While French venture capital is going through a more rigorous phase, marked by the search for liquidity and the end of the excesses of the 2020/2021 period, the ISAI investment fund has just achieved the first closing of its Venture 4 fund, at 75% of its objective of 100 million euros. Guests of DECODE VC, Jean-David Chamboredon, executive president and co-founder of ISAI, and François Collet, General Partner, detail what this fundraising says about the market, LPs, entrepreneurs, AI and possible exit trajectories in Europe.
A paradoxical climate: macro gloom, tech consolidation, AI excitement
For Jean-David Chamboredon, the year is marked by a strong contrast, with on one side, a macroeconomic context considered threatening, a gloomy French political climate, a rather depressive general environment and on the other, a French Tech which is consolidating, with more mature, better structured companies, and a field of artificial intelligence which creates a form of permanent tension between speculative bubble and profound transformation.
AI, and in particular GenAI, clearly generates hype, but it also acts as a revealer because behind the announcement effects, concrete uses and productivity gains are multiplying, particularly among “traditional” companies which know how to quickly integrate these new tools. François Collet insists on this point: certain companies not positioned as “native AI” manage to strongly differentiate themselves by exploiting these technologies with agility, capturing market share in a short time and with real capital efficiency.
Venture 4: model continuity in a very different market
ISAI Venture 4 is not a break in the model, the fund has the same characteristics as Venture 3, raised in the middle of a health crisis: same structure, same early stage logic, same team, it is the surrounding market which has been profoundly modified since 2022.
LPs, whether entrepreneurs, family offices or institutions, express more of a need to recover liquidity than a desire to reinvest massively in tech. Fundraising cycles are therefore more sensitive and more dependent on the ability to demonstrate exits. In this context, the fact that ISAI achieves a rapid first closing, mainly with subscribers already present in previous rounds, underlines the importance of the trust accumulated between one fund and another.
The particularity of ISAI remains its anchoring in a largely entrepreneurial investor base. An entrepreneur decides quickly, says yes or no more quickly than a large institution. This agility is decisive in a cycle where each month of delay can modify the conditions of access to capital.
Why ISAI is not switching to capital-intensive deeptech
While many European funds are increasing their exposure to deeptech, ISAI assumes a different positioning. The heart of its strategy is based on very early entry into companies, often as the first VC, then on progressive reinvestments over the rounds. This model assumes that the first ticket is not disproportionate in relation to the risk, and that the initial “march” does not consume too much capital.
Deeptech, in its most intensive version, reverses this logic. It is sometimes necessary to deploy significant amounts before even obtaining a first solid milestone, with a high technological and industrial risk. For a fund of around a hundred million euros, the equation becomes less balanced and ISAI prefers to position itself on the “shovel sellers” rather than the “gold diggers”: tools, platforms, layers of infrastructure or software that allow disruptive technologies to spread, with faster development cycles and more controlled capital requirements.
Less volume, more maturity among entrepreneurs
Since the 2019/2021 wave, the gross volume of projects has declined, but the nature of the profiles has evolved. The founders entering the market today have often worked in scale-ups or tech companies that have reached significant size. They saw from the inside how organizations, processes, go-to-market teams, and operations capable of supporting strong growth are built.
According to Jean-David Chamboredon and François Collet, this generation of entrepreneurs arrives with more precise benchmarks, avoids certain structural pitfalls and projects itself more spontaneously on the scale of the ETI rather than that of the SME. It is no longer simply a question of “building a beautiful company”, but of aiming for more ambitious trajectories, while remaining clear-minded about the difficulty of the path.
The dealflow is no longer suffered, it is chased away
One of the major transformations of the profession is due to the evolution of sourcing. Fifteen years ago, funds could still rely on a significant incoming flow, fueled by spontaneous applications and natural introductions, today, this logic is no longer sufficient.
ISAI, like most of the most active players in the market, now operates with a much more proactive approach: listening to weak signals on professional networks, making direct contact with founders who announce a new project, following up with former employees of high-potential scale-ups. The best files no longer appear as “forms received in a mailbox”. These are opportunities that must be sought out and for which the fund must quickly demonstrate what it brings, beyond capital.
