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In true Parisian style, la rentrée has fully kicked in and the Hexa office is buzzing with energy again. The news of the week has everyone talking: Hugging Face’s acquisition by Nvidia for $12.9B.
Join us in congratulating Clem Delangue, a Hexa alumnus who built the marketing and growth department at Mention, a company we backed when we were still called eFounders. Years later Thibaud Elzière and Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire, then CEO of Mention, came in as angels on Hugging Face’s first round. As Clem put it: “They really helped me get off the ground with our first round of funding.”
That’s what being in the Hexa network actually brings: believers who are in your corner from the early days, when you need them most.
Welcome to Hexa, Guerric & Thibault!
Guerric de Crombrugghe recently joined as Partner to build hardware startups solving problems in defense and energy. He holds a PhD in plasma aerospace engineering, and he’s already building a water logistics solution for military deployments and satellite ground infrastructure.
We’ve also welcomed Thibault Chassagne to Hexa Scale as Partner this summer. He co-founded Virtuo, the digital car-rental startup backed by Balderton.
Call for Founders
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗫
Our co-founder Thibaud Elzière and Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire are looking for founders to launch 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗫, the hardware and software infrastructure to capture physical conversations and turn them into usable context for teams and AI agents.
Reach out if you’re ready to build your next venture, or know a technical founder who’s a strong fit.
TokenX
Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire wants to team up with a technical co-founder ready to join him in SF to build an AI coach that reads what each employee actually does with AI tools (not self-reported surveys) and teaches them what their own company’s top performers already do.
Get in touch with Matthieu directly, or send along entrepreneurial talent from your network.
Portfolio news
Upflow (HX18), the Financial Relationship Management (FRM) platform for B2B finance teams, launched a new brand and a new category. Co-founder and CEO Alex Louisy also published The Cash Collection Book
Catch up on what’s been announced during the summer
Waniwani (HX26) raises $8M seed
Founded by Robin Diligent, Maxime Antoine, and Luiza Gusmao, Waniwani is the Revenue infrastructure for the age of AI buyers The San Francisco startup raised an $8M seed round, led by Seedcamp, with participation from Redstone, Zone II Ventures and Plug & Play.
Panora (HX25) raises $5M seed
Founded by Diane du Paty and Fabian Langlet, Panora is an AI operating system for insurance brokers. The Paris-based closed $5 million in seed funding led by Isai, with additional support from Kima Ventures, 100in, 199 Ventures and the founders of Pennylane.
Yousign becomes Youtrust
Yousign, a Hexa Scale portfolio company, has rebranded to Youtrust to reflect its evolution into a complete digital trust platform. Hexa (then eFounders) first backed founders Luc Pallavidino and Antoine Louiset in 2019.
Verso (HX26) on OpenAI’s Paris main stage
Verso (HX26) took the main stage at OpenAI‘s Paris event in June. Co-founder and CEO Lydia Bellahouel presented Verso as a company that never sleeps. The proof point: over 50 studies delivered in three months (roughly one every two days) for 30+ clients including Fortune 500 and CAC40 names, run by a team of four, versus the six weeks a traditional agency study typically takes.
PMF Collector with Vincent Bryant, Co-founder and CEO of Deepki
Thirty clients, self-funded, in 18 months, building custom mini-apps for each one instead of a real product. It worked until it didn’t. Vincent Bryant and his team at Deepki hit a wall on maintainability before they even raised a euro. In this episode of PMF Collector, hosted by Mat Vaxelaire, the Deepki co-founder and CEO explains why he stopped chasing the whole market and focused only on the 5-10% who already felt the urgency, what pushed him to finally raise and rebuild the product from scratch, and which early bets (international expansion, one-off client deals) he’d take back. “We weren’t selling urgency. We were finding the people who already felt it.”
Also tune into the previous episode featuring Jon Anguelov (Aircall)
Build with AI feat. Camille Epitalon, Co-founder and CTO of Verso (HX26)
Camille opens his terminal each morning to eight pull requests already created, reviewed, and pre-approved while he slept. In this episode of Build with AI, hosted by Tanguy Goretti (CTO at Hexa), Camille Epitalon, co-founder and CTO of Verso, breaks down the setup behind it: Claude Code and Codex reviewing each other’s work, three external AI reviewers on every PR, and one hard rule for his agents, no one-way-door decisions without him. Camille built Verso’s entire technical side solo in three months and now counts over twenty paying enterprise clients. “Vibe coding is the worst name for this practice. It’s real engineering work.”
72 hours in Ukraine with defense startups
Our Partner Guillaume Lerouge, former team member Emma Caillat, and Lancelot Convert, co-founder and CEO of Rhizome Labs (HX25) traveled to Kyiv and Lviv earlier this year to see firsthand how Ukraine’s defense sector is innovating under extreme pressure. The country now counts 1,000+ defense companies, some past $100M in revenue. Drones can be jammed and obsolete within two months, compared to 20–30 years for a tank. The army even runs its own marketplace, ranking systems by real battlefield performance. It’s a sobering look at what wartime necessity has forced into being, and what it means for defense innovation in Europe.
Feet on the Ground, Head in the Stars by Thibaud Elzière
Our co-founder Thibaud Elzière‘s story doesn’t follow a straight line. In his new book, Feet on the Ground, Head in the Stars (Iconic Edition, out June 9), he shares the failures and the wins behind twenty years of building: selling Fotolia to Adobe for $800M, co-founding Hexa and launching three unicorns, investing in 300+ startups, and chasing side bets in microcars, solar sails, and hospitality with his brother Robin. Along the way, he lays out his methods and his case for a bold, distinctly European kind of entrepreneurship.
Opportunities & Community
Careers
Hexa | Chief of Staff - Hardware Projects (Brussels or Paris)
Pelagon | AI Applied Researcher (Paris)
Verso | Founding Sales (Paris)
Community Events
Paris Hardware Meetup
Our new Partner Guerric de Crombrugghe is hosting the Paris Hardware Meetup at our space on September 8.
Storytime by Hexa
Join us on September 30 for an evening event focused on content and founder-led growth, with Guillaume Moubeche, founder of lempire.
Thanks for reading! Follow us on Linkedin and Instagram to stay up to date between issues.
Cheers,
The Hexa Team