According to Atomico’s new State of European Tech 2022 report, France has taken the U.K.’s title as the third largest listed tech nation, with Britain moving down to fourth. Nothing to do with Brexit, of course… Meanwhile, Sista, the Paris-based organisation which campaigns for more funds for female founders recently closed €30 million of an intended €100 million fund to power its aims. It would appear France is definitely on the rise in startup and VC terms.
Further evidence of this thesis has emerged this week with the news that France-based IRIS Capital has reached a €110 million first close for its new €150 million venture fund (IRIS Venture IV), and is planning to hold a second close in 3Q 2023.
The new fund will be seed and Series A investment focused, looking at France, Germany and across Europe. This is the fourth early-stage fund raised by IRIS. The fund will invest in seed and Series A rounds, from €1 million to €8 million.
LPs include French conglomerates such as Orange, Publicis and Bpifrance, as well as newcomers including Fred Potter, founder of Netatmo; Yannis Yahiaoui, co-founder of Adot; Amirhossein Malekzadeh, co-founder of Logmatic; Grégoire Delpit, co-founder of ProcessOut; Patrick Asdaghi, founder of FoodCheri; and Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder of Mirakl.
Commenting, Julien-David Nitlech, managing partners at IRIS, said in a statement: “With this new Seed and Early-stage fund we intend to pursue our successful journey of selecting, backing, and scaling differentiated tech platforms developed by out of the ordinary founders who know their market well. To do so, we have structured a new team of investors bearing our selective DNA and methods.”
To date, IRIS has invested in companies such as Shift Technology (insurtech), Talend (software), Kyriba (fintech), Lumapps (HR) and Jedox (software); industry 4.0 and logistics experts such Exotec (logistics), Braincube (manufacturing software), Forto (freight management) and Spinergie (offshore); platforms such as Virtuo (mobility) and Yubo (social); and data specialists like Talon.one (marketing), Red Points (brand protection) and Scality (cloud). Newer investments include Spinergie in France, Helu in Austria and two more to be announced early next year.