Partner Article

50 million euros for student start-ups

Paris-Saclay Seed Fund, an investment fund of 50 million euros for start-ups created by students, young graduates and researchers of Université Paris-Saclay has been launched.

Set up by the university, the fund aims to promote the creation of technology and service start-ups – rivalling amounts offered by the world’s largest universities.

It brings together major corporate partners – such as BNP Paribas, CHANEL, Cisco, EDF, and Orange – and is endorsed by entrepreneurs and alumni who contributed to setting it up, and will be involved in its activities.

Université Paris-Saclay was created by 18 of France’s most renowned institutions who joined to compete internationally in education, research and innovation. Back in 2015, seventeen of these were brought together by top engineering school École Polytechnique and HEC Paris business school to work on the seed fund project.

There are 10,000 researchers, 65,000 students – including 10,000 in entrepreneurial programmes, 360 laboratories, and 10 incubators and accelerators in these institutions.

To be eligible for investment, the start-up founders or executives must have graduated from Université Paris-Saclay within the last six years, have a contract with one of the university’s research centres, or have been accelerated or incubated by one of the university’s organisations.

Between 40 and 50 young companies will be selected to be financed by the Paris-Saclay Seed Fund, which will be managed by venture capital firm Partech Ventures, one of the world’s largest investors in information and digital technology. Start-ups could receive up to three million euros of investment.

The fund will make its first investments in the coming weeks.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Université Paris-Saclay .