Concours d’Innovation: France 2030’s Innovation Competition Results

The Concours d’Innovation is the annual competition framework through which Bpifrance awards hundreds of innovation grants per year to French startups and SMEs aligned with France 2030 priorities. This page tracks competition results, key winners, and sector distributions — see the Concours d’Innovation mechanism guide for how to apply, eligibility requirements, and the detailed evaluation process.

Competition Structure

The Concours d’Innovation operates three tiers designed to match funding scale to technology readiness:

• i2: €200K–€600K for early-stage innovation (TRL 3–5), typically 1–3 years post-founding
• i3: €600K–€2M for scale-up to demonstrator stage (TRL 5–7), validated technology proof of concept
• i-Lab: Up to €1M for academic spinoffs from public research institutions (CNRS, INRIA, CEA, universities)

Each year, 200–400 projects are funded across all tiers, with total annual budget of €200–300M.

2024 Competition Results Overview

The 2024 Concours d’Innovation produced 312 total grants across i2, i3, and i-Lab categories, representing €255M in total public grant funding. Sector distributions reflect France 2030’s strategic priorities:

The dominance of AI and digital (27%) reflects both the breadth of France’s deeptech AI ecosystem and Bpifrance’s deliberate strategy of funding AI applications across all France 2030 sectors — health AI, industrial AI, climate AI — rather than confining AI grants to a single sector category.

Notable 2024 Winners

Quantum Technologies (i3):

• Quobly (Grenoble): Silicon spin qubits on CMOS platform — €2M grant. Quobly is building the world’s first qubit architecture that is natively compatible with conventional semiconductor manufacturing processes. If successful, this approach would allow quantum chips to be fabricated in existing semiconductor fabs (including Crolles) rather than requiring exotic specialty manufacturing environments.
• Welinq (Paris): Quantum memory for quantum repeater networks — €1.5M grant. Welinq is developing the hardware for quantum communication networks, enabling secure quantum key distribution over long distances without signal degradation.
• Quriosity (Sorbonne Université spinoff, i-Lab): Quantum sensing for medical imaging — €800K. Nitrogen-vacancy diamond sensors for ultra-high-resolution MRI.

AI for Healthcare (i2/i3):

• Nabla (Paris): AI medical documentation assistant — €1M i3 grant. Now serving 40,000+ physicians across France, automating clinical note-taking and PMSI coding. Raised €25M Series A after the grant.
• Giskard (Paris): AI model testing and quality assurance platform — €600K i2 grant. Open-source platform adopted by 5,000+ organizations globally for testing LLMs and ML models before production deployment.
• Pixacare (Toulouse): AI wound care management and teledermatology — €500K i2 grant. Deployed in 80+ French hospitals.

Cleantech (i3):

• Sweetch Energy (Nantes): Osmotic energy harvesting from the salinity gradient at river-sea interfaces — €2M i3 grant. France has 1,800 km of Atlantic and Channel coastline with significant river discharge — a resource Sweetch is commercializing with proprietary ion exchange membrane technology.
• Rosi Solar (Grenoble): Silicon recovery and recycling from solar panel manufacturing waste — €1.5M i3 grant. Rosi recovers high-purity silicon from manufacturing kerf — waste generated during wafer cutting — reducing primary silicon demand and solar panel embodied carbon.
• Hexvia (Clermont-Ferrand): High-performance thermal insulation from recycled glass fiber — €600K i2 grant. Target application: thermal renovation of French building stock (France 2030 intersects with thermal renovation policy).

Advanced Manufacturing (i3):

• Corintium (Paris/Bordeaux): AI-powered chemical synthesis planning — €1.8M i3 grant. Reduces pharmaceutical synthesis process development from months to weeks.
• IoniCo (Toulouse): Solid-state lithium battery electrolyte — €1.5M i3 grant. Addressing the safety and energy density limitations of liquid electrolyte batteries; potential application in aerospace and defense.

