Elaia

🌱 Sustainable AI Newsletter: Edition 5 is live! As AI systems grow more powerful, they also grow more energy-hungry. But does “smarter” always need to mean “bigger”? In the latest edition of Elaia’s Sustainable AI newsletter, Xavier Evans & Louisa Mesnard explore how model-level efficiency, from pruning and quantisation to Small Language Models (SLMs), is reshaping the sustainability equation. With inference costs rising, AI agents proliferating, and frontier models reaching trillion-parameter scale, the future of LLMs could depend on better architectural sophistication, not endless size. SLM-centric systems, smarter task routing, and specialised tool-calling may dramatically cut energy use while maintaining quality.

Check out Samantha J. Jérusalmy, Partner at Elaia and long-time investor in healthtech, featured in Les Echos. Sam highlights a truth we see every day: medical founders and clinical experts play a decisive role in building trustworthy, impactful healthtech companies. Their presence brings scientific rigor, deep understanding of patient pathways, and the credibility needed to navigate a complex go-to-market. At Elaia, we’re convinced that the strongest healthtech startups emerge at the intersection of medical expertise × technological excellence × disciplined execution; a rare and powerful combination. Thanks Marion Simon-Rainaud for including us! Read the article in full here: https://lnkd.in/ebfKrjWv

AI workloads are growing faster than hardware can support. Copper interconnects are reaching their limits, and memory bandwidth has become a defining constraint. NcodiN is solving that problem at the root. With €16 million in new funding, it plans to scale its photonic interposer platform built around the world’s smallest integrated laser. This breakthrough allows chipmakers to deliver supercomputer-level performance within a single processor, using a pathway that fits directly into existing semiconductor architectures to pave the way for better, faster AI hardware. We are excited to continue backing NcodiN alongside MIG Capital, Maverick Silicon, PhotonVentures, Verve Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, and OVNI Capital. This round accelerates the company’s industrialization plans, including expansion into Silicon Valley. Congrats to Francesco Manegatti, PhD, and the NcodiN team!

Enterprises want automation, but they also want transparency and control. GetVocal AI is delivering both. With $26 million in new funding, it plans to scale its trustworthy conversational AI agents for CX teams. GetVocal’s platform orchestrates real-time collaboration between human and AI agents in a governed environment aligned with current European data sovereignty requirements. The result is higher deflection, fewer escalations, and measurable operational gains without sacrificing trust or accountability. It’s not AI vs humans, it’s AI powered by humans. Customers like Vodafone and Glovo are already seeing major impact, including fewer live escalations, higher self-service resolution, and deflection rates reaching 70 percent within months. We continue to support the team alongside Creandum and Speedinvest as GetVocal strengthens its leadership across Europe. Congratulations to Roy Moussa, Antonin Bertin, Sebastião Zaragoza and the team on this next step!

Hummink just raised €15 million to fix one of the toughest problems in advanced manufacturing. Tiny sub-micron defects cost the microelectronics industry billions each year. Hummink’s High-Precision Capillary Printing technology offers real-time, sub-micron repair capabilities and helps manufacturers boost yields, cut scrap, and reduce environmental impact. We’re continuing to partner with Hummink in this round, led by KBC Focus Fund, CapHorn, Bpifrance, and the EIC - European Innovation Council Fund that will help Hummink scale its industrial printing modules and bring its technology into semiconductor and display fabs worldwide. We are proud to continue supporting Amin M'Barki, Pascal Boncenne, and the team as they build one of the most promising deep tech platforms in microelectronics.

Last week, Elaia, CDL-Paris, and HEC Paris brought the Future of Computing conference to Paris at at iXcampus. The room brought together experts working across quantum, AI silicon, photonics, and advanced semiconductor materials. The mix of quick pitches and panel conversations with innnovators including offered a clear view of where computing innovation is heading and who is driving it forward. If you are building in this space and want to connect with us, we would love to hear from you. Don’t hesitate to ping Julien Macquet and Clément Vanden Driessche. Didn’t get the chance to make it? Check out a few snapshots from the event below:

The 2025 La French Tech 2030 cohort brings together 80 champions building world-class technologies, including two Elaia portfolio companies: HarfangLab and NcodiN. ↗ HarfangLab – advancing cybersecurity for the modern era ↗ NcodiN – building the world's smallest laser on silicon This new generation of champions is driving French and European tech sovereignty. The 80 startups in the 2025 program are building real-world solutions in strategic sectors like AI, cybersecurity, quantum, robotics, electronics, space, and infrastructure. Check out the full list below.

AI’s environmental impact has become a talking point everywhere, from boardrooms to news headlines. But without hard numbers on energy, water, and carbon use, myths fill the gaps. Some paint AI as an environmental villain; others frame it as a silver bullet for decarbonization. Either way, more data is needed. In the fourth edition of Elaia: SustAIned Future, we dig into: → Why transparency is key to separating signal from noise → How Mistral AI, Hugging Face, and Google are beginning to publish real impact data → Why inference, not just training, may account for the bulk of AI’s energy footprint Read the latest edition of our newsletter on our Substack: https://lnkd.in/e86QyFUM

Across factory floors worldwide, millions of intricate manual tasks still depend on human skill, tasks that remain beyond the reach of traditional automation. As industries face labour shortages, rising costs, and reshoring pressures, the need for versatile, intelligent robots has never been clearer. That’s why Elaia is leading the $16M seed round in mimic, a Swiss company rethinking what’s possible in industrial robotics. mimic’s physical AI models, trained on real-world human demonstrations, enable robots to autonomously grasp, adapt, and self-correct, turning human dexterity into scalable automation. Alongside Speedinvest and historic investors including Founderful, 1st Kind, 10x Founders, 2100 Ventures and Sequoia Capital Scout Fund, we’re supporting mimic’s mission to make dexterity deployable at scale, bridging the gap between research and production. The race to build general-purpose robotics is global. With mimic, Europe is stepping forward with a practical, powerful answer and we’re excited to partner with the mimic team as they build this next wave. Congratulations to Stefan Weirich, Stephan-Daniel Gravert, Elvis Nava and the mimic team!

The first annual Sifted AI 100 is here - spotlighting the European startups harnessing artificial intelligence to reshape industries, and perhaps the continent itself. Selected for their boldness, momentum and originality rather than funding alone, the ranking highlights the AI-native startups tackling complex challenges, from drug discovery to compute, as well as those simplifying everyday tasks through smart applications of AI. Most are young, lean and fast-growing, with an average founding year of 2022. See if you can spot these rising stars from the Elaia portfolio included in this year’s edition: → AQEMIA → .txt → FlexAI → H Company Elaia is also included in Sifted’s ranking of the 50 best-performing AI investors. Check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eqsjxeBt