EDHEC signs a deep tech entrepreneurship partnership with Bpifrance
Alongside seven other prestigious engineering and management schools, EDHEC Business School signed an ambitious partnership with Bpifrance in Paris on 22 April 2025. The partnership seeks to strengthen France’s deep tech ecosystem, particularly by accelerating the creation of technologically disruptive start-ups.
Responding to the constant expansion of deep tech start-ups, frequently run by alumni of France’s prestigious grandes écoles, EDHEC Business School, AgroParisTech, CentraleSupélec, emlyon business school, ESCP, ESSEC, Institut Mines-Télécom and Institut Polytechnique de Paris have teamed up with Bpifrance in a strategic partnership. The dual objectives of the partnership are to foster the emergence of deep tech entrepreneurial projects and to increase the involvement of students and alumni of these schools in research-driven technological entrepreneurship, either through company creations or support for innovative projects.
The partnership is part of the French government’s Deep Tech Plan, coordinated by Bpifrance and launched in 2019. The plan is designed to make France a world leader in disruptive innovation, by multiplying the number of deep tech start-ups throughout the country.
Structuring collective momentum in higher education
The collaboration aims to structure and amplify the engagement of France’s grandes écoles in the deep tech ecosystem. It notably seeks to raise awareness of deeptech issues among students and alumni, as well as among innovation networks (competitiveness clusters, public and private laboratories, incubators).
The agreement will also ensure more seamless support for projects emanating from the signatory establishments – beginning at their creation phase – thanks to the sharing of expertise, tools and resources. The start-ups will also benefit from privileged access to a continuum of support and funding from Bpifrance, embracing expertise, networking and investment.
Lastly, the alliance coalesces the partner establishments around the co-construction of the Deep Tech Plan, the aim being to propose new initiatives and democratise access to technological entrepreneurship.
Consolidating expertise in deep tech entrepreneurship
For EDHEC, the partnership represents a strategic opportunity to strengthen the deep tech expertise of the School’s three incubators, in particular TechForward, the incubator co-founded with EURECOM and Institut Mines-Télécom, located in the Sophia Antipolis business cluster. TechForward’s goal is to foster synergies between scientific talent and business around technological projects capable of responding to major societal and environmental issues.
The signature of the partnership was preceded by an event organised in the Bpifrance Hub in Paris, and attended by the partner schools. Several people driving entrepreneurship at EDHEC spoke at the event. Ludovic Cailluet, Professor and Associate Dean of the EDHEC Centre for Responsible Entrepreneurship, reviewed the success of TechForward. Since being created in 2023, the incubator has supported 23 start-ups, generating 443 jobs and raising total funding of €49 million.
One of these start-ups, Pearcode, founded by Melpomeni Dimopoulou, is developing a technology for storing digital data on synthetic DNA. During the event, the entrepreneur came to present the progress made by her company, one of the new generation of high-impact deep tech start-ups.
