Partech

AI modelling, product research, and academic studies all hinge on one thing most platforms can’t guarantee: real, trustworthy human data. 👥 This is where Prolific comes in, the platform-model tech company filling a critical gap in AI and research by providing fast, reliable access to high-quality human data from a verified, global participant pool. Their Protocol data quality system ensures every contributor is ID-checked and behaviorally screened, offering a level of assurance and trustworthiness competitors can’t replicate. By combining this with seamless API integrations and a compounding data quality flywheel, Prolific’s platform makes authentic, scalable human insight accessible to over 35,000 researchers, AI developers, and enterprises. 📊 Launched in 2014, the marketplace connecting researchers with vetted participants was founded on the conviction that the best decisions and the biggest discoveries stem from data of the highest quality. 🩺 Since completing the Y Combinator accelerator program in 2019, Prolific has experienced significant growth, including: - Operating in 200+ countries - 200,000+ verified participants - New study launched every 2 minutes - Trusted by over 35,000 researchers and 10,000 organizations, including 85% of frontier AI labs relying on Prolific to evaluate and improve their models If that weren’t enough, Prolific’s $32M Series A in 2023, co-led by Partech and Oxford Science Enterprises, was one of the largest in the UK that year! 💥 In their HUMAINE leaderboard evaluating human experiences with AI, Prolific participants ranked GPT-5.2-chat in second place out of the 33 models tested, pointing to a future where AI performance is judged by people, not just benchmarks. 🤖 Looking ahead, Prolific is building the global operating system that ensures AI systems remain grounded in genuine human understanding, and research is driven by the highest-quality human insights. With the long-term vision of becoming the universal platform for human-AI evaluation worldwide, Prolific is laying the infrastructure for the entire AI industry to evaluate models safely and responsibly, and for researchers worldwide to achieve exciting breakthroughs more quickly. What’s more, Prolific recently won the 2025 Investor Allstars Company Challenge, an invite-only competition judged by a panel of industry leaders, and has featured in the annual FT1000 list of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses for two years in a row. The company is truly becoming prolific😉 The team is also expanding rapidly and currently hiring across a range of AI and research-focused roles in both the US and the UK. Check out their website and job openings in the comments below👇 PS: For more context on Prolific’s role in the AI data landscape, check out the recent Real Deals piece in the comments, where our own André François-Poncet shares why the company has become a go-to data supplier for leading AI players. Cc Phelim Bradley

At Partech Growth, everything we do, from investing to operating and hands-on support, ladders up to the same goal: helping founders scale enduring, category-defining companies. 🪜 That’s exactly what our own Omri Benayoun explored in his conversation on the EUVC podcast, where he discussed how Europe’s capital-efficient DNA, combined with ambitious founders and engaged LPs, is reshaping growth equity. In his discussion with Andreas Munk Holm, Omri covered topics that sit at the core of our Growth strategy, including: - Bootstrapped scale-ups and contrarian growth bets  - Measured risk-taking and long-term compounding  - Building at scale across fragmented European markets  - When growth capital accelerates, not distorts, companies  - The evolving role of LPs in European growth equity These themes reflect how our Growth team partners with scale-ups today: backing companies on the path to profitability, accelerating organic growth, and supporting founders through M&A, international expansion, and long-term value creation. 📈 If you missed the episode, it’s a great window into how our Growth Team thinks about growth, in Europe and beyond.  Head to the comments to listen! 🎧 

🎧 Partech’s 2025 Podcast Picks: Part 2 We’re back with more conversations we bookmarked this year, focused on growth, product, go-to-market, and leadership at scale: - The secrets behind growth, with Jonathan Badoux (Ornikar, Icebreaker Podcast)  - The story of Studocu, with Marnix Broer (Studocu, Frames Of Tech Podcast)  - Product-driven founders: strength or weakness?, with our own Boris Golden (Partech, Timothe Frin’s Podcast)  - About Europe’s capital-efficient DNA and Growth Equity, with our own Omri Benayoun (Partech, EUVC Podcast)  - The 5 silent killers of go-to-market, with our own Keji Mustapha (Partech, Making The Grade Podcast) Same tradition as every year: sharing useful signal while the ecosystem slows down! Happy listening 🎙️  All links on our website here: https://lnkd.in/exviwcbe

