France is now one of Europe's most active VC markets, and investors are more selective than ever. This list cuts through the noise: 10 French AI startups personally chosen by leading partners at firms including Eurazeo, Kima Ventures, Serena, Breega, and Singular. Download the full version to discover all 48 companies chosen by 16 of France’s top venture capitalists.
Over the past few years, the French startup ecosystem has experienced explosive growth. Investors are evaluating well over 1,000 companies in a single year, highlighting an intense grind mentality and a highly competitive market. Yet, despite the competition to win the best deals, there is a remarkably strong culture of information sharing among French VCs.
Understanding which companies are capturing the attention of top investors can give you a significant edge, whether you are looking for new software solutions, investment opportunities, or market trends. In this listicle, we highlight 10 standout AI startups handpicked by leading French VCs. These aren’t just the companies with the highest projected revenue; they are the innovative “chouchous” (favorites) pushing the boundaries of AI, healthcare, fintech, and more. Read on to discover the startups shaping the future and learn how their breakthrough technologies can impact your business.
Startup: Joko
Year Founded: 2018
Total Funding: €11.7M
What it does:
Joko is a free platform that helps people save money and earn rewards while shopping. Through Joko, users can get cashback on purchases (online, in stores, or with gift cards), automatically apply coupon codes at checkout, track prices, store loyalty cards, and manage deals all in one place, either via a mobile app or with browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
Why it was selected:
François-Poncet: “Joko is one of the most convincing consumer fintech companies to have emerged in France in recent years. The company has surpassed 5 million users and works with more than 3,500 merchant partners, and has successfully moved well beyond its initial cashback positioning. What stands out in its trajectory is the way the product has evolved over time: from cashback to price comparison, promotions, and now a broader shopping experience built on a deep understanding of consumer transactions. This evolution has progressively positioned the product closer to the moment of purchase, which is where the real long-term value sits.”
Startup: AdaptiveML
Year Founded: 2023
Total Funding: $20M
What it does:
AdaptiveML helps enterprises customize, evaluate, and deploy LLMs for specific business use cases, rather than relying on generic models. Their main product, Adaptive Engine, uses techniques such as reinforcement learning and preference tuning to improve model accuracy, reduce errors (e.g., hallucinations), and continuously refine performance based on real user feedback, enabling tailored AI solutions across customer support, search, and analytics. The platform lets businesses measure, optimize, and serve AI in production with fine-tuned, domain-specific behavior.
Why it was selected:
Badalian: “They were early to build RLOps before it was obvious, and 2026 is when RL actually ships: fine-tuning is saturating, while RL is becoming necessary for long-running production systems & further down the line for frontier research such as continual learning.”
Startup: Dattak
Year Founded: 2021
Total Funding: €18M
What it does:
Dattak provides proactive cyber insurance that combines financial coverage with built-in cybersecurity monitoring, risk assessment, and 24/7 incident response to help businesses prevent and manage cyberattacks.
Why it was selected:
Deplus: “Pioneers like Dattak are fusing proactive cyber insurance with AI-driven SOC to align risk transfer and real-time defense. This integrated model is redefining how mid-market and enterprise customers manage cyber risk across the full breach lifecycle — before, during, and after an attack.”
Startup: Arcads AI
Year Founded: 2024
Total Funding: $16M
What it does:
Arcads is an AI‑powered creative platform that helps marketers, brands, and businesses automatically generate professional video ads and visuals from text prompts using a library of AI actors and creative tools. It’s designed to let teams produce social‑ready UGC‑style videos, product shots, and promotional content quickly and without traditional production costs.
Why it was selected:
Ha: “Arcads AI helps marketers ship high-performing videos with AI, and chances are that if you’ve scrolled on TikTok, Instagram... you’ve already seen one of their ads. Arcads is already used by top media buyers spending $100M+/year. Behind that traction is a relentless duo of founders who have bootstrapped multiple companies together and know the ins and outs of performance marketing.”
Startup: 10%
Year Founded: 2024
Total Funding: €2.4M
What it does:
10% is a cashback app and loyalty platform that lets consumers earn 10 % money-back on everyday purchases (supermarkets, pharmacies, online & in-store) by submitting proof of purchase, with no fees and a single unified experience, while giving brands a modern way to boost loyalty and access shopper data.
Why it was selected:
De Breucker: “Brands need a direct relationship with consumers. They often lack first-party data and simple ways to drive repeat purchases. 10% gives brands a measurable loyalty loop so they launch new products faster and learn what people actually buy.”
