There are some ways nations can go about supporting their tech industries. In France it includes selecting a yearly cohort of 120 high-potential startups — the French Tech 120 — together with 40 personal corporations deemed as most promising, dubbed the Next40.
The French Secretary of State for the Digital Economy as of this yr, Marina Ferrari, revealed this yr’s laureates throughout VivaTech week in Paris. According to its promoters, this fifth class was essentially the most selective for the reason that inception of this system.
The French Tech Next40/120 program was first launched in 2019, and classes have been discovered alongside the best way, particularly when some unicorns turned out to be ZIRPicorns. Following suggestions from tech insiders, standards have modified, and half of the choice is now primarily based on income metrics, reasonably than fundraising.
As a end result, solely 28 of the French Tech 120 chosen in 2024 declare valuations of $1 billion or extra. On the opposite hand, La French Tech studies that the cohort collectively had a internet income of €10 billion in 2023, in contrast with €7.5 billion in 2022. Thirty-one corporations reported a internet income above €100 million.
In combination, this cohort reveals or confirms some attention-grabbing traits that France is driving, such because the rise of deep tech and AI. But it is usually price zooming in on new laureates of the Next40: If and when the IPO window reopens, the expectation could be for a few of these to go public and reinject long-awaited liquidity into the enterprise capital pipeline.
Without additional ado, right here’s the category of 2024, summed up in a single picture:
That’s not essentially the most digestible format, so let’s take a more in-depth take a look at newcomers.
Welcome to the membership(s)
Here are the businesses that joined the Next40 listing:
- AddGuests, the father or mother firm of BungalowSpecials and Campings.com, which had joined the French Tech 120 en 2023;
- ChapsVision, a B2B firm that positions itself as a specialist in sovereign knowledge processing;
- Ekwateur, a renewable power supplier that raised a mixture of enterprise capital and crowdfunding;
- Equativ, an adtech firm previously generally known as Smart AdServer that spun off Aufeminin;
- ilek, one other inexperienced power provider;
- Malt, a freelancer market energetic in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.Okay;
- Mistertemp’, a web-based short-term work company;
- Mistral AI, the open LLM rocketship that’s rumored to be elevating cash at a $6 billion valuation, 3 times its valuation in December;
- Pennylane, the accounting software program scaleup that grew to become a unicorn in February;
- Qair Group, yet another renewable power participant;
- Weezevent, a ticketing platform created in 2008.
It is spectacular, particularly, to see how briskly Mistral AI joined the identical listing as two-decade-old Weezevent. The AI firm solely not too long ago turned one, however Arthur Mensch and his co-founders are actually on the helm of one in every of France’s most promising corporations, and maybe ultimately a publicly listed one.
While that’s considerably implied by the “Next40” moniker alluding to France’s CAC 40, it’s too early to inform which of those will flip into IPO candidates and when or the place. In 2023, Euronext solely welcomed 64 new listings, down from 83 in 2022 and 212 in 2021.
Among the opposite 80 corporations that full the FrenchTech 120, new entrants are Adagio, AQEMIA, Braincube, Comet, DriiveMe, Ekimetrics, Exotrail, Flowdesk, Foodles, Greenly, HappyVore, Hoppen, iSupplier, La Fourche, Madbox, Moon Surgical, Mooncard, mylight150, Opteamis, Pasqal, PerfectStay, Planity, Shares, SiPearl, Swan, Umiami, Unseenlabs, Volta Medical, WAAT, WeMaintain and Worldia.
To our information, none of those startups is a unicorn (but). Then once more, possibly that ought to by no means have been the north star. Regardless, it will have been a tricky purpose to realize in latest months: Investment into French startups declined considerably final yr, from €13.49 billion in 2022 to €8.32 billion. According to EY, inexperienced…
