Partech

On the ground and on the move! Our Africa strategy backs ambitious founders from seed to growth in building the technology infrastructure powering the next chapter in African markets. Since January, these are just a few notable milestones: - Happy Pay joined the portfolio with a $5M seed round - littlefish joined the portfolio with a $9.5M Series A round And beyond the portfolio: - We dropped our yearly Partech Africa Report - Tito Cookey-Gam joined Louis Furtwängler on the Term Sheet Tapes - Tidjane Deme joined Hélène Kohl on Le Podkast Now we're making haste to H2! Find out more about each of these achievements in the comments below!

Planting the next generation of industry leaders. 🌱 Our Seed strategy backs ambitious founders at the earliest stages, helping turn bold ideas into companies with the potential to reshape entire industries. Since January, these are just a few notable milestones: -         Modeinspect joined the portfolio with a $3.4M Seed round  -         Alassio joined the portfolio with a €2.6M Pre-Seed round -         hyground joined the portfolio with a €3M Pre-Seed round -         NPco joined the portfolio with a €6M Pre-Seed round -         Pennylane raised a €175M Series E round -         Oviva raised a $200M Series D round. -         OpsMill raised a $14M Series A round -         e-peas raised a €19.2M funding round That marks around €400M for early-stage innovation, and we’re only halfway through the year! Find out more about each of these achievements in the comments below! CC: Boris Golden, Alison Imbert, Romain Lavault, Ariadne Lemieux-Cumberlege, Moritz Steinbrecher

Our Venture team has already got a lot under their belt this year! ⚡ The Venture strategy backs European companies at Series A and Series B and provides hands-on support in building the next generation of category-defining technology. Since January, these are just a few notable milestones from the portfolio: - ABTasty joined forces with VWO and exited our portfolio - Qevlar AI joined the portfolio with $30M in funding - Smartness raised a $47M Series B round - Fresha reached unicorn status And on the fund side: - We picked up a major industry award - Simone Riva Violetta appeared on the Startuprad.io podcast and an article in Technology Magazine - Reza Malekzadeh joined Ahmed Achchak, Qevlar AI’s cofounder, on the EUVC podcast to discuss modern cybersecurity The first half of the year brought a new company, a record-breaking round, a unicorn, and lots more. We’re not done yet though, and H2 promises just as much momentum! Find out more about each of these achievements in the comments below! CC: Vivien Bovard, Philippe Collombel, Reza Malekzadeh, Julia Najman, Magda Posluszny, Simone Riva Violetta

Six months into the year and the Impact team has gone all out! 🫨 Our one-of-a-kind Impact strategy scales European B2B tech companies transforming global value chains across clean production, sustainable agriculture, construction, mobility, education, and digital health. Since January, these are just a few of our notable milestones: - FYLD joined the portfolio with a $41M Series B round - Semble joined the portfolio with a €35M Series C round - Flease joined the portfolio with a €13M Funding round And on the fund side: - The Partech Impact Growth Fund closed at €300M - Rémi Said, General Partner of our Impact Strategy, appeared on the aulium and Sowefund Podcasts Three new portfolio companies. Two podcast appearances. One major milestone. The first half of the year set the pace, now it’s onto the second! Find out more about each of these achievements in the comments below! CC Rémi Said, Arnaud Minvielle, Charlie Moussey, Pauline Lissavalid, Gwen (Minji) Kim

Fighting fire with fire! 🔥 Our own Reza Malekzadeh and portfolio founder Ahmed Achchak joined Andreas Munk Holm on the EUVC podcast to discuss how AI is reshaping cybersecurity and how dynamic, AI-accelerated solutions, such as Qevlar AI, are responding. As Réza explains, cyberattacks are no longer an ‘if,’ but a ‘when,’ with targets ranging from emerging startups to global corporations. That’s why outsiders of the established cybersecurity industry creating new solutions are more important than ever. Like Ahmed says, Qevlar replaces the outdated manual models of cybersecurity with dynamic AI assistants that go beyond freeing up analysts from their repetitive triage roles. They create systems that learn from each attack to automatically build a ‘self-healing’ security stance. Today, it’s the companies that execute fast, build trust through product exposure, and rethink the first principles with modern solutions that will win the war against cyberattackers. Catch the episode in the comments below! 

