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.

Welcome back 🏝

This week’s edition of the newsletter is going to be a little different from the usual format. August was a predictably slow month, with only 10 deals closed, as most of France slammed their laptops shut until September.

Whether you took advantage of the time off or not the French tech world is starting to return to the office this week and September promises to be a much busier month as the 2nd half of the year truly kicks off.

To help you adjust back to normal life, today I’ll be covering the top stories from the summer that you may have missed so you’re fully informed and ready for la rentrée.

With that, let’s jump into this week’s month’s update!

📝 Quiz: What was the median age of the athletes during the 2024 Olympic Games?

(answer at the bottom of the newsletter)

• A.) 17 years old

• B.) 21 years old

• C.) 26 years old

• D.) 29 years old

20 minute catchup – the 5 big stories from August ⏳

🚔 Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested near Paris: in a move that spurned shock and outrage around the world, the 39-year-old Russian billionaire was detained at Le Bourget Airport north of Paris and indicted on six charges related to illegal activity on Telegram. Durov, who holds French citizenship, has since been released on €5 million bail and is currently barred from leaving France.

😵 H looses 3 out of its 5 co-founders: back in May I wrote about H, then called Holistic, and the €185 million round the company raised before they even had a website. Now, in a surprising twist, 3/5 of the founding team have suddenly left the young startup. Former DeepMind researchers Julien Perolat, Karl Tuyls, and Daan Wierstra announced their departures with identical posts on LinkedIn, citing “operational and business disagreements between co-founders.”

🦄 Europe’s only nuclear unicorn is moving to France: Newcleo, currently based in the UK, is relocating its holding company to France. The move is reportedly intended to enable Newcleo to tap into additional funds in the EU as part of their latest fundraising effort.

📈 Morpho Labs raised €46.1 million: in the largest French fundraising round of the summer led by Ribbit Capital with participation from a16z, Coinbase Ventures, and others. The 3-year-old startup has created a decentralized borrowing and lending service built on Ethereum.

🤝 7-year-old Zeenea in acquisition talks with Indian tech giant: HLCSoftware, the software division of Indian IT giant HLCTech, announced their intent to purchase Paris-HQ’d Zeeenea for $26 million early in August. The deal is expected to close this month.

Events This Month 🗓

• French Tech Leader Series with Benjamin Chemla – September 9

• FDDAY – September 18

• Go Entrepreneurs Lyon – September 26

Interesting Jobs 👩‍💻

• 📈 Lead Product Growth - Multiplayer @ Photoroom

• 🔋 CMO @ Beev

• 👩‍🎨 Product Designer @ Joko

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• Will the billions in AI investment pay off? (Built In)

• French market snapshot (Pitchbook)

• European VC valuations report (Pitchbook)

• France’s most active pre-seed and seed investors (Sifted)

• French tech Q2 update (Dealroom)

• Who blew up Nordstream? (Wall Street Journal)

📝 Quiz answer: C.) 26 years old

Data on athlete’s ages is usually portrayed in a way that is intended to be funny, yet depressing. And, while it’s true that most Olympians are under 30, the distribution of their ages is actually way wider than I expected.

So, if you’re dream is to compete in the olympics maybe don’t give up just because you recently celebrated another birthday. For extra inspiration, just look to Kristen Faulkner, the 31-year-old former VC turned gold medalist who began competing just 6 years ago.

Surprisingly, skateboarding had one of the largest age gaps in any sport spanning from Zheng Haohao, the youngest Olympic athlete at just 11 years old, to the 50-year-old legend Andy Macdonald.

The equestrian events included the oldest athletes at the games, including 69-year-old Mary Hanna from Australia, who attended her 7th Olympic Games an alternate, and 65-year-old Juan Antonio Jimenez Cobo who competed for Spain.