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.

Goodbye, January 👋 

Well, that was fast. One month of 2024 is behind us which saw French startups raise more than €600M, Paris-based Singular VC close a new €400M fund, and a farmer’s strike to end the month because it wouldn’t be France without at least one good old-fashioned protest.

For comparison, French startups raised €758M in January 2023 and €2.6B in January 2022. Will 2024 be more like last year or will the downtrend start to reverse? It’s still too early to tell, but the increased dry powder for VCs, both in and out of France, is an encouraging sign that the environment is shifting in a positive direction.

For more on the latest from France, let’s jump into this week’s update!

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

From farmer protests to new venture funds, here’s the rundown of this week’s top headlines.

• 🏃‍♂️ Speedinvest closes their fourth fund at €350M: The pan-European fund with offices in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, and Munich has backed more than 20 French startups and saw the number of pitches from French companies by over 25X since 2017.

• 🚜 Both major French farmer’s unions suspended their protests: But that doesn’t mean the disruptions will end. Across Europe, farmers continue to block roads in a show of outrage against hardening conditions they blame on everything from government sustainability efforts to unfair competition from abroad.

• 💶 Newfund launches NAEH2, a €15M regional fund: The fund will invest in 20 companies in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region at the pre-seed to seed stage with ticket sizes from €100K–€500K.

• VIVES IUF (Inter-University Fund) raised an additional €38M in capital: The fund now has a total of €70M to deploy into into early-stage financing to productize academic research, startups, and spinouts.

Startup To Watch – Pasqal 👀

While advancements in AI have captured much of the recent discussion around computing power, with GPU manufacturers like NVIDIA reaping the benefits, advancements in quantum computing have been quietly plugging away—largely in the background. 5-year-old French startup Pasqal is one of the companies leading these advancements but with some key differences from their competitors.

Quantum computing has the potential to drastically improve the speed and efficiency of computers. But, these advancements come at a cost. To maintain quantum entanglement, most quantum computers need to be kept extremely cold—at temperatures around absolute zero or -273 Celsius. Not exactly practical, or cheap, to do.

Pasqal has developed an alternative way of achieving the same computing power by using lasers to hold individual atoms in place in a process that can occur at room temperature. The technology Pasqal is developing has implications for a range of industries requiring intensive computing power including finance, energy, and yes, even artificial intelligence.

With more than €140M and a Nobel-prize-winning researcher on the founding team, Pasqal is well-positioned to push computing to places never before possible. And that certainly makes them a startup to watch.

New Funding 💶

14 French companies raised €76.8M in the last week *not including €25M invested by Eurazeo in perfume company Ex Nihlo.

Events This Month 🗓

• February 7, 10:00 AM: Regulating NFTs—Balancing Business Innovation and Risks

• February 14, 5:00 PM: A Conversation with Joe Lubin, CEO & Founder, Consensys

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

• February 28, 4:30 – 7:00 PM: From Zero to a Billion in 2 Years. Scaling Up with TikTok

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• 2023 State of The French Tech Ecosystem (Overlooked by Alexandre Dewez). I know I also shared this last week, but it’s worth reading the full report if you haven’t yet!

• Investing in the women’s economy as an impact VC (Impact Supporters). Key stats: only 10.4% of founders and 14.1% of general partners at VCs are female according to The European Investment Fund.

• The Unicorn Club 10 years later (Cowboy VC). An interesting analysis of global unicorns in 2023 vs. 2013. Last year, 532 unicorns around the world boasted a total valuation of $1.5 trillion—a staggering sum, especially considering unicorns are still rare, with less than 1% of all VC-backed startups ever reaching unicorn status.