Happy Friday, Happy Pay! 🛍️ In emerging markets, consumer credit typically carries high interest rates and traditional lending often carries high costs. Traditional Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms have helped to fill the gap, but still operate as standalone payment methods bolted on at checkout. Enter Happy Pay. South-Africa based Happy Pay is one of the first closed-loop commerce ecosystems that connects discovery, advertising, payments and financing into a single platform. Its AI reads behavioural signals, transaction patterns, and context to match high-intent consumers with the right products. The result: strong conversion and some of the highest returns on marketing spend. But rather than charging merchants for impressions or clicks, Happy Pay monetises transactions, meaning advertising spend is directly tied to completed sales. That allows merchant spend to fund interest-free installment payments for consumers. Since being founded in 2021, the company has stacked up some major wins: - 750,000+ registered users - 4,000+ merchant partners - Launch of its commerce media layer, Happy Ads - Among the first BNPL players in South Africa to report repayment behaviour to credit bureaus - Named Top African Startup at Deloitte’s VivaTech AfricaTech Awards - A partnership with Ozow, making Happy Pay available to 47M South African bank account holders So, where to now? The team will continue scaling the platform by integrating AI across its ecosystem to improve risk decisioning, fraud prevention and the efficiency of internal software systems. But with 90% of transactions still happening in physical retail, Happy Pay is building a market-first payments product that allows consumers to use it in physical retail environments. That means dramatically increased access to flexible payment options and another step forward in building Africa's leading Ad-Subsidised Payments network. It’s a re-tale for the ages! Read more about Happy Pay in the comments below! 👇 CC: Wesley Billett, Mark Geary, Marie Benrubi, Sabrine Chahrour, Cyril Collon, Tito Cookey-Gam, Tidjane Deme, Lewam Kefela, Matthieu Marchand, Ogugua Osakwe-Adegbite

Easy Peasy! 🫛 e-peas closed a $22M funding round by Crédit Mutuel Innovation with support from @European Innovation Council (EIC), Wallonie Entreprendre, KBC Focus Fund, Otium, NOMAINVEST, The Faktory Fund, and invest.bw. CEO Geoffroy Gosset and CTO Julien De Vos cofounded e-peas to eliminate the operational and environmental costs of industrial and IoT batteries. Today its ultra-low power management products enable electronic devices to operate autonomously from ambient energy sources such as light, vibration, and heat, drastically extending battery lifetime. This latest investment is the recognition of 15 years of research, 20k+ tons of CO2 saved, and a journey that’s taken e-peas to the moon! This funding “will allow us to further scale our commercial activities, enter new high-growth markets, and expand our portfolio to support a wider range of energy-autonomous applications,” said Geoffrey. “Our ambition is to make energy harvesting a standard design choice for sustainable electronics.” Congratulations to the whole team for this latest achievement! Find out more in the comments below. 👇 CC: Romain Lavault, Boris Golden, Alison Imbert, Ariadne Lemieux-Cumberlege, Moritz Steinbrecher

A company���s story isn’t over when the final chapter is closed… 📖 Pierre Marin, CEO and cofounder of RockFi, joined Andréa Bensaid, CEO at Eskimoz, on the LITTLE BIG THINGS podcast to share his personal experience of exits and what they’ve taught him. Before founding RockFi, Pierre Marin built and sold two companies. That showed him some of the easiest mistakes you can make after a liquidity event; overconfident investing, hyperactive investing, and letting capital sit idle. Traditional private banking’s complex products, opaque fees, and dense reports only add fuel to the fire. That’s what inspired him to cofound Rockfi. It’s private wealth management model brings together detailed analytics for a holistic view of assets with a highly personalized, human approach. That means more transparency, efficiency, and flexibility for modern investors. Because the hardest part of a cash-out isn’t making the money. It’s knowing what to do next. Catch the episode in the comments below for a mid-week boost! 👇 Note; the episode is in French

For your Friday listening! 🎧 Our own Rémi Said joined Benjamin WATTINNE on the Sowefund 'Entretien avec un VC' podcast to break down how our Impact Growth strategy reconciles impact with returns. Europe has long lacked the infrastructure to bridge the two. Operating in that gap means balancing “art” (judgment, timing, hands-on support) with “science” (governance, capital, processes). At Partech Impact, each company has a defined impact KPI, expected to be tripled. If not, 50% of the carry is redirected to foundations. That’s how we not just bridge impact and returns, but make them inextricable. Despite a tougher macro and geopolitical backdrop, the opportunity set is stronger than ever with more impact-driven growth companies reaching scale across Europe. Here xFarm Technologies and Makersite get namedropped! Catch the episode in the comments below!👇 Note: this episode is in French

From lab-grown to industry-grown! 🔬 PARIMA has produced duck at multi-ton scale in a single 22,000-liter production run, working with Sydney-based Vow, which operates the largest cultivated meat manufacturing facility built to date. This first attempt ran at full volume with a 99% lower production cost than earlier runs and no performance loss. "Economic viability for cultivated meat is no longer an extrapolation from pilot runs. It's here," said PARIMA co-founder and CEO Nicolas Morin-Forest "Our team spent more than seven years building the biology and process behind this." Cultivated meat at Sub €10/kg production cost is closer than most observers expected, and Parima is leading the way, already the first company in the world cleared for two species! Congratulations to Nicolas Morin-Forest, George Peppou (Vow Executive Director), and the whole team that made this happen! Find out more in the comments below 👇 Cc Alison Imbert