Galion.exe

🚀 We are excited to announce our investment in Opsima's €1M funding round to help companies reduce their cloud bills! Opsima has developed a proprietary algorithm that optimizes how corporations buy resources from public cloud providers. By automating cloud resource procurement, the platform maximizes discounts on long-term commitments, offering up to 72% savings without impacting infrastructure. Opsima offers businesses a way to reduce cloud costs by 30% on average through innovative automation and AI solutions. We are proud to support Louis Raynaud, Fabien Punin, Alexandre Lacroux and the rest of the Opsima team on this exciting journey 🤝 Many thanks and congratulations to our co-investors: Kima Ventures, Super Capital, Source Ventures, NEO FOUNDERS, Raphaël Haïk, Laureline Serieys. To find out more about the platform: https://www.opsima.ai/

This Friday Tech Lunch.exe #4 felt almost more about reconnecting than connecting, with some of the most talented people from the Algolia Mafia, Gaëtan G. and Guillaume Duvaux; the most active investor in the world Alexis Robert (ok, let's be fair, maybe a bit behind Y Combinator 😇); and Gilles Barbier, who was shaping the French tech scene when France barely registered on the VC map and is still very active doubling down on AI. Of course, there was even more talent around the table: Thierry Abaléa (Shipfox, making CI/CD work like a charm), Antoine Berton (ex-Cajoo, now doing great things in cybersecurity with elba), Omid Gosha (Ewake.ai, the AI teammate for site reliability teams), Alexandre Folliot (X&Immersion bringing AI to game studios), Paul Roussel (building something new in AI video), and the repeat hackathon winner Alba María Téllez Fernández, who can build anything from an on-edge AI Yoga app to an environment simulation making robotics more accessible to hobbyists, in just a weekend. I fully expect to see Alba on the podium next month at the biggest AI x Robotics event: the Mistral AI Robotics Hackathon, powered by Lightspeed, Hugging Face, Entrepreneurs First and, of course, our new initiative at Galion.exe around AI called SOTA. Speaking about SOTA, don’t miss our weekly webinar every Monday. The next session features Xuan-Son NGUYEN from Hugging Face, diving deep into the State of On-Device LLMs!). As usual, all links are in the first comment. Thanks to Alban Oudin for the 📸, as usual 😇

Tomorrow, we are co-hosting an exclusive evening with Chausson Partners and Revaia, bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals to explore AI’s impact on climate, energy, and model performance. This event also marks the launch of the French AI Report 2024, a comprehensive study analysing the key challenges and emerging trends shaping the French AI ecosystem, based on insights from 400+ startups. Agenda: 🌍 AI & Climate - the role of AI in addressing climate challenges, user adoptions and scaling sustainable solutions, with Olivier Pin (Deepki), Katrin de Proyart (Vizzia), Lucile Ritchie (Entalpic) as speakers and Laurence Hémery (Chausson Partners) as moderator. ⚙️ Performance & Model Architecture - An exploration of AI model performance and architectural constraints, with Louis Abraham (Sciences Po, H Company), Laurent Mazare (Kyutai), Adina Yakefu (Hugging Face) as speakers and Willy Braun (Galion.exe) as moderator. ⚡AI & Energy: How AI is revolutionising the energy sector and addressing sustainability challenges with Théo Alves Da Costa (Ekimetrics, Data for Good), Xavier Blot (Zenon), JB Rudelle (The Galion Project) as speakers, and Anaïs Blarel (Revaia) as moderator. 📍 Where? Google Paris, 8 rue de Londres, 75009 Paris 📅 When? March 19, 2024 | 6:30PM - 9:30PM A unique opportunity to connect with those shaping the future of AI. Registration is closed. #AI #FrenchAIReport2024 #Tech #Innovation

Thank you to all those that attended our event last night! It was a pleasure to introduce Prior Labs, our foundation model, TabPFN and showcase some our use-cases to the broader community. Thanks to our panelists and moderator James Wise for an engaging discussion on the future of the data science! You could feel the energy in the room and we couldn't be more excited about what the future holds 🚀 #TabPFN #DataScience #Machinelearning

We usually meet in small batches during our Friday Tech Lunch.exe at the Galion.exe office in the Sentier (Paris), sharing a slice of pizza 🍕, war stories ☠️, hobbies 🎸, knowledge 🧠, and, of course, our personal and professional journey 🚀. It was fantastic to host our first official gathering in Paris last week, bringing together over 80 attendees, including many members who traveled from the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. Speaking of the Netherlands 🇳🇱, Reg.exe will be back in Amsterdam this June to strengthen ties with the city's growing tech ecosystem and spend quality time with our most active local mafia (Andrei Herasimchuk, Antoine MILLET, Arnaud Porterie, Emil Rijcken, Georges Gomes, Guillaume Lesur, Julien Mangeard, Raoul Ritter, Rik Arends, and Robert Hommes) and also the local Tech Makers community led by Julien Nathan Balanqueux, Fabien Bouhier and Sébastien Le Goff. 🐶 Reg.exe is an invitation-only Discord community, exclusively for engineers and researchers. If you're interested in applying, reach out to Kevin Kuipers.

