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.

Hello 2025 🥳

Is it too late to say happy new year? Whether it is or isn’t, welcome back to the first weekly newsletter edition of French Tech Updates this year 🎉.

January can be an unpredictable time in startup world. Last year, the month started off sluggishly, until EV charging scale-up Electra swept in during the final days of the month with a massive €304 million round that proved to be one of the largest of the year.

This year has kicked off a bit faster in France, with several deals over €20 million already closing in the opening weeks. It’s also seen the kidnapping and subsequent rescue of Ledger founder Daniel Balland and his wife…so that’s something different.

In this week’s edition we have more funding announcements, VC turmoil, and even an IPO in France. Without further ado, let’s get into this week’s update.

📝 Quiz: Bpifrance was amongst the top 10 most active investors last year in rounds sized $3M+. Who were the top 3 investors on the list?

(answer at the bottom of the newsletter)

• A.) Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, General Catalyst

• B.) Alumni Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Bpifrance

• C.) Index Ventures, Accel, Khosla Ventures

• D.) Google Ventures, Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

• 🎁 French Tech grant increases from €30K to €50K: the maximum amount for La Bourse French Tech, available for companies less than one year old, has been raised 67% by Bpifrance.

• 🇺🇸 Prominent French VC Jean de La Rochebrochard joins US-based Cassius fund: Rochebrochard remains a key figure at Xavier Niel’s Kima fund where he manages one of the most active sources of VC investment in France.

• 🔔 Younited goes public, marking the first Euronext Paris listing of 2025: the consumer credit company raised €152.6 million in the IPO, which took place simultaneously on the Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam exchanges.

• 🇪🇺 EU Inc. petition in favor of a pan-European corporate legal structure gains support at Davos: future legislation on the topic would aim to simplify scaling across EU’s single market—potentially retaining more European founders who are tempted to move elsewhere to build their businesses.

• 🌱 Climate-focused startup studio 4elements raises €27.4 million: The funding, which largely came from government sources, will be used to create and support 10 new companies over the next five years.

🌍 Headlines from around the world

• 🛫 a16z is closing its UK office (Sifted)

• 🇨🇳 DeepSeek’s AI model sends tech stocks crashing (Barron’s)

• 🤝 Perplexity has acquired LinkedIn competitor Read.cv (Techcrunch)

• 🙈 US TikTok ban delayed but the app’s future remains uncertain (BBC)

• 🤖 $500 billion Stargate joint-venture sets out to build the largest AI infrastructure network in the world (The Decoder)

• 🐝 Whitney Wolfe Herd will return as CEO of Bumble 1-year after leaving (The Verge)

• 🥵 The US intends to leave the Paris Climate Agreement…again (The Guardian)

• 💰 Anthropic has reportedly raised an additional $1 billion from Google (Financial Times)

Startup To Watch: Localista 👀

How does a founder go from building in food tech to working as a early employee at a US-based pet health startup to launching an event marketing business in France? When Lana Kazzaz, co-founder of Localista, describes the journey it actually makes a lot of sense.

After returning to France in 2024 following five years running Go-To-Market for Pawp, Lana set out to create a company in food tech. During the process of meeting potential co-founders with she was introduced to Rebecca Laub and Lucien George—each of whom were working on their own projects at the time, including a consumer events application. While consumers were hesitant to pay for the service, several businesses had contacted Rebecca about paying for a professional use case.

After interviewing more than 100 potentials, Lana, Rebecca, and Lucien were sure they had a promising opportunity in front of them. As Lana told me, “everyone was complaining about the B2B offers in the market. Many companies with big budgets for events had no way of measuring the ROI on their investment.”

What the trio of co-founders found was a “missing middle” market, where existing companies in the event space had created tools built for consumers and tools intended for huge events and conferences but nothing in between.

Localista is now filling this gap and has already worked with prominent businesses in fintech, education, and B2B software since launching last March.

Focusing on these underserved audiences is a great start, but what really excites me about Localista is how they’re pushing the product roadmap.

The first part of this roadmap starts with recapturing data from events. According to Localista’s research, 40% of data at events is lost—resulting in missed leads, undiscovered customer insights, and an inaccurate picture of event performance. With Localista’s built in smart forms, scanning tool for contact information, and voice note recorder to automatically transcribe conversations they are helping their customers recapture this critical data.

Localista then helps their customers accurately measure ROI on events—enabling better collaboration between marketing and sales for post-event follow ups and helping event planners better plan and allocate event budgets.

“Tech is realizing events are a very powerful conversion tool and part of their sales strategy,” said Lana, “any company with a button on their website that says ‘talk to sales’ is selling a complex product that’s easier sold through conversations.” For the thousands of companies that match that description, Localista is building the future of how they create, manage, and optimize those conversations—all of which makes Localista a startup to watch.

New Funding 💶

6 companies raised €209.75M in the last week including €750K by Wellow (co-living).

Upcoming Events 🗓

• Startup Marketing 101 (virtual) – January 30

• Data & Transparency: Building Trust in the Crypto Ecosystem – January 30

• How Qonto Builds With AI – January 30

• Founders Running Club – February 1

• Digital Trust Day at Station F – February 6

• Backlash ESG : Quel avenir pour la finance durable ? – February 6

• Early Builders, From early employees to C-levels: Story of Partoo – February 13

• Techstars Climate Coffee in Paris – February 13

• AI Agent Day at NFT Paris – February 15

• Community Apero at Climate House – February 26

Interesting Jobs 👩‍💻

• 👩‍💻 Product Manager @ ManoMano

• ⚒️ Staff Product Manager Payments & Fraud @ Back Market

• 👨‍🚀 Head of Production @ Exotrail

• 🧰 Lead Product Manager @ Naboo

• 🇪🇺 EU Partnership Manager @ Aria

• 🤖 Head of Product Legal & AI @ Qonto (referral link)

• 🌐 Head of IT @ Bioptimus

• 🗂️ HR Project Manager @ Swan

• 🎓 Business Development Internship @ sunday

• 📈 Product Marketing Director @ Sage Active

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• Will Europe see any tech IPOs in 2025? Here are the next candidates (Sifted)

• Six decades later you can once again interact with Eliza—the world’s first chat bot (The Decoder)

• Mistral is not for sale (Bloomberg)

• Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (Brian Klaas)

• “Nobody Knows Anything,” Wall Street Strategist Edition (Barry Ritholtz)

• Fake Job Postings Are Becoming a Real Problem (WSJ)

Quiz Answer: A.) Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, General Catalyst