Agriculture: an INRAe/Bpifrance partnership agreement to develop deeptech startups

INRAe is a world leading institution for studies in relation with agriculture, the environment, and food. It’s the first French specialised research entity in these three scientific fields, and it has the means to support the emergence of sustainable agricultural and food systems and bring up “solutions for life, for humans and for the Earth”. Bpifrance has become both the bank and trust partner of entrepreneurs. “Serving the future” is the motto of Bpifrance, an entity which mission is to open new “ways of business” to entrepreneurs and turn them into “the French champions of tomorrow”.

Becoming industrial champions

It is with this shared vision in mind that INRAe and Bpifrance signed a “structuring” partnership agreement on July 3, 2025, to accelerate the transformation of scientific results into concrete, high-impact innovations.

This partnership is part of the Deeptech Plan, managed by Bpifrance on behalf of the French government as part of the France 2030 global development plan, which aims to foster the emergence of a dense network of “disruptive technology” startups in France. This agreement is driven by the same shared ambition: to transform scientific excellence into “industrial champions”. As one of the signatories to this agreement states, the aim here is to strengthen “key link in the Deeptech Plan in the agricultural, food, and environmental fields. This partnership is both strategic and exemplary, as it combines support, transparency, and ambition for impact.”

Structuring a full support course

To bridge research and industry and ensure a “continuum of overall support”, and to help the start-ups of tomorrow emerge, the two entities seek to structure a full-scale support course for deeptech projects, “from the identification of research results stage to the fundraising stage, and the training of project leaders, access to expertise, funding and infrastructures”.

To reach this goal, the agreement will set up concrete tools, such as:

• the improvement of detection mechanisms and start-up creation;
• access to infrastructures of preindustrial demos and access to the Bpifrance Les Deeptech national services such as Tandem (to find an associate) and Tango (to assemble an advisory board);
• support to fundraising, leveraging a network of business angels and deeptech funds.

Leverage, share, improve

In addition to these tools, the partnership also considers in a broader vision to:

• leverage deeptech talents “using the Bpifrance pools to improve funding teams from the research field”;
• share good practice in terms of tech transfer, HR, funding and support;
• improve “the transparency and readability of valuation processes”.

According to both parts of the agreements, these actions aim at lifting barriers to deeptech entrepreneurship by creating an environment that is “more open, more fluid and more efficient” for all players of the ecosystem, “in a logic of common good at the service of transitions”.