• Vulkam

  Participated · Equity · Jan 2024

  Vulkam develops and industrializes amorphous metal alloys called Vulkalloys® and a thermomoulding production process to make micromechanical parts with micrometer precision. Its materials deliver 2–3× the strength of conventional metals, hardness comparable to ceramics without brittleness, and elastic deformation capacities superior to spring steels, enabling 30–50% reductions in part size and weight. The thermomoulding process is said to cut raw material usage by about 50% and CO2 emissions by at least 30%, while allowing direct production of finished parts without additional machining. The company holds nine patents (three transferred by Linksium) and has completed technology qualification and prototyping, and is now scaling to industrial production. Vulkam plans a 3,000 m² factory in Versoud (Isère) with a €15M capex envelope, aiming to be operational in 2025 and to produce 2 million pieces in the first year and 4 million in 2026. The team today numbers roughly 25–30 people (majority engineers, doctors and technicians) and is expected to grow to about 50 employees within three years to support commercial deployment across medical, watchmaking and aerospace markets, with later expansion into transport, sports and leisure.

• Chefclub

  Participated · Equity · Jan 2021

  Chefclub has built a major food-media brand on social platforms, amassing roughly 100 million followers across YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok and generating more than 1 billion views per month. The company leverages that audience to create physical products: it has sold 700,000 self-published cookbooks and about 150,000 children’s products (cooking kits and accessories). Because the books are self-published, Chefclub retains a substantial share of the revenue from those sales. The startup is pursuing retail partnerships to display co-branded items in stores and has taken investment from Groupe SEB’s venture arm, signaling merchandising and appliance tie-ins. Chefclub is planning to enter the consumer-packaged goods (food) market as a next product vertical. The company views expansion beyond online advertising as central to its strategy amid the current economic environment.

• Aryballe Technologies

  Participated · Equity · Jul 2020

  Aryballe builds digital olfaction solutions—hardware sensors and software—that capture, display and analyze odor data for R&D, quality control and consumer applications. Its flagship product, the NeOse Pro, is a fast, portable sensor sensitive to hundreds of odors and won gold in the 2020 Edison Awards. The company serves industries including automotive, consumer appliances, and flavor & fragrances and operates in France and the USA. Aryballe plans to use new funding to scale manufacturing and industrialize a high-volume, low-cost universal odor sensor. Management also intends to double headcount across engineering and product roles to meet accelerating demand. In 2019 the company grew headcount by 30% and more than doubled its intellectual property portfolio. Aryballe Technologies, founded in 2014 and based in Grenoble, France, develops digital olfaction sensors and software that mimic the human sense of smell. Its flagship product, the NeOse Pro, is a portable digital nose launched at CES 2018 that captures odor signatures for analysis via software for R&D, quality control, and manufacturing. The company combines biochemistry, advanced optics and machine learning and works with customers across automotive, food & beverage, consumer appliances, and flavor & fragrance industries. Aryballe plans to reduce sensor size, scale manufacturing for distributed sensing networks, and build a universal odor database using proprietary machine-learning models and algorithms. It recently helped form the Digital Olfaction Automotive Consortium to establish odor measurement standards for the automotive industry. The company secured an additional €6.2 million in equity financing led by IFF and Hyundai to advance technology development and commercialization. Founded in 2014 in Grenoble, Aryballe Technologies develops an "electronic nose" that mimics the human nose to identify, detect, and measure smells and tastes. The core technology was developed at the Institute for Nanoscience and Cryogenics (INAC). The device targets applications across medicine, food quality control, pollution control, and household appliances. The company envisions integrations such as refrigerators that could detect expired foods. Aryballe recently raised a €3.1 million round led by Asahi Kasei.

• Alkemics

  Participated · Series C · Jun 2020

  Alkemics provides a single, secure platform that digitises supplier-retailer relations across product discovery, listings and sales to accelerate product launches and keep product data transparent and up to date. The platform connects retailers to multinational suppliers and small local producers and covers omnichannel commerce workflows. It works with more than 17,000 brands and customers including E.Leclerc, Intermarché, Casino, Tesco and Ocado. Founded in 2012 and based in Paris, the company says demand has surged amid the coronavirus pandemic and a rapid shift to online and omni-channel grocery shopping. Alkemics positions itself to reduce traditional time-to-market (around 60 days) by replacing manual processes like XLS files and back-and-forth emails. With the new capital the company plans launches in Scandinavia, Germany and Benelux and intends to expand into additional verticals. Alkemics provides an omni-channel retail intelligence platform that enables retailers and CPG manufacturers to collect, enrich and share product data across the retail ecosystem. Its cloud-based, maintenance-free platform is pre-configured for grocery retail and automates management of digital product content, including packaging, ingredients, visuals, promotions and rich media. The platform extracts metadata to normalize product information and streamlines delivery to trading partners and third-party service providers. The company raised €20m in a Series B round led by Cathay Capital and Serena Capital, with participation from Index Ventures, Partech Ventures and SEB Alliance. Alkemics intends to use the funds to expand operations in Europe and to increase sales, marketing and technology development efforts. The company was co-founded by Antoine Durieux, Antoine Perrin and Benoit Portoleau-Balloy and is based in Paris.

• CASTALIE

  Participated · Equity · Jun 2020

  CASTALIE designs and markets micro-filtered water fountains for companies and restaurants and provides containers, accessories and maintenance services. Its systems micro-filter tap water and bottle it on-site in reusable containers, eliminating distance between source and consumption and reducing plastic waste. The company bottles water on customers' premises to avoid single-use plastic and promote a circular consumption model. Founder and chairman Thibault Lamarque created the company out of opposition to the omnipresence of plastic bottles and is leading its expansion. CASTALIE recently completed a €13.5 million fundraise to support its economic transition and growth. The financing is expected to help accelerate adoption of its sustainable water solutions and awareness among private and corporate customers.

No current team members are available.