🎧 Partech’s 2025 Podcast Picks: Part 1 As the year slows down, we’re keeping the signal going. 🔊 Here are 5 podcast episodes that stood out to us this year: grounded conversations on deeptech, AI, fintech, and building at scale across markets: - A crash course in building deeptech, with Rohit Jha (Transcelestial, The Upside Podcast!)  - Beaucoup d’Alan et un peu de Mistral AI, with Charles Gorintin (Alan, 40 nuances de Next - les champions de la French Tech)  - How AURA is giving underserved communities access to financial services in South Africa with Warren Myers (AURA, Unlocking Africa Podcast)  - Building Africa’s largest proptech, with Mostafa El-Beltagy (Nawy, The Upside Podcast!)  - Building the future of cybersecurity, with Gianni Cuozzo (Exein, Made IT Podcast - Storie Italiane di Successo) Thoughtful listens for the year-end break; Part 2 coming soon! 👀 Find all links on our website here: https://lnkd.in/exviwcbe

How to rethink seed in an unpredictable market? Our Partner Alison Imbert was recently featured on Startups Magazine and shared how seed investing is evolving and what it really means to take smarter risks in today’s environment. From backing conviction over consensus to supporting seven founders at Pennylane and passing (and learning) from Mistral AI, Alison breaks down how she thinks about teams, timing, and judgement. 🤔 Here’s a glimpse of the conversation: - Why the best seed bets are often pure team bets  - What investors get wrong about founders’ ability to grow into CEOs  - What our core value of “independent thinking” means in practice  - The hidden risks of “beautiful-on-paper” business models  - The toughest questions Alison asks founders before investing A thoughtful read for founders and investors looking to navigate today’s seed landscape; link in the comments! 📖 

Major milestone for medtech 🩺 Huge congrats to our portfolio company AMBOSS, whose AI search agent for clinical care LiSA recently ranked #1 overall in an independent evaluation of clinical AI systems! This ranking comes from a new benchmark study carried out by Stanford University, Harvard University, and collaborating institutions, evaluating how 31 AI systems behave in 100 real clinical scenarios drawn from primary-care-to-specialist consultations. The NOHARM benchmark is one of the most clinically grounded evaluations to date, using real cases reviewed by subspecialists across 10 specialties and based on 12,747 expert annotations. On top of ranking first overall, AMBOSS’ LiSA ranked among the top 5 safest models and was one of the few systems that demonstrated consistently strong performance across all evaluated criteria: safety, clinical appropriateness, and contextual relevance.  This balanced profile reflects LiSA’s intentional design choices: - Draws exclusively from curated clinical sources (AMBOSS Knowledge Library, selected US guidelines, and drug databases)  - Built to support, never place, clinical judgement  - Transparent about limitations  - Structured to align with clinical workflows Congratulations to the team at AMBOSS on this amb-azing achievement!  Cc Benedikt Hochkirchen | Madjid Salimi | Nawid Salimi | Dr. Sievert Weiss | Omri Benayoun | Bruno CREMEL | André François-Poncet | Andrew Whiting | Paul Vider | Victor Huberson | Mohamed Damak | Alexis Lancien | Aya Murr | Louis Dessal | Paul Soulis | Tiffany Chhoa 

We’ve got some ex-cellent news for you! 😉 Our portfolio company Exein, the leading embedded cybersecurity company for the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced €100M in new funding! The round was led by Blue Cloud Ventures, with participation from HV Capital, Intrepid Growth Partners, Geodesic Capital, and J.P. Morgan. This funding brings Exein's total funding for 2025 to €170M, following their recent Series C round in July. 💸 Since its founding in 2018, Exein has already made a mark on the cybersecurity world and has achieved the following milestones: - Protects 1.5B devices every day, making it the world’s largest embedded cybersecurity provider  - Reports 5x year-on-year growth  - Its mission-critical IoT security is expected to surpass 2B embedded devices worldwide in Q1 2026 This new investment will fuel Exein’s global expansion as demand soars for protection against attacks, and will also support a multi-deal M&A program in 2026.  We’re thrilled to back the team at Exein as they continue redefining IoT security and are excited to see them continue growing! 📈 👇 Read more in the comments  Cc Gianni Cuozzo | Gerardo Gagliardo | Giovanni Alberto Falcione | Gary Walshe | Reza Malekzadeh | Philippe Collombel | Simone Riva Violetta | Magda Posluszny | Julia Najman | Vivien Bovard 

