In honour of Bastille Day, here’s a list of some of the exciting French start-ups lighting up the tech world.
Today (14 July), France is celebrating Bastille Day to commemorate the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison, a key moment in the French revolution.
236 years later, France is the seventh largest economy in the world with a flourishing start-up scene supported by the country’s government, as well as from the EU.
In honour of the day, SiliconRepublic.com has put together a list of seven French start-ups that celebrated their own victories in recent months.
Solence
Co-founded by Mael Mertad and Clara Stephenson, a former Ernst Young corporate lawyer and brain behind Les Natives, a polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) blog, Solence claims to be the first AI-driven digital therapeutics start-up aimed at improving PCOS symptoms.
The French femtech, founded in 2022, recently bagged €1.6m in a seed round led by Shakers Ventures, as well as from angel investors, including the founder of Leetchi, Mangopay and Resilience Céline Lazorthes, former JP Morgan Berthe Latreille, Systemanova VC founder Stephane Mardel and BPI France.
Stephenson’s start-up aims to make personalised and patient-centric care available to all who suffer with PCOS, with the ultimate goal of reducing the burden of this chronic and painful condition.
The start-up’s first product is a patient app designed to help relieve PCOS symptoms through personalised lifestyle intervention. The latest funding is set to go towards deepening the product’s functionality and expanding the team.
Bioptimus
This Paris-based start-up raised $41m earlier this year to develop what it claims is the world’s first universal foundation AI model for biology.
Bioptimus was founded in 2024 by Dr Rodolphe Jenatton, Dr Zelda Mariet, Dr Felipe Llinares, David Cahané, Dr Eric Durand and CEO Dr Jean-Philippe Vert.
The start-up aims to create the world’s first-ever universal AI foundation model that connects biological data at different scales, ranging from molecules to cells, tissues and even entire organisms.
The latest round takes Bioptimus’ total raise to $76m and comes after the company launched its AI foundation model for pathology last July.
The company intends to use the funds to enhance its platform, integrate more diverse data sources and forge strategic partnerships with pharma and biotech companies.
Skynopy
Skynopy is a Paris-based space-tech that provides ground station services for low Earth orbit satellites. Earlier this year, the start-up raised €15m in a fundraising round, which came less than two years after the company was established.
The funding round was supported by Alven, Expansion Venture Capital, Omnes Capital, Heartcore Capital and CNES via the SpaceFounders program.
The start-up intends to use the fresh infusion to deploy a large-scale network of ground stations to meet the growing demand for data downlink services.
“The first thing [satellite operators] want is fresher data. They want the ability to download that data as fast as possible, as frequently as possible,” cofounder and CEO Pierre Bertrand told the outlet Payload.
Arago
This deep-tech start-up, which creates energy-efficient AI chips powered by light, recently raised $26m in a seed funding round to speed up commercialising its photonic processor.
The company’s photonic processor, called JEF, processes data using lasers instead of transistors. The result is a process that produces less heat and therefore consumes less energy while producing similar results as other methods.
The oversubscribed seed round was co-led by Earlybird, Protagonist and Visionaries Tomorrow, along with several angel investors.
The start-up was founded by Nicolas Muller, Eliott Sarrey and Ambroise Müller in 2024, who have already amassed a team of 20 experts in less than a year since establishing.
Tandem
This Paris-based start-up builds in-app AI agents that assist users in getting tasks done. Last week, it bagged €3.2m in a seed round led by Tribe Capital to expand services and open a US headquarters in San Francisco.
Founded in 2024 by Christophe Barre and Manuel Darcemont, Tandem completes tasks for software users with in-product AI.
According to the company, 64pc of new users never activate advanced features, with users dropping off before enterprises can extract value.
“Users shouldn’t have to learn a product before they can use it. We built Tandem because too many valuable features go unused, and users don’t need more explanations of how to use them – they just need the ability to act,” said Barre, who is also the company’s CEO.
Parallel
Parallel is building AI agents for healthcare providers. The start-up recently raised $3.5m in seed funding led by Frst with participation from Y Combinator, BPI France, Kima Ventures and Better Angle.
Parallel aims to reduce the administrative burden in hospitals by building AI agents that automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
The start-up’s AI agents can read clinical documentation, identify the appropriate codes and input them directly into hospital systems. This enables hospitals to streamline operations and free up medical staff for more valuable work.
It aims to use the latest funding to grow its engineering team, accelerate hospital deployments and lay the foundations for the next generation of its AI agents.
Zama
This open-source cryptography start-up specialises in fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).
It recently raised $57m in a Series B round co-led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital. With the raise, Zama became the world’s first unicorn in the FHE space.
According to the company co-founder and CEO Rand Hindi, the fundraising round was structured to bring strategic blockchain investors into Zama’s ecosystem.
Moreover, the start-ups funding announcement also coincided with the launch of its confidential blockchain protocol and its public testnet, which Paul Veradittakit, managing partner at Pantera said would allow for secure, compliant and verifiable decentralised apps for AI, crypto and cloud.
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