2024-03-14 06:00:07
Artificial intelligence (AI) loves money. Thursday March 14, the venture capital company Elaia announced the launch of its third fund dedicated to “deep tech” start-ups, resulting from fundamental research. Compared to its two predecessors with a little more than 75 million euros each, the newborn should have an envelope of 120 million, two thirds of which will be devoted to the future of IT, starting with solutions of artificial intelligence.
The amount, even if it demonstrates a growing ambition on the part of Elaia, is small compared to the vehicles that the major players in the sector are capable of mobilizing, to the tune of more than 1 billion. Nothing inconsistent, however, since the company focuses on start-ups that are about to launch or have just launched.
To identify them, Elaia has established strong links with research centers, such as the National Institute for Research in Digital Sciences and Technologies or the University of Paris Sciences et Lettres in France, but also important European research centers. The goal is to detect projects before they even leave the laboratory, and to support entrepreneurs in their first steps.
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As a result, the venture capital company will only be able to issue tickets ranging from 300,000 euros to 3 million euros per program. However, it remains convinced of benefiting from a return on investment, as the quality projects are numerous and ” trends “in the words of Anne-Sophie Carrese, head of the new fund.
Considerable amounts
Artificial intelligence start-ups are certainly in vogue, especially since the emergence of generative AI software like ChatGPT, capable of autonomously generating content in natural language. This is evidenced by the successive fundraising of the French Mistral IA, founded in April 2023, which managed to attract 105 million euros the following June, then 385 million in December.
Since then, other French nuggets have managed to raise considerable sums, despite the big slowdown in the venture capital market observed in France in 2023 (8.32 billion euros, or -38% compared to 2022). Among them we can cite Photoroom (40 million euros, February 27) or more recently Adaptive ML (18 million euros, March 12), barely five months after the founding of the company, which only has only nine employees today).
Read also | French start-up Mistral AI raised 385 million euros
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For Julien Launay, co-founder and CEO of Adaptive ML, the interest in the funds reflects that which companies are now showing for these generative artificial intelligence solutions: “For the past one or two years, we have been more in a demonstration phase, but this year is that of putting projects into production. » With its new fundraising, the young company plans to open a research and development center in France, but will remain hosted in the United States, where the customer base is higher. As well as investments.
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