France’s startup scene is falling behind the US and Europe, and AI is both the cause and the cure

Cognition just raised $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation, and 90% of its own code is written by its AI

Stord raises $250 million to give independent brands the shipping speed they need to compete with Amazon

SPARQ opens $8.5M seed round for AI-native game engine, with a16z’s scout fund on the cap table

Avrea raises $4.7M to fix CI/CD before AI coding breaks it

Paris preventive-health startup Lucis raises $20M Series A four months after seed

Finland’s Quanscient raises €10M to build a quantum- and AI-native simulation platform

Primer secures $100M Series C to fuel US expansion and autonomous AI payments

This new app scans your clothes for PFAS, microplastics, and hidden toxins

Temasek-backed motif launches Clarity, an AI system that wants to give wealth platforms a brain

Italy’s Lexroom hits $73M total raised on $50M Series B for civil-law legal AI

Berlin’s LawX raises €7.5m to build the backoffice layer of legal AI

Fractile raises $220m to take its in-memory-compute inference chip into production

Webidoo raises $25m to build an ‘AI operating layer’ for small businesses

Rocsys raises $13M and launches the world’s first multi-bay hands-free robotaxi charging system

Exclusive: Synaps raises $3.6M to build an AI design canvas for architects that could challenge AutoCAD

AI recruiting startup Dex raises $5.3m seed to match AI engineers with the companies that need them most

All3 raises $25m to automate construction with legged robots and AI design software

True Anomaly raises $650 million as the only space startup exclusively focused on orbital defense

Patronus raises €11 million to turn senior emergency smartwatches from ‘bedside decoration’ into daily-worn devices

Redpine raises €6.8M led by NordicNinja to build a licensed data API for AI agents

French satellite startup Univity raises €27M Series A

NeoCognition raises $40M seed to build AI agents that specialise through experience rather than pre-training

Humble emerges from stealth with $24M and a cabless autonomous electric truck built to go dock-to-dock

OrangeQS raises €15M and brings hardware makers into the solution

VisioLab raises $11M to scale its AI-powered iPad checkout to stadiums, canteens, and campuses worldwide

Coral raises $12.5M to automate healthcare’s administrative back office

AlixLabs closes €15M Series A to commercialise the atomic etching technology

Synera raises $40M to bring agentic AI into engineering workflows at NASA, BMW, Airbus, and Hyundai

Helical closes $10M seed to turn bio foundation models into systems

France bets €500 million that quantum computing is the tech race Europe can finally win

Round raises $6M to automate the finance workflows that still require a human to press a button

Eight, the Portuguese dating app,is raising a €3M seed round

Maeconomy raises €1.5M to give building materials a digital identity

Serve First secures €5.7M to scale its AI-driven customer experience platform beyond the UK