French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, is launching its cloud gaming service in the U.K. Just like in the U.S., the company is starting with a pre-sale before accepting all customers. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent a gaming PC in a data center near you. You can then access this beefy computer using desktop and mobile apps as well as the company’s own little box. Read More
Category: France Newsletter
Cozy is building a personal cloud service that respects your privacy
Meet Cozy, a French startup that wants to completely rethink how cloud services work. The startup first launched a Dropbox-like competitor to store, synchronize and share all your files. Now, the company wants to go one step further and create an ecosystem of open-source services that respect your privacy. When I met with Cozy co-founder and CEO Benjamin André earlier this week, he was fed… Read More
France Digitale wants to teach French parliament members about tech
France Digitale presented its roadmap for the upcoming 12 months. France Digitale is an association that acts as a lobbying organization when it comes to defending the interests of the startup community in France. And the organization had a coupl…
View More France Digitale wants to teach French parliament members about techGoogle is launching an AI research center in France and expanding its office
Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a blog post about Google’s investments in France. There are three different pieces of news in this announcement. First, Google is going to expand its office in Paris. If you already know Google’s current office in Paris, that building is going to stick around. The company is going to acquire or rent other buildings around Google’s current office… Read More
France’s Digital Minister Mounir Mahjoubi on French startups
More than 270 French startups flew all the way to Las Vegas for CES 2018. And France’s Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Mounir Mahjoubi came there to support them. I had the opportunity to sit down and interview him about the current state of the tech ecosystem in France and how it can compete at a global level. Mahjoubi joined Emmanuel Macron’s team as the person in charge… Read More
French VC firm Ring Capital raises $170 million fund
Meet Ring Capital, a brand new VC firm based in Paris. The firm just raised a new $170 million fund (€140 million) and might still be raising another $10 million or so for this fund. Many new VC firms tend to focus on seed rounds at first. Ring Capital thinks there’s a Series A and Series B gap in France. That’s why Ring Capital plans to invest around €5 to €10 million ($6 to… Read More
Ledger raises another $70 million to become the leader in cryptocurrency hardware wallets
Ledger just raised an impressive Series B round of $70 million, led by Draper Esprit. The startup already raised a $7 million round last year. But the cryptocurrency mania probably made it easy to raise more money. If you have more than a bit of money in cryptocurrencies, chances are you’ve heard about Ledger wallets. The French startup has been designing some of the most secure… Read More
Forest raises $3.7 million for its administration interface to rule them all
French startup Forest just raised a $3.7 million seed round (€3 million) from Connect Ventures and Xavier Niel, with Taavet Hinrikus also participating. Pietro Bezza and Jean de La Rochebrochard are joining the board of the company. The startup first started in the eFounders startup studio. I already wrote about the startup back in May. The vision hasn’t changed at all. Forest still… Read More
Kuzzle is building the backend for the internet of things
Meet Kuzzle, an all-in-one backend solution for connected devices and beyond. The French startup is giving you a scalable solution so that you don’t have to develop everything from scratch yourself. Think about it as Firebase but for different use cases.
Before Kuzzle, the French company had been working on all sorts of web and digital projects since 2001. They realized that they kept… Read More
Netatmo launches a chatbot to manage all your connected devices
French company Netatmo is adding one more way to control your smart objects around your house. You can now talk and control with all your connected devices using a chatbot in Messenger. The feature is now live in English, with more languages comi…
View More Netatmo launches a chatbot to manage all your connected devicesShadow launches its cloud computer for gamers in California
French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, is about to expand its cloud gaming service to the U.S. Customers who live in California can pre-order starting today, and they’ll be able to access the service on February 15th. The rest of the U.S. will be able to subscribe later this summer. Shadow is currently live in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. For a flat… Read More
Devialet built a car audio system for Renault’s Symbioz concept car
High-end speaker maker Devialet is branching out of home speakers. The company announced a partnership with Renault for its first ever car audio system. You can’t buy a Renault car with Devialet speakers just yet, but there’s a Renault concept car with those speakers. Devialet has always said that it wasn’t just a speaker manufacturer. The French startup has worked on its… Read More