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According to Atomico’s new State of European Tech 2022 report, France has taken the UK’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 finds for female founders recently closed €30m of an intended €100m 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 reach the €110m first close for its new €150m 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 €1m to €8m.
LPs include French conglomerates such as Orange, Publicis and Bpifrance, as well as newcomers including Fred Potter, founder of Netatmo, Yannis Yahiaoui, cofounder of Adot, Amirhossein Malekzadeh, cofounder of Logmatic, Grégoire Delpit, cofounder of ProcessOut, Patrick Asdaghi, founder of FoodCheri or Adrien Nussenbaum, cofounder 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), Jedox (software), industry 4.0 and logistics experts such Exotec (logistics), Braincube (manufacturing software), Forto (freight management), Spinergie (offshore), platforms such as Virtuo (mobility), Yubo (social) and data specialists like Talon.one (marketing), Red Points (brand protection) or Scality (cloud). Newer investments include Spinergie in France, Helu in Austria and 2 more to be announced early next year.