Partech

Let’s make some noise four (😉) them! Exein, Shakers, Smartness and Ukio all made it into the Sifted 100: Southern Europe Leaderboard ranking! The Southern European Tech Scene has never felt this lively, but these companies are livelier than most; ranking among the region’s 100 fastest-growing startups and scaleups by revenue growth over the past three financial years. Congratulations to all the teams and founders Gianni Cuozzo of Exein, Héctor Mata, Jaime Castillo Parages, Adrian de Pedro and Nico de Luis of Shakers, Luca Rodella, Tommaso Centonze, and Eugenio Bancaro of Smartness, as well as Jeremy F. and Stanley Fourteau of Ukio! 🏆   Find the full list in the comments below!

‘The bar is being raised ten times over’ Our own Simone Riva Violetta answered Alice Chambers's questions in the Technology Magazine, giving his perspective on ‘How AI is Rewriting the VC Playbook for Software Investing’ It’s never been faster or cheaper to build software. The traditional moat and solid fundamentals are no longer an assurance of relevance at exit, and the threat landscape changes faster than ever before. How then to identify real value? 🧐 Deep workflow integration that can’t be easily rebuilt, proprietary data, distribution advantages, and meaningful cost of ownership. These are what Simone says counts; it has to hurt to switch to an alternative. He also identifies where AI is truly delivering in Software Investing, but also where it still has room to grow. Check out the full article in the comments below! 👇

A decade in the making. A new chapter begins. 🦄 Fresha just crossed the $1B valuation mark, following an $80M growth investment from KKR’s Next Generation Technology Growth fund. Founded in 2015 with a simple idea, to build software that beauty, wellness and self‑care professionals genuinely love, Fresha has quietly become the backbone of a global industry: - 130,000+ businesses - 500,000+ professionals - 35M appointments booked every month - $15B in annual GMV What stands out isn’t just the scale. It’s the trust that they’ve built over time. The same trust that inspired us to back them through our venture strategy. After months of meticulous diligence, surveying 1,000+ businesses across four regions, KKR ranked Fresha #1 across every major purchasing criterion, with the highest NPS in the category. Already profitable, with growing revenues of 60%+ year‑on‑year, it’s now setting its sights on investing more deeply into AI and accelerating global expansion. Congrats to William Zeqiri and the entire Fresha team on reaching unicorn status without losing sight of what made their model work in the first place. Read more about this milestone in the comments below! Cc Philippe Collombel Reza Malekzadeh Simone Riva Violetta Julia Najman Vivien Bovard

Critical infrastructure organisations running complex, high-risk field operations need jobs done right, first time, every time. But too often frontline work is taken up by time-consuming admin, and delayed reporting means the sites that pose the most risk don’t receive the attention they need in real time. This is where FYLD comes to the rescue! The company’s AI-native frontline intelligence platform transforms frontline work into a real-time source of operational intelligence. Instead of static forms and paperwork, field teams capture short videos which are then analysed by AI to identify safety, quality, and delivery risks before they escalate. This gives managers live visibility across jobs without adding site visits or headcount, with every action automatically documented for compliance and audit purposes. Founded in 2020, FYLD’s list of accomplishments is already extensive. They have:  - a global customer base across the UK, US, and Latin America ✅  - Over 30,000 field workers now using their platform ✅  - Over 40,000 jobs carried out on the platform per week, with the number expected to rise up to 150,000 by this time next year ✅  - contracts with SGN, Southern Water, M Group Water, Kier and Ferrovial, to name a few. ✅  - An 82% year-over-year growth in 2025 ✅  - A strategic partnership with Amey to deploy FYLD across its entire highway operations and Kiewit across its entire mining operations ✅ If that weren’t impressive enough, they’ve been shortlisted for several awards:  - The Water Industry Awards’s Health and Safety Initiative of the Year with M Group Water🏆  - Leakage Initiative of the Year with Yorkshire Water🏆  - VivaTech's Top 100 Rising Europeans Startups 🏆 With all this under their belt, (😉) where are they setting their sights now?  The team is prioritising growth in the US as well as working to deepen their intelligence layer through an agentic AI framework. This includes richer video and data analysis predicting how a day’s operations will play out, smarter pre-work insights, and tighter integration with the existing systems that customers are already using. And last, but certainly not least… a fun fact! FYLD was born in the middle of the pandemic with a founding team of six. Travel restrictions forced one founding member to have to dial in to their first call from Brazil, and they all only met in person after a further 18 months!   All this success and the challenges they’ve faced proves that the FYLD team certainly are the sharpest tools in the shed! Find out more about FYLD in the comments below!

