France has secured €13 billion in new institutional capital for its tech sector, marking the third phase of the Tibi programme and bringing total commitments since 2020 to nearly €31 billion. The announcement, made at the VivaTech conference in Paris, sees the French Treasury expand the initiative beyond its traditional base of private insurers to include state-linked industrial companies for the first time.
Half of the new funding – €6.5 billion – is earmarked specifically for deeptech, with a sharper focus on disruptive fields such as quantum computing, New Space and biotechnology. The overall target for this third phase is to reach €15 billion in pledges by 2030, building on the momentum of earlier rounds that exceeded their goals: Phase One (2020–2022) targeted €6 billion but raised €6.4 billion, while Phase Two (2023–2026) hit €7.6 billion by September 2025, more than a year ahead of schedule.
The expanded investor pool now includes mutual insurer Carac, rail operator SNCF, Paris transport group RATP, satellite operator Eutelsat, and defence companies Naval Group and MBDA. SNCF participates through its corporate venture capital arm, 574 Invest, which backs startups in mobility, logistics and predictive analysis. Naval Group has taken a stake in an AI accelerator. The inclusion of defence-sector companies marks a notable shift, given that institutional investors have historically avoided the defence tech sector.
The programme operates under a market-driven logic: institutional investors sign a voluntary charter committing a portion of their portfolios to eligible tech funds, with the French state providing the label but no direct investment. Technical committees of partner investors convene regularly to approve applications from fund management companies. A French government audit found that Tibi has nearly tripled annual investment in French tech companies with minimal cost to the state budget.
Expanding across Europe to retain homegrown champions
While the first two phases focused almost entirely on France, the central change in Phase Three is its pan-European ambition. The government wants to support funds that can invest larger amounts across several countries, with the explicit goal of helping small and mid-sized companies grow and go public while remaining based in Europe – rather than being acquired or moving abroad when they need more funding than local investors can provide.
This shift reflects a long-standing structural weakness in European venture capital. EU venture capital funds raise only 5% of global VC, compared with 52% in the United States and 40% in China. European scale-ups raise 50% less capital than their San Francisco peers by the time they reach ten years in operation. The economist Philippe Tibi, after whom the programme is named, has argued that European institutional investors need to allocate roughly 1% of their assets to venture capital to compete globally. US pension funds invest far more heavily in the asset class.
Funds raised through Tibi have backed French scale-ups such as Doctolib, Exotec and BlaBlaCar. The initiative has been held up by Tech Funding News as a model for the rest of Europe, and countries including Germany – via its WIN initiative – and the UK – which is exploring a proposed NOVA marketplace – have studied the scheme. The British Private Capital association has examined Tibi as a template for encouraging pension fund investment in venture and growth capital.
France’s broader tech ecosystem already provides a strong foundation. The country is a leading European hub for venture capital, with French VCs raising more funds than the UK in 2025. Artificial intelligence is a dominant sector, with companies such as Mistral AI attracting significant investment. The “La French Tech” initiative and a dedicated “Deeptech Plan” launched in 2019 have driven startup creation, and VivaTech – where Phase Three was unveiled – has become a major annual event, with its 2024 edition focused on AI.
How Tibi compares to Brussels’ own funds
Tibi is not the only programme trying to fill Europe’s growth-stage funding gap. The European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), managed by the European Investment Fund, raised €3.9 billion in its first round in 2023 and is now moving into a second phase with a €15 billion target, open to both private institutional investors and national governments. The EIF believes ETCI could ultimately attract up to €80 billion in additional investment. Brussels has also proposed InvestAI, a much larger €200 billion plan for AI infrastructure, and a separate €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund that invests directly in companies rather than through fund managers.
The key difference between Tibi and ETCI lies in governance and speed. Tibi is managed by the French Treasury, which decides which funds receive the Tibi label, allowing a single government to act quickly. ETCI gathers commitments from several national governments through an EU institution, which then selects the funds itself – a process that its backers argue is necessary to ensure a truly pan-European approach rather than a programme that mainly serves the country providing the capital.
Both initiatives are now focused on the same objective: helping European companies at the growth stage that need to raise more than €50 million, a segment where US investors have frequently stepped in when local funding proved insufficient. This overlap raises a question that Brussels has not fully answered. Some of Tibi 3’s new participants, including major French insurers, could also join ETCI 2. France has shown over the past five years that institutional capital will invest at home if the state creates the right conditions. Phase Three now tests whether that capital will also cross borders. Whether Tibi and ETCI end up working together or competing for the same investors will reveal if Europe’s push for tech independence is truly coordinated or just two similar efforts running side by side.
