Prime Highlights-
- Sopra Steria Ventures brings the group into French Tech 2030 to connect 80 startups with its expertise, teams and customers.
- Initiative aims to turn introductions into practical pilots, joint offerings and wider deployment with Sopra Steria’s business units.
Key Facts-
- CEO Rajesh Krishnamurthy serves as executive sponsor, while Socheat Chhay sat on the selection panel.
- Sopra Steria Ventures earned CVC of the Year honors at the Maddy Invest Awards.
Background-
Sopra Steria Ventures is widening its role beyond investing by bringing the European IT services group into France’s French Tech 2030 program, opening a path for 80 selected technology companies to tap its expertise, teams and potential customers.
French Tech 2030 is a government-backed program that helps French companies building strategically important technologies scale up. The current cohort of 80 firms works in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum technologies, space, critical infrastructure, robotics, electronics and healthcare. Corporate sponsors link these firms with industrial know-how and routes to market.
Sopra Steria Group Chief Executive Rajesh Krishnamurthy will act as executive sponsor. Socheat Chhay, managing director at Sopra Steria Ventures, sat on the selection panel that helped bring the group into the program.
The initiative aims to turn introductions into practical work between the startups and the group’s business units, moving from use cases to pilots, joint offerings and wider rollout. Startups gain the group’s capabilities and commercial reach, while it gains access to technologies its clients need.
The group already has experience with projects such as STREAMS, a space program with Aldoria, CS Group and France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) that strengthens space surveillance in France and Europe. Its own Startup Program has backed six startups, Albert, Curiosity, Egerie, Glimps, Skyreal and XXII.
Chhay said the sponsorship creates many chances for synergies between the startups and a major group, and he sees strong potential in AI-native companies that are changing how businesses grow. Sopra Steria Ventures also earned CVC of the Year at the Maddy Invest Awards.