Participated · Series B · Sep 2024

Founded in 2018 by former consultants and ex-bankers including cofounder and COO Clara Vaisse, Pony operates a dockless micromobility service with 15,000 bikes and scooters deployed across 23 French cities. The fleet includes made-in-France mechanical and electric two-seater bikes and electric scooters, and the company emphasizes durability and an eco-responsible approach. Pony employs about 200 people and reported a target of €29M in revenue for the year. Its model includes a participatory financing feature where residents can buy a bike and return it to the platform in exchange for remuneration. Pony handles the full value chain from manufacturing to platform management, logistics, repair and warehousing. The company positions itself as the only French free-floating, dockless operator and aims to equip all French cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, including Paris.

Participated · Series B · Sep 2023

AYRO designs, manufactures and markets OceanWings®, a fully automated rigid wingsail solution for cargo ships and yachts, to cut fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions. The company’s latest OceanWings® generation is a major step up in scale (40 meters high / 363 m2) and maturity, proven with prototypes and demonstrators such as the Energy Observer. In July AYRO installed four OceanWings® 363 on the Canopée, a vessel dedicated to transporting Ariane 6 components, enabling a reported ~30% reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions on its route. AYRO was founded in 2018 by Marc Van Peteghem and leverages wingsail design expertise from VPLP and America’s Cup technology. The company is positioning to scale its wind-propulsion solution and become a global leader in maritime decarbonization. Financially, AYRO closed a €19.2M Series B round, bringing total funding to over €30M.

Participated · Equity · Jan 2023

Qarnot builds modular boiler systems that house servers and route their waste heat into central heating networks, converting up to 95% of computer waste heat into hot water. The modules pack up to 12 Open Compute Project–form-factor servers using AMD Epyc and Intel Xeon CPUs and connect to building water systems for passive cooling and heat delivery. The company began with electric heaters for construction and now rents compute to clients such as BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Illumination while selling heat to social landlords, property developers, local authorities, swimming pools and heating network operators. Qarnot launched 12 years ago and has piloted a 100kW data center in Finland, and is targeting deployments from 500kW up to a few megawatts. Its business model combines selling compute capacity and recovered heat, eliminating separate cooling systems and improving data-center carbon footprint. Financially, Qarnot recently raised €12.5M and secured a €22.5M credit line to finance future projects. Qarnot builds heating hardware that contains computer servers so the waste heat from computation is used to warm buildings. The company sells computing-equipped electrical heaters to construction firms and provides occupants with local controls and a mobile app. Around 1,000 social housing units are currently heated by Qarnot devices. On the compute side, companies such as BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Natixis rent Qarnot’s servers; customers also include Illumination Mac Guff for 3D rendering. To address heating seasonality, Qarnot has developed scalable boiler systems that house CPU or mixed CPU/GPU server racks. The company has formed a joint venture with Groupe Casino to heat warehouses using computer racks. Its business model combines hardware sales to buildings with hosted compute rentals to enterprise clients.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2022

Tri'n'Collect develops low-tech on-site sorting stations and a full collection/consulting service to valorize construction waste and increase recycling. The company positions itself as an "entreprise à mission" created in October 2019 with a purpose of preserving natural resources by preventing and recycling construction waste. Its offering targets all types of sites (single-family homes, multi-family, selective deconstruction and builders' deposits) and combines methodology, on-site sensitization and logistics. In three years the company says it has created 80 local jobs in western France and diverted more than 10,000 tonnes of material from landfill for local valorization. The startup emphasizes regulatory and economic alignment while pushing for reuse and circular-economy outcomes. It plans to strengthen teams, accelerate geographic expansion with new agencies and broaden services (notably for selective deconstruction) to increase reuse and recycling. Tri'n'Collect is a Nantes-based entreprise à mission offering a low-tech on-site source-separation solution for construction and demolition waste. Its service addresses all types of jobsites, including individual houses, collective housing, selective deconstruction and builders' deposits. The company positions its solution as reconciling regulatory and economic constraints while preventing landfill disposal and transforming waste into resources within a circular economy. Founded in October 2019, Tri'n'Collect says it has diverted more than 4,300 tonnes of material from landfill and valorized them locally in two and a half years. With a €3 million fundraising, the startup intends to reinforce teams, expand its national network by opening agencies and broaden its offer for reuse and recycling. Tri'n'Collect is scaling deployment amid the implementation of the building-sector extended producer responsibility (REP) framework.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2021

Founded in 2013 and based in Hastingues in southwest France, Patatam operates B2B resale and collection solutions for the fashion sector, offering 'second hand as-a-service' to retailers and marketplaces. The company runs collection and resale operations integrated with more than 15 brands and over 300 partner points of sale or collection, and currently processes and ships more than 200,000 garments per month. Patatam employs about 120 people and positions itself as a leader in circular fashion for large retailers, specialty chains and e-commerce platforms. Its core product is an end-to-end logistics and resale service that supports partners such as Auchan, Carrefour, Leclerc, Kiabi, Gémo, Décathlon and Spartoo. Patatam plans to use new funding to reinforce its supply chain and improve logistics to meet rising partner demand and to expand into new markets, starting with Spain where it has launched Carrefour corners and added client deployments. Patatam is an ecommerce site that purchases and re-sells second-hand children’s clothing. The Biarritz-based company is currently active in France, Spain and the UK. It has raised €3 million in new funding to support expansion across Europe. The startup is working on ambitious industrialization and optimization of its internal processes to widen its offering and extend its customer reach to 10 countries by the end of 2018. It is targeting further expansion into Northern Europe by the end of the year. Management says the financing will help Patatam stand out as a European leader for online retailing of second-hand children’s wear.