Space (i-Lab/i3):

• Infinite Orbits (Toulouse): Satellite life extension services — robotic spacecraft docking with and extending the operational life of geostationary communication satellites. €800K i-Lab grant, €1.5M i3 follow-on. Raised €16M Series A.
• Satlantis France (Toulouse office, Basque-French company): Very high resolution Earth observation optical imaging from microsatellites — €600K i2 grant.

i-Lab 2024: Academic Spinoffs in Detail

i-Lab 2024 laureates: 70 companies selected from 280 candidates — a 25% success rate, the highest in the Concours d’Innovation family. This higher success rate reflects i-Lab’s focus on academic quality: applications from CNRS, INRIA, CEA, and university spinoffs are typically more technically rigorous, even if commercially earlier-stage.

Key i-Lab 2024 spinoffs beyond quantum:

• BioSynTec (Université Paris-Saclay spinoff): Enzymatic chemical synthesis platform — replacing energy-intensive chemical synthesis routes with enzyme-catalyzed reactions. €800K. CNRS PEPR Biologie Santé co-funded.
• Algama (INRAE spinoff): Microalgae protein extraction technology for food and feed applications. €750K. Agri-food sector, direct France 2030 protein sovereignty objective.
• PhotonFirst France (CNRS/Université de Strasbourg spinoff): Optical fiber sensing for structural health monitoring in aerospace and civil infrastructure. €700K.
• Fermentis Pro (INRAE/AgroParisTech spinoff): Precision fermentation for animal-free protein production. €900K.

Historical Volume and Trend Statistics

The trend is clear: AI and digital technology’s share of Concours d’Innovation awards has grown from 21% to 27% in four years, reflecting both the surge in French AI startup activity (catalyzed by Mistral AI’s emergence as a global LLM champion) and Bpifrance’s deliberate strategy of funding AI applications as infrastructure across all sectors.

Average grant size has grown 11% since 2021 — keeping pace with inflation and project complexity increases as France 2030 moves startups toward higher TRL demonstrators.

How Competition Results Are Published

Winners are announced through:

• Bpifrance press releases at bpifrance.fr/actualites — typically sector-specific announcement days
• Regional Bpifrance office communications — each of France’s 47 regional Bpifrance offices announces regional winners simultaneously
• Journal Officiel for final administrative decisions (typically 6–8 weeks after initial announcement)
• Laureate webinars hosted by Bpifrance — grant winners, methodology, and portfolio development support sessions, held 2–3 weeks post-announcement

Transparency limitation: Individual grant amounts are not routinely disclosed without company permission. The aggregate statistics published by Bpifrance (total budget, number of laureates, sector distribution) are reliable, but the company-level database requires direct inquiry to Bpifrance or company press release review. This opacity has been criticised by France Stratégie’s evaluation teams and the Cour des Comptes, which recommended a more structured public disclosure regime.

From Concours d’Innovation to I-Démo: The Career Path

The Concours d’Innovation is not a terminal destination for high-potential France 2030 companies — it is the first validation step in a structured public co-investment pathway:

1. Concours d’Innovation i2/i-Lab (€200K–€1M): Proof of concept, academic spinoff validation
2. Concours d’Innovation i3 (€600K–€2M): Demonstrator, first customer engagement
3. I-Nov or I-Démo (€3M–€70M): Industrial demonstrator, scale-up
4. Aide aux Projets Structurants (€100M+): First factory, European market leader stage

Companies that successfully navigate all four stages are the intended “deeptech champions” of France 2030 — globally competitive companies in strategic technologies that began with a Bpifrance small grant and ended as European category leaders.

Example trajectory: Pasqal (quantum computing) received i-Lab support in 2020, I-Démo in 2021 (€20M), and is now France 2030’s flagship quantum company with €100M raised and international commercial contracts. Quandela followed a similar path. The Concours d’Innovation grants are, in retrospect, the cheapest leverage point in the entire France 2030 system.

Related Content

• Concours d’Innovation Mechanism
• I-Nov Competition
• I-Démo Competition
• Competition Tracker Index
• Startups Funded KPI
• France 2030 for Startups