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.

C’est quel jour aujourd’hui? 📆

I had to check my calendar last week to make sure I hadn’t traveled back to 2021. With headlines like Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high and the biggest funding round in France going to a blockchain cryptography startup, you’ll start to understand why. On the off chance we did exit a wormhole back to 2021, this month will be a fun one…

No matter when we currently are for real, I wouldn’t be surprised if the second half of 2024 looks more like 2021 for crypto and blockchain businesses.

As AI claimed the king-of-hype crown formerly worn by the countless crypto projects launched in the early 2020s, the crypto space retreated back under the radar over the last two years. I believe this has been a good change for the sector. There’s no better way to rid an ecosystem of get-rich-quick scammers than by removing the “get-rich” and “quick” parts of that equation. And there were. a. lot. of. those.

Just as importantly, the long crypto winter has flushed the space of founders and startups who probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The companies and teams who endured did so for a reason, and we should see more solid businesses that have been quietly building emerge in this space.

And with that, let’s jump into this week’s update!

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

Acquisitions, expansions, and €500M contracts. Here’s the rundown of this week’s top headlines.

• 🤝 Qonto acquires financial management startup Regate: just last month we talked about how French business-banking unicorn Qonto was gearing up for new acquisitions. It appears buying season has begun.

• 🦾 Hugging Face is expanding into robotics: with one simple Twitter bio change, former Tesla researcher and Hugging Face new-hire Remi Cadene revealed to the world that Hugging Face is entering the robotics space.

• 🇪🇺 French Defense Agency awards €500M to build quantum computers: recipients Alice & Bob, C12, Pasqal, Quandela, and Quobly are tasked with developing two universal quantum computing prototypes by 2032.

Across the English Channel, 9-year-old neo-bank Monzo raised €393 million at a valuation north of €4 billion. I’m still waiting to see if French dominance in business banking, with startups like Qonto and Shine rapidly expanding their services for SMEs, will eventually expand to consumer banking innovation as well.

As a quick side note, I first learned of Monzo in 2019 when I was working on advertising for a major US bank. At the time, there was a flurry of concern over Monzo’s imminent US rollout. 5 years later, that rollout is still in progress, making it less of a launch and more of a stumble into the US market.

New Funding 💶

6 companies announced €89.5M in the last week. *editor’s note, I do my best to track down all of these deals the week they happen but occasionally miss deals that get announced late or fly under the radar. The final number of deals from the last 7 days may be higher.

Events This Month 🗓

• March 18 – March 22: Deep Tech Days Global Summit

• March 29th, 14h – 19h: Meet French Start-Ups Recruiting for the World of Tomorrow

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• Perplexity AI is set to double its valuation to $1 billion 2 months after raising its Series B. Are things getting a bit silly? 🤷‍♂️ (Crunchbase)

• Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people after it laid off 700 people (Fast Company)

• The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (Michael Lewis)

• What Would $5,000 Invested in Nvidia Be Worth Today? (Visual Capitalist)