Startup: Annette
Year Founded: 20
Total Funding: €2M
What it does:
Annette is a digital health platform offering medically supervised weight‑loss support that combines GLP‑1 treatment evaluation, tailored nutrition and behavioral coaching, and continuous expert guidance through a mobile app to help users achieve and sustain long‑term results.
Why it was selected:
Mendes: “Annette is one of the most promising French startups because it is building the missing clinical infrastructure around GLP-1 obesity treatments. With 48.8% of adults in France affected by overweight or obesity, and prevalence potentially reaching 30% by 2030, chronic obesity is a major public health challenge. As GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro scale rapidly, poorly supervised use has led to weight regain and a lack of follow-up abroad. Annette addresses this gap through a clinical companion app combining medical, nutritional, and psychological support to ensure safe, long-term care. Annette is positioning itself at the core of a global obesity market projected to exceed $100B, making digital follow-up a critical layer of modern healthcare.”
Startup: Fipto
Year Founded: 2022
Total Funding: €15M
What it does:
Fifto is a B2B payment infrastructure platform that lets businesses send, receive, and convert stablecoins and fiat currencies globally in real time via a single API, combining regulated blockchain rails with multi-currency accounts and treasury tools for fast, secure, compliant cross-border payments.
Why it was selected:
Ast: “Fipto is Europe’s first stablecoin infrastructure provider to hold both Payment Institution and MiCA CASP licenses from the AMF. Their recent funding from stablecoin specialists validates their regulatory-first approach as crypto payment infrastructure matures.”
Startup: Certo
Year Founded: 2025
Total Funding: Undisclosed
What it does:
Certo is an AI‑powered product compliance and regulatory platform that helps consumer goods companies automate and scale regulatory checks — turning complex, evolving global rules, formulas, labels, marketing claims, and supplier docs into dynamic, audit‑ready compliance workflows so teams can launch products faster and with less risk.
Why it was selected:
Moureaux: “They combine rare domain depth in FMCG regulatory workflows with strong technical execution, and a very clear obsession with credibility and trust. In early conversations with large players like Chanel and Pierre Fabre, they’ve already shown both product intuition and founder-led sales maturity, which is often the hardest part to get right this early.”
Startup: Relief
Year Founded: 2024
Total Funding: €2.6M
What it does:
Relief is an AI‑powered quoting assistant that helps industrial and manufacturing teams automate and improve complex cost estimates and sales quotes, standardizing pricing rules, reducing errors, accelerating response times, and boosting conversion and margins through intelligent, data‑driven quote generation.
Why it was selected:
Garnier: “Industrial pricing is a massive market, and Relief is tackling a real business challenge: helping manufacturers better estimate and optimize their quotes while protecting their margins in increasingly complex environments.”
Startup: SporeBio
Year Founded: 2023
Total Funding: $31.6M
What it does:
SporeBio is developing AI‑powered, rapid microbiology testing technology that dramatically shortens pathogen and contamination detection from days to near-real time. This enables manufacturers across food, beverage, pharma, cosmetics, and other industries to perform on-site quality control and safety analysis using advanced machine learning and photonic sensing.
Why it was selected:
Larbey: “The Silent Pandemic will kill millions as pathogens spread undetected across our food, water, and medicines — yet microbiology testing has been stuck in the Petri dish era for 150 years; Spore is finally breaking that paradigm with deep learning-enhanced biophotonics to detect contamination in near real-time, before it’s too late. The market is gigantic.”
Want to see the full list? Download our report highlighting the AI startups personally selected by 16 investors from 16 firms in France.
The French ecosystem has benefited from strong government support, a high concentration of engineering talent, and an increasingly collaborative culture among venture capitalists who actively share information and co-invest.
These startups were handpicked by 16 leading venture capitalists in France. They were chosen not strictly based on the highest projected revenue, but because they are the “chouchous” (favorites) these investors believe are doing something truly innovative and worth watching in 2026.
Generative AI, applied AI in healthcare (like precision oncology and biomarker tracking), proactive cybersecurity, and infrastructure for digital payments and stablecoins are currently seeing massive momentum and funding in France.
This article only covers 10 of the 48 startups selected by the participating VCs. You can access the complete list and deeper investor insights by downloading our full-featured ebook.
Ben Ahrens
Philipp Hödl
Angie Chan
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