A multi-winner portfolio as proof of the method
In this more demanding environment, ISAI highlights an element that plays a key role in the dialogue with LPs: the ability to bring out several winners per fund, and not a single “fluke of luck”. StickyAds, 360Learning, Platform.sh, Alma, Malt, Datadome, Weezevent and other less visible but very effective names make up this framework.
On Venture 3, companies like Flowdesk, Naboo, Dashdoc are already standing out. Others, even less exposed in the media, like Kestra or LightPanda, position themselves on the tool layers of the AI wave and are perceived as credible candidates for strong trajectories. This “multi-winners” pattern reinforces the fund’s thesis; performance is not based on a favorable accident, but on a reproducible method.
Tickets from 100,000 euros: ISAI as an institutional super-angel
The evolution of the early stage market has pushed ISAI to formalize, from fund 3, to intervene from the pre seed rounds with tickets between 100,000 and 500,000 euros. The idea is to play the role of an institutional “super-angel”, capable of aligning with very early rounds, often alongside entrepreneurs subscribing to the fund, then supporting projects during subsequent rounds.
This strategy is being renewed with Venture 4, it allows the fund to be present upstream of classic series A, to better understand the dynamics from the outset and to have more latitude to strengthen its positions in companies that are proving their traction.
An exit market structured by European private equity
Since 2020, the nature of outflows in the portfolio has changed. Private equity now plays a central role in the liquidity of participations. Players such as HG Capital, Keensight, or ISAI Expansion, on smaller scales, regularly intervene to take over stakes or carry out consolidation operations.
This dynamic does not boil down to an “Americans buy everything” scenario. Many consolidators are European, sometimes Nordic, sometimes Belgian or British. They are building pan-European groups whose size allows them to compete with certain American players, or at least to position themselves on large continental markets.
Conversely, the stock market appears less and less as a credible exit route for the majority of scale-ups. Recent cases show the difficulty in creating sufficient liquidity below 5 to 10 billion euros in capitalization. Even files perceived as solid have encountered limits, or even left the listing quickly; in this context, IPOs remain the exception, not the model.
Build actors large enough to be integrated without being crushed
ISAI emphasizes a point often underestimated in the exit debate: size at the time of acquisition. Historically, many large groups have bought startups that were too small, then tried to integrate them into their organization with cumbersome processes and a radically different culture, and the result has often been disappointing, or even destructive of value.
ISAI’s hypothesis is that the larger and more structured the acquired asset, the greater its ability to remain self-sustaining, maintain its culture and continue to execute. The success of certain acquisitions, in banking, software, services, is based on this balance between strategic integration and operational autonomy. Private equity, by allowing growth before this type of merger, plays an important “stepping” role here.
Investment pacing: one fund every five years, 20 to 25 lines
ISAI Venture 4 follows a stabilized rhythm: one fund every five years, around 20 to 25 main participations, supplemented by super-angel operations. This pacing helps smooth out cyclical effects; if ISAI had been forced to deploy most of its capital in 2021/2022, the risk of entering at too high multiples would have been significantly greater. By spreading its deployment over five years, the fund gives itself average exposure to several market environments.
The fund has already made a first investment, which will be made public in early 2026, and is finalizing a second operation. The objective remains to maintain an average pace of a little more than one deal per quarter, with busier periods and calmer ones, depending on the opportunities.
AI, much more than a fad
Underlying the interview, artificial intelligence appears to be the common thread for the coming years. Jean-David Chamboredon underlines that a very important part of the dealflow today integrates an AI dimension, sometimes superficial, sometimes at the heart of the product. GenAI has given spectacular visibility to the subject, but the issue goes far beyond generative models.
What is at stake, according to ISAI, is a profound restructuring of information systems, decision chains and software interfaces. AI, in all its forms (machine learning, deep learning, agentization) will transform the way in which companies design and operate their products, services and back offices. The comparison with the arrival of the web in the 1990s is not made lightly, it is a movement which should structure the next ten years.
