After a lackluster first half of 2025, French Tech is back in business.
According to EY’s venture-capital barometer for France, French startups raised 4.6 billion euros between January and June 2026, a 65% increase in value compared with the previous year. This figure lifts the first half of the year to the third-best performance in the post-Covid era.
But beware of rushing to celebrate: this rebound in big-ticket rounds does not equate to a return to widespread euphoria.
The number of deals, meanwhile, fell: 280 funding rounds were closed, versus 311 a year earlier. As a result, the average ticket size surged, rising from under 9 million euros in H1 2025 to just over 16 million euros this year.
Money remains, but it is still harder to access and more concentrated.
A conviction-based venture capital
The market structure confirms this underlying trend. The seven deals exceeding 100 million euros alone account for almost half of the funds raised in the half-year.
Conversely, small rounds below 10 million euros remain numerous but no longer tilt the overall capital pool.
EY speaks of a “conviction-based venture capital,” ready to back companies judged capable of becoming global leaders.
Proof of this trend, the five largest French rounds of the semester total nearly 2 billion euros on their own.
Among them was Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI Labs), which closed 890 million euros at the seed stage. An extraordinary sum for a company at such an early stage, emblematic of investors’ renewed appetite for ambitious technological bets.
AI and software take center stage
Not surprisingly, software (led by AI) dominates the semester by a wide margin, with just over 1.7 billion euros raised, or about 40% of the capital invested.
Fintechs posted a dramatic rebound in value, Life Sciences continued their ascent, and breakthrough technologies (quantum, semiconductors, critical infrastructures) confirmed their rising prominence.
Geographically, nothing new under the sun: Île-de-France alone accounts for more than 80% of the funds raised. Together with Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, these two regions capture the overwhelming majority of capital invested in France.
London, Berlin, Paris: three strategies
The EY barometer also puts France’s performance into perspective on a European scale.
The continent’s three major ecosystems all show strong growth driven by megatours: +97% in the United Kingdom (14.6 billion euros), +66% in Germany (5.9 billion euros), and +65% in France (4.6 billion euros).
Yet beneath these seemingly uniform figures lie three distinct strategies.
The United Kingdom, with 14.6 billion euros raised across 616 deals, reinforces its position as Europe’s leading tech hub. Its 22 megatours over 100 million euros concentrate 9.4 billion euros, nearly two-thirds of the market. Names like Isomorphic Labs, Nscale, Wayve, and Recursive Superintelligence reflect a clear ambition: to become Europe’s nerve center for computing and artificial intelligence.
Germany, for its part, bets on technological reindustrialization. With 5.9 billion euros raised across 213 deals, including 3.6 billion concentrated in just seven megatours, Berlin is building growth around defense, robotics, space, and energy, led by companies such as Neura Robotics, Helsing, or Isar Aerospace.
France claims the most diversified technological portfolio in Europe. Its growth in value is comparable to Germany’s, but it rests on a surge in megatours (+938%, rising from 0.2 to 2.1 billion euros), which offsets a 10% drop in deal count. The country is boasting gems across AI (Mistral, H Company, AMI Labs), quantum (Pasqal, Alice & Bob, Quobly), energy (Verkor, Electra, GravitHy), space (Exotrail, Latitude, Unseenlabs), and robotics (Exotec, Wandercraft).
The real challenge: scaling up
For Franck Sebag, EY Paris Office Managing Partner and author of the barometer, the challenge in the coming years is no longer about creating new champions but about helping them scale up in the face of British and German giants.
France possesses real strengths: top-tier academic research, internationally recognized entrepreneurs, exceptional prowess in mathematics, engineering, health, space, and quantum, and a funding ecosystem that has reached maturity.
But nothing is guaranteed. In a world where tech cycles accelerate and dominant positions can shift in a few years, EY cautions that this semester’s rebound must not become complacency.
Moreover, the question of technological sovereignty is already cropping up in political debate ahead of the next presidential election. How can France finance the growth of its champions, speed the transfer from research to market, and attract and retain talent?
Because behind the fundraising, the sovereignty issue at stake is knowing where the technologies that will shape health, industry, energy, and defense will be designed tomorrow.
As the adage quoted in the barometer sums it up: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
