Invest and exit — the June 2024 Paris start-ups

3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 385

BeReal app has been sold.

BeReal is an original social app where users send a snapshot within a restricted time frame. And a huge success in 2022. Today with 40 million users, but low perspective on scaling and revenue. BeReal has been acquired by French publisher of mini-games, Voodoo. The funding of high profile VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and DST Global of $90m was too low in the end. Opinion: BeReal is a seldom case of a social network app growing worldwide, beyond Meta. The business case was not proven, no subscription and no advertising. It remains unclear what mobile game Voodoo will do and develop from that user base and the original usage.

Does anyone use BeReal in our audience?

Surpassing the 1 billion funding, Mistral AI

We usually don’t rewrite news from techCrunch, but this one is big. Mistral AI the European champion in the Gen AI world. The latest investment brings them to a $1.1bn financing. Mistral is developing open-source large and small language models. Models available on the largest cloud and adopted by many developers around the world. Opinion: Distincively, Mistral develops models with unique low-compute training of the models. The CEO Arthur Mensch has grown into one of the world references in AI and Gen AI. European champion? Well, most investors are from the US, like Microsoft, Nvidia and Andreessen Horowitz (again).

Following Mistral is understanding the tech development of Generative AI.

Finovox with a modest $5.9m, but a growing niche

More frauds and fakes are possible, it’s a growing danger. A market potential, for a technology start-up called Finovox. A software to detect frauds, in any kind of enterprise documents. Documents like passports, tax declaration, birth certificates. Opinion: The software intervenes in any registration process and is a solution for many industries like telecommunication, insurance, banks, and real estate. Interesting that the rise of generative AI brings immense capacities for fakes, and a market for detection software like Finovox.

Another proof of a lively 2024 Paris start-up ecosystem.