📢 2025 over and out! 📢 From exciting fundraising rounds, notable awards and recognitions to a whole repertoire of new companies, let’s take a look at the highlights of 2025!  🥳 New Chapters   This year, we celebrated the full exit of 4 portfolio companies: SideCare, Memfault, Upvest, and Brevo. While this is not a goodbye, we’re proud to have been a part of their journey and wish them the best of luck in their new adventures!  💸 New funding rounds Our portfolio raised over $1.5B in 2025, with multiple $50M+ rounds from Pennylane, Exein, AMBOSS, Nawy, and Makersite. What a year indeed!    👋 New portfolio companies  In 2025, we welcomed 15+ new companies to the Partech family: say hello to ai-coustics, Alpic, Aura, Carrot Credit, CloudQuery, IMP Software, Kredete, Makersite, Mercanis, Plumerai, Revibe, RockFi, Shakers, Sumary, and Track Titan. We’re excited to walk alongside you on your journey!    🏆 Awards and recognitions  2025 was certainly an awards season, with Prolific and xFarm Technologies labelled winners of GP Bullhound’s 2025 Allstars Awards, and well-earned ranking features from multiple portfolio companies; find the full list in the comments! A massive congrats to all companies featured!     📚 Reports and editorials  We released three reports and editorials this year: the Partech Africa Report was published in January, providing detailed insights into the African VC ecosystem. In June, we released the very first edition of The Outlier, our new editorial series on what it really takes to build in Europe. Finally, we published our 2025 Sustainability Report in December, showcasing ESG maturity across our global portfolio. Want a re-read to relive the year? Find the links to all publications in the comments 👇    👥 Community   2025 was a year of face-to-face connection and conversation, brought together by our numerous community events such as the Founders’ Summit in May and the C-Level (Un)-Conference in October.     Overall, it’s been a year of momentum and progress, and we are excited for the adventures ahead in 2026. Check out this video for the full 2025 Partech recap! 🎬 Don’t want to wait until December 2026 to find out what we got up to? Sign up to our monthly Newsletter to get updates in your inbox as soon as they happen. Head to the comments for the link! 📪

The agri-food sector remains one of the least digitized industries, still characterised by administrative chaos, fragmented tools, and limited integration between machines, sensors, and data sources. Farmers often rely on dozens of disconnected apps and manual paperwork, making it difficult to manage operations efficiently, ensure compliance, and generate the data increasingly required by supply chains. 🌾 In steps xFarm Technologies. The tech company digitalizing the agri-food sector addresses this gap by providing a single, easy-to-use platform that centralizes farm management, from administrative workflows to agronomy, monitoring, and machinery connection. By turning an unstructured environment into a coherent, data-driven ecosystem, xFarm enables farmers to improve efficiency, reduce risks, and create value through traceable, high-quality data. 🌽 Founded in 2017 and born from the merger between xFarm and Farm Technologies in 2021, the pace of the company’s evolution has been striking: - 550,000+ farms supported - 14M+ hectares digitized  - 500+ crops supported - 100+ countries covered With a strong presence in Europe, South America, and India, the platform has become a widely adopted solution for farm management and continues to evolve with new features that strengthen its role as a comprehensive, all-in-one ecosystem for the agri-food sector. 🐄 So, what’s next for xFarm Technologies? The company is building a unified ecosystem where AI, Natural Capital, and embedded FinTech converge to empower every farmer. xFarm’s AI layer is evolving from simple tools into a true digital companion, capable of turning photos, voice notes and messages into agronomic intelligence. At the same time, they are enabling food companies to regenerate soil, water, biodiversity and carbon across their value chains. And with embedded FinTech, xFarm is moving toward a world where insurance and financing happen seamlessly in the background, reducing friction to almost zero. The future the team at xFarm sees is one where a farmer can understand, decide and act in one place, supported by technology that feels simple, human, and immediate. 🧑🌾 And this ambition has certainly been well-recognized! xFarm was recently awarded “Farm Management Innovation of the Year” at the AgTech Breakthrough Awards, one of the most relevant recognitions in the global AgTech landscape. The company also became a Certified B-Corp, was the first Italian company invited to Dreamforce in San Francisco, received the SEF Growth High Potential label from the Swiss Economic Forum, and was listed by Sifted among Europe’s Fastest-Growing Startups in 2025 among many other awards. Truly x-ellent work! To read more about xFarm and explore the team’s job openings, head to their website in the comments 👇 PS: Make sure to check out our 2025 Sustainability Report, which spotlights xFarm’s sustainability practices 🌿 Cc Matteo Vanotti | Matteo Cunial

Craving something to listen to this festive season other than carols? 🎶 Our own Keji Mustapha was featured on the latest episode of the KLIMB podcast in conversation with Michael Saifoudine to discuss brand, trust, and VC, as well as how she is rewriting venture marketing.     In this episode, Keji breaks down the three pillars of VC brand-building: curation, convening, and the “infinite game”. Among many others, the conversation also touches on these topics: - Discovering sales, psychology, and relationship-building  - What a CMO really does inside a VC firm  - Website as a storefront and portfolio narrative  - Refresh vs rebrand: when and why  - Hiring: curiosity, agency, humility & attitude Keji also reflects on working across London, Paris, and New York, why relationships can’t be replaced by AI, and what it means to build a tribe that self-selects into your worldview. 👥 Catch the episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Deezer; links in the comments! 🎙️