Obsession with solving the problem. That’s what matters. Our own Alison Imbert discussed ‘The new Seed filter: what investors look for beyond the demo,’ with Cate Lawrence from Tech.eu. With AI having made the creation of polished demos, sleek interfaces and convincing prototypes easier than ever before, she explains that people matter more than ever when looking to invest. She draws attention to founder EQ and adaptability as qualities as well as cohesion and trust within teams as key signals of real value. What matters most is founders who demonstrate real care for their customers’ needs and how to resolve them. Don’t miss her insights and find the full article in the comments below! 👇

We had a sixth sense about them… papernest, Pennylane, Joko, Agicap, Epsor, and Mooncard, all made it into the Fintech 100 of 2026! Last year saw a fragile economy and a developing regulatory environment that fundamentally questioned the developing fintech industry: the market was forced to become more dynamic but also more selective. Despite what was thrown at them, these companies more than rose to the challenge! Congratulations to all the founders and teams featured! 🏆   Find the full list in the comments below!

Spring is in full swing, and so are we! 🌼 We’ve seen growth all around, and with it sprouts our May Newsletter! 🌱 From record-breakers to award winners, we’ve compiled some amazing achievements from our portfolio. Here’s the rundown; - Smartness smashed Italian funding round records with a €47 million Series B round - PARIMA (creators of Gourmey) broke regulatory foodtech history - Payt Software (France) dropped its analysis on the impact of commercial payment delays - 6 of our portfolio companies ranked in the Fintech 100 - Sensome published the successes of its medical software tests - Karnott released a timely update to its software Not to mention seeing something of a media takeover! Our own Emmanuel Delaveau and Tito Cookey-Gam made podcast appearances on Finscale and the Term Sheet Tapes while Alison Imbert featured in Tech.eu and Sifted. Head to the comments below for the full newsletter 👇

This otter makes a splash! 🦦 OpsMill just closed $14M Series A round led by IRIS with participation from Benhamou Global Ventures, Serena and us. Born from the founders’ first-hand frustration with IT infrastructure lagging decades behind, OpsMill’s unique Infrahub platform helps network teams scale automation by adopting AI-driven operations. Since being founded in 2023, OpsMill has already developed a loyal global customer base with clients across retail, insurance, manufacturing, and fintech, including hyperscalers such as TikTok. With Infrahub, one of its clients even reported cutting service deployment times from five days to just 15 minutes. This new funding will help OpsMill expand its engineering and product teams to continue developing data-centric AIOps solutions in an emerging market. The otter romp is growing! 🪴 Congratulations to cofounders Damien Garros, Raphael Maunier, and the whole team! cc Reza Malekzadeh Moritz Steinbrecher

‘Underdogs bite harder!’ 🐕 Smartness has just completed a €47 million Series B round led by United Ventures and CDP Venture Capital with our participation in the largest round ever completed in Italy for a vertical SaaS company! Founded in 2020, Smartness offers hoteliers and property managers an agentic system that analyses the data and market for accommodation to dynamically optimize prices in real time. Smartness has grown to more than 5,000 customers across 41 countries and reports a growth of more than 6x since its Series A round. This milestone aligns with Smartness’s clear goal for 2026: tripling revenue through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions across Europe. It’s well on track to becoming top dog of the hospitality software industry! Congratulations to co-founders Luca Rodella, Tommaso Centonze, Eugenio Bancaro and the whole team! Find out more about their achievement in the comments below!

Throwback Thursday! Two weeks ago, our own Alison Imbert took the main stage at GO Entrepreneurs in Paris, at Paris La Défense Arena.   Alongside Roxanne VARZA (STATION F) and Marie Ekeland (2050), in a panel moderated by Charlie Perreau (Les Echos), the conversation tackled a central tension for today’s investors:   How to stay focused on your growing business when AI dramatically accelerates product development? To Alison, the quality and resilience of the founding team remain the most decisive factors for long-term success. She also highlights a generational shift: younger founders are natively integrating AI; not just to build faster, but to rethink how organizations operate and scale. Yet despite the efficiencies AI unlocks, one truth remains unchanged: building and leading a human team is something technology cannot replace. This conviction extends beyond investment practice. For Alison, mentoring and building long-term relationships, particularly with women in the ecosystem, is another way to help shape a more balanced and sustainable venture landscape.   Watch the full recording of the panel and Alison’s interview (in French); linked in the comments below!