute and giving me lots of time to read this week.

• The sudden repricing of startups in early 2024 (Tomasz Tunguz)

• These 12 startups could be France’s next unicorns (Sifted)

• How France bolstered its startup ecosystem (Tech Informed)

• Interview with France Digitale CEO Maya Noël (The French Tech Journal)

• 2024 State of Fintech (Fintech Prime Time)

• The “endshitification” of TikTok (Wired)

• Station F director Roxanne Varza on AI, exits, and keeping French founders in France (Sifted)

• EU plan for critical technologies ends up as a shadow of the promised sovereignty fund (Science Business)

• Plan For Europe's Huge New Particle Collider Takes Shape (Barron’s)

• Fundraising gap in Impact Growth Equity, interview with Partech’s Rémi Said (August Solliv)

• How are open-source foundation models ever going to make money? (Ryan Shannon)