Wednesday, March 4, 2026

The French AI startup gunning for Workday, Oracle, and SAP

For Eléonore Crespo, the French attitude of “jamais content,” or never happy, is a business strategy, not a stereotype. The Paris-trained fundamental physicist turned co-founder and CEO has built Pigment around a French-flavored “Never Settle” ethos—an aggressive refusal to be satisfied that’s now powering one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI software companies.

Fortune has exclusively learned Pigment is approaching $100 million in ARR, having doubled ARR for a third consecutive year. The company has grown its customer base 74%, with leaders like Uber, Unilever, Anthropic, Siemens and more using Pigment, and 57% of new revenue coming from enterprise customers. More than half of Pigment’s new customers in 2025 migrated from SaaS giants, Crespo says, a 115% year-over-year increase in replacement.

Crespo, a former Index Ventures investor, co-founded Pigment with Romain Niccoli in 2019 to replace the spreadsheets and legacy planning tools that still run the guts of large companies. The pitch: an AI-native enterprise performance management platform that sits across finance, sales, HR, and supply chain, unifying data and decision-making in one system.

“Every single CEO or CFO on this planet wants to make fast decisions to react to this macroeconomic environment,” Crespo told Fortune, pointing to wars, tariffs, inflation, and supply chain shocks. “They cannot wait months to make decisions.”

Pigment’s core product aggregates business data into a single platform and lets teams run scenario models—different oil price paths, shifting tariff regimes—without blowing up fragile Excel sheets or waiting weeks for a specialist to reconfigure a model.

Crespo’s latest bet is what she calls Pigment’s biggest leap yet: a “Modeler Agent.” Users describe what they want in natural language, and the agent generates governed, production-ready applications on top of Pigment’s data engine. Early customers say build times have collapsed from weeks to minutes. Figma reported getting to “80% of what they wanted to build from a blank page in minutes,” according to Crespo.

Investors have bought in. Pigment has raised nearly $400 million to date and crossed a $1 billion valuation in 2024, with backers including ICONIQ Growth, Meritech, IVP, Greenoaks, Blossom, and Sheryl Sandberg’s fund. But Crespo insists she’s in no rush to add more capital—or to go public. “IPO for us would be way, way down the line,” she said.

Crespo advises French President Emmanuel Macron on AI, and speaks frequently about “AI sovereignty.” But she resists framing Pigment as a European champion in opposition to the U.S.

“I do not consider ourselves a French company. I consider ourselves a global company,” she said. Most of her executive team is U.S.-based, while engineering remains concentrated in France—a talent base she describes as a “secret weapon.”

Crespo runs Pigment with the intensity of a founder who still feels behind. This energy extends to how she thinks about the so-called “SaaSpocalypse.” In her view, AI is a sorting event: some new players, like Pigment, will adopt the technology, while many legacy vendors will struggle to bolt AI onto old architectures. She’s betting she can outrun the incumbents.

“It’s a total revolution,” she said.

See you tomorrow,

Lily Mae Lazarus
X: @LilyMaeLazarus
Email: lily.lazarus@fortune.com
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VENTURE CAPITAL

- Ayar Labs, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup making AI chips more efficient, raised $500 million in Series E funding. NVIDIA, AMD, MediaTek, Alchip, and others led the round.

- Grow Therapy, a New York-based mental health platform for in-person and online therapy and psychiatric care, raised $150 million in Series D financing. TCV and Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the round and was joined by BCI, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, SignalFire, and Transformation Capital.

- Flink, a Berlin, Germany-based speedy grocery startup, raised $100 million in funding. Prosus Ventures and Btomorrow Ventures led the round.

- Fig Security, a New York-based platform that finds and fixes broken security flows across SecOps infrastructure, raised $38 million in seed and Series A rounds. Team8 and Ten Eleven Ventures, led the round and were joined by Doug Merritt, Rene Bonvanie, and the founders of Demisto and Siemplify.

- JetStream, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based AI governance company, raised $34 million in seed funding. Redpoint Ventures led the round and was joined by Falcon Fund, George Kurtz, Assaf Rappaport, and Frederic Kerrest.

- Guild.ai, a San Francisco-based AI-native community workspace for developers, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Google Ventures led the round and was joined by Khosla Ventures.

- KeyCare, a Chicago, Ill.-based virtual care provider built on Epic, raised $27.4 million in financing. HealthX Ventures led the round and was joined by 8VC, LRVHealth, BOLD Capital Partners, Ikigai Venture Partners, WellSpan Health, Allina Health, University of Chicago Ventures, Edge Ventures, and Exact Sciences.

- RenoFi, a Berwyn, Pa.-based AI-enabled renovation financing platform for homeowners, raised $22 million in Series B funding. Fifth Wall led the round and was joined by Progressive Insurance and others.

- Multitude Insights, a Boston, Mass.-based provider of AI-powered intelligence tools for law enforcement agencies, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Primary Venture Partners led the round and was joined by VSC, Commonweal, NEC, Counterview, and others.

- EGI Battery Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based advanced battery technology and manufacturing company, raised $10 million seed financing. TSV Capital led the round and was joined by several U.S. family offices.

- NextWork, an Austin, Texas-based platform helping people learn practical AI skills through projects and proof-of-work portfolios, raised $4.45 million in seed funding. Shakti VC led the round and was joined by Cake Ventures, GD1 VC, Blackbird Ventures, Icehouse Ventures, Phase One Ventures, and angel investors.

- Vento Games, an Istanbul, Turkey-based mobile games company, raised $4 million in seed funding. Makers Fund and Arcadia Gaming Partners led the round.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- The Rise Funds, an arm of TPG, invested approximately $250 million in Findhelp, an Austin, Texas-based social care technology platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Espirion, backed by Athyrium Capital Management and HealthCare Royalty, agreed to acquire Corstasis, a Henderson, Nev.-based biopharmaceutical company, in a $75 million deal.

- Gryphon Investors made a majority investment in HRSoft, a Denver, Colo.-based provider of enterprise compensation management software. Existing investor Bow River Capital will retain a minority stake.

- LGPS and Vista Equity Partners invested in Joblogic, a Birmingham, U.K.-based field service management software provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Thoma Bravo entered into a definitive agreement to acquire W