STATION F reports that companies associated with its Paris campus raised a record €2 billion in 2026, surpassing the more than €1.5 billion raised across the ecosystem in 2025.

Major alumni rounds drove the total: Multiverse Computing raised €500 million and health insurer Alan raised €480 million, according to tech.eu's interview with campus investor Camille Aubery.

The Future 40 list itself is now in its eighth edition, and startups selected across all eight editions have collectively raised €1.2 billion.

The campus, founded by Xavier Niel in 2017, supports more than 1,000 startups annually through 40 programmes, with roughly 9,000 startups passing through since launch.

The most striking signal in this year's cohort is a reversal of the traditional brain drain: six of the 2026 Future 40 companies participated in Y Combinator and then returned to France to build.

Aubery told tech.eu that founders previously might have gone to San Francisco and stayed there, but now recognise they can benefit from the US ecosystem and networks while still returning to France.

She argues it is cheaper to build in Paris and that founders can create a global company without being based in the US — a development she described as really encouraging, even as Europe still lacks liquidity and sufficient late-stage capital.

AI dominates the 2026 Future 40, but The Next Web notes the list also spans hardware, robots, developer tools and carbon-reduction technology.

STATION F highlighted two themes in particular: sovereign AI, giving Europe greater control over its technology, and physical AI bringing AI into robots and machines.

Selected companies include Bleu Robotics, which builds AI models for industrial humanoid robots; Allude, which builds infrastructure making AI agents and robots operable in factories; and AICE, which develops low-cost subsea drone swarms for defence and critical infrastructure.

CURA is developing carbon capture technology for cement plants.

Five companies in this year's Future 40 are bootstrapped, and Aubery attributes this partly to a changed funding environment: in 2021 and 2022 startups could sometimes raise on little more than an ambitious idea and a pitch deck, which she told tech.eu is no longer the case.

There is also a growing conviction among founders that they want to retain control.

AI tools let small teams accomplish far more: Oguste reached €400,000 in annual recurring revenue in under a year while bootstrapped, and Revox used an AI agent to book 250 prospective-customer calls in a single month.

Two of the five are now raising funding while others have chosen to remain independent.

The profile of selected founders is shifting: tech.eu reports that 47 per cent of this year's teams have at least one PhD and 75 per cent are repeat founders.

The 40 companies, selected from more than 1,000 campus startups, have raised €110 million to date, with Arlequin AI's €28 million Series A the largest round, followed by CURA at $10 million, Cleavr at €8 million and Lemrock at €7 million; 31 companies are at pre-seed or seed stage and two at Series A. Corporate partnerships feed the pipeline — Sanofi supports AI-driven drug discovery startups, and The Next Web notes the cohort pitches investors at an online demo day on November 4 at 10:00 CET.

The cohort underscores both momentum and friction in European venture.

tech.eu reports that late-stage capital remains scarce in France and across much of Europe, and that converting corporate pilots into lasting commercial relationships is difficult — though TotalEnergies acquires up to four companies a year from the campus as part of an M&A strategy.

Past Future 40 picks have delivered: Mistral acquired Pimento and Sovos acquired Flowie, while earlier cohorts included Fintecture, Tomorro, Spore.bio, WhiteLab Genomics and Syntetica.

STATION F plans a major celebration for its tenth anniversary in 2027, even amid political uncertainty around France's upcoming elections.