STATION F celebrates 8 years of innovation

It is hard to believe STATION F is celebrating 8 years! It feels like just yesterday we rushing to prepare our inauguration, which would host over 2,000 key people and change the face of innovation in this country forever. And a lot has happened since - each year we are surprised to find new figures that uncover new truths about the state of our ecosystem and entrepreneurship. For example, 11,000 applications in our first year. Or when we hit over 40% female-founded or cofounded companies across all programs, surpassed €1bn raised annually - or learned that there were 65 nationalities on campus (just last year). So what did we discover this year?

After having worked with over 8,000 companies, some of our numbers are now pretty consistent. For example, for the last 3 years, STATION F companies have raised €1 billion annually and we are on track for that to be the case again this year. In addition, for the last 3 years, we have had about 40% of our companies founded or co-founded by a female, and this is again the case. And last year, we announced 65 nationalities and are again in the same ballpark with about 70 nationalities represented this year.

Early-stage funding is thriving

Things have come a long way. In 2018, after our first full year of activity, our companies raised around €350 million. Today, our companies are raising this amount in 2-3 months. In just the first 6 months of 2025, STATION F companies have raised about €800 million - with some of the larger rounds announced this year including alumni like Multiverse Computing (€189m raised), Sekoia (€26m raised), Tomorro (€25m raised), Veesion (€38m raised) and more. In fact, over 20 companies have raised rounds of €10m or more since the beginning of the year.

While not all our companies have a French HQ (approximately 14% are non-French), many of our companies do leverage the local support schemes. Nearly 50% of our companies have been financed by BPIfrance and nearly 40% have leveraged unemployment benefits. And while over 50% of our companies have foreign investors in their cap table, the most active investors on campus remain France-based. This is not particularly surprising for angel and pre-seed rounds.

It’s time to talk about exits

While the funding market has transformed over the last few years, there is one area of the ecosystem that still leaves us quite concerned: the exit market. While STATION F startups are very early, a staggering 47% claim to not have given much thought to their exit strategy. Of the remaining 53%, only 16% are interested in a IPO. It is time we - and the rest of the ecosystem - work to address this issue.

That said, we have seen many of our companies get acquired by companies like Apple, Samsung, Datadog, SAP, Magicleap, Checkout, Veepee, TotalEnergies, Hugging Face, H Company, Jasper AI and more. And May 2025 was the first month where we had as many companies get acquired as companies who announced funding.

53% repeat founders

As our ecosystem gains maturity, it’s only natural to see more repeat founders emerge. We have been noticing this trend for about 24 months, with now around 53% of our founders having launched a previous company (and 28% having launched 2 or more previous companies).

When it comes to previous experience, an overwhelming number of founders come from other startups and scale ups, followed by corporates and consulting firms. However, we are seeing a rise in the number of founders from research backgrounds - and expect this number to surpass the number of ex consultants in the upcoming months.

A whole lot of AI - 70% to be exact

Between our partners and the large number of AI startups, STATION F likely has one of the largest AI communities in Europe. Nearly 70% of all our companies are building on AI or leveraging it as a key part of their offer. And while our companies are building on a variety of models, OpenAI remains the most popular by a lot - almost double the adoption of Mistral and Anthropic on campus.

Some of our top startups

Entrepreneurs are concerned about the upcoming French Presidential election - already

There is a lot for entrepreneurs to be concerned about at the moment: geopolitical instability, the exit market, European regulation, the funding market, the ability to attract the right talent. So what tops the list? We were not surprised to learn that the geopolitical context is the #1 concern of our companies, however we were not expecting for the #2 concern to be the upcoming Presidential election in France at this point in time and ahead of all other concerns (funding, competitiveness, hiring, exits). This is, however, very telling. We are about 2 years away but entrepreneurs want to be reassured that there will be stability and we will not backtrack on the progress made.

A great 2025 so far

Sifted recently came out with a ranking of the top 250 companies in France and Southern Europe. 12 STATION F companies made the cut. If STATION F had been an investor in all 12, we would have ranked as the #3 investor on the list - just behind our friends at Kima Ventures and BPIfrance.

So much has happened this year. We announced quite a few new programs, including Paris Saint-Germain, Pioneers, IndiaAI and UM6P. Snowflake launched a mentorship office on campus earlier this year. We also launched new facilities - including a Podcast studio, Podspace, and most recently a new restaurant, Riverside. We hosted part of the AI Action Summit (and party!) and more recently the Vivaparty. And have been lucky to host many incredible guests, like Lisa Su, Chuck Robbins, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia ..and some of our founders have accompanied President Macron on his trips to UAE and Southeast Asia. But we are particularly excited for whats to come and continue to strive to strengthen this ecosystem and address the needs and concerns of our entrepreneurs. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of our journey so far, this would not be possible without you.