Advent France Biotechnology launches €86m fund

The European Investment Fund (EIF) and the Fonds national d’amorçage 2 managed on behalf of the French State by Bpifrance, participated in the fund, along with corporate ventures including Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Pierre Fabre and a major Asian pharmaceutical company, family offices and AFB’s management.

As its first version, the newfund will focus on investments in France, and maybe in Spain and Belgium and will select and finance two startups before the end of this year. As French policy-makers, the European Commission and Germany’s governmentz established huge funds in Aporil 2021  that are fueled by tax payers money, dubbed EIF  and Zukunftsfoinds I, respectivly to provide sufficient early-stage funding. However the gap to the US Ventrure Captial market has been widening over the past 20 years. While the US VC market ín 1998 was 12 times larger compared to Germany, in 2026 it was 49-fold larger. Experts, however, wonder if state money and the selection of portfolio companies by state-owned banks is competitive to the professional VC fund management in the US.