Great founders shape great companies. Venture capital is, at its core, about backing exceptional talent. But what makes a founder truly exceptional? At Galion.exe, we’ve been asking ourselves: 🔍 Can founder “persona mapping” predict success? 🎭 Is understanding a founder as a person just as important as assessing their business? 💡 Does better investing start with better conversations? Beyond strategy, execution, and market fit, the best founders bring conviction, clarity, and the ability to build a movement. Investing in them is not just about metrics—it’s about understanding their worldview. 🔗 Willy Braun explores the art of founder insight in Review.exe → https://lnkd.in/emS7bzVf

AI needs guardrails. As global leaders race to define AI’s future, the EU’s AI Act, U.S. policy shifts, and international initiatives are shaping how artificial intelligence will be built, governed, and scaled. The challenge is clear—too little oversight risks uncontrolled development, while excessive regulation could slow down innovation and leave some regions behind. At Galion.exe, we’ve been asking ourselves: 🔍 How do we balance innovation with accountability? 🌍 Can Europe’s regulatory-first approach compete with faster-moving AI ecosystems? 🤖 What role do investors and founders play in ensuring AI is both powerful and responsible? The future of AI isn’t just about speed but about direction. The choices made today will shape the technology for decades to come. 🔗 Willy Braun explores what’s at stake in Review.exe → https://lnkd.in/eE2ZgeEK

Thrilled to announce our investment in Prior Labs as they raise €9M in their pre-seed round! 👨💻 Prior Labs is building a foundation model for tabular data from commodity trading to B2B credit risk modeling, drug discovery, and personalized medicine. 📝 Their research, published in Nature Magazine, shows that foundation models pre-trained on synthetic tasks can generalize across datasets and uncover patterns that traditional approaches miss. We’re excited to back this world-class team: Frank, Noah, Sauraj, Léo, Alexander. The round was led by Balderton Capital (James, Sivesh), with participation from XTX Ventures, Hector Foundation, Atlantic Labs (Christophe), and us, alongside an incredible group of angels investors, including: Peter (AMD Silo AI), Christopher (Atscale), Guy (Snyk, Tessl), Edward (Google DeepMind), Robin Rombach (Black Forest Labs), Ashutosh (Elastic), Thomas (Hugging Face), Steve (Qonto), and many others. Check out their new website and API: https://priorlabs.ai/ Thank you to Jeremy (Fortune) for covering their journey and vision: https://lnkd.in/eADsKTK7

Here is the mapping and full report of 400 AI startups in France. The U.S. and China are investing billions to dominate the space, but where does France stand? To answer this, Revaia, Galion.exe, and Chausson Partners have joined forces to release The French AI Report 2024, a deep dive into the country's AI ecosystem, mapping 400+ startups and analyzing funding trends, key challenges, and emerging leaders. To sum up the state of AI in France:  💰 AI now represents 20% of all VC funding in Europe  🚀 Sectors like AI infrastructure, health, and climate are gaining momentum  💡 U.S. investors drive 50% of late-stage funding—but is that sustainable? France has the talent, the research, and the ambition to lead, but scaling remains a challenge. To keep up, the ecosystem must address late-stage funding gaps, increase access to computational power, and strengthen public-private collaboration. The decisions made today will determine France’s place in the AI revolution. Now is the time to act. * This is just the mapping of the AI infrastructure and agents. The full report is longer and contains mappings and insights on the entire AI ecosystem. 📥 Download the full report here → https://lnkd.in/eaPtmP4f

We are delighted to announce that Raidium is raising €16 million to create a Foundation Model for Precision Radiology. Created in 2022, this “GPT of radiology”, integrated into a dashboard for radiologists, will enable the creation of a veritable “biomarker factory” thanks to AI, useful for both clinical examinations and research. Congratulations to Paul Herent, M.D., Msc, Pierre Manceron and the whole team for this announcement. We're delighted to be accompanying you on this adventure! Many thanks and congratulations to our co-investors: Newfund, Kurma Partners, Founders Future, European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) Fund, Debiopharm and Techmind. To find out more, read the article in Les Echos (cc Marion Simon-Rainaud): https://lnkd.in/eCSSVthi