Ten French transport impact companies you need to know about in 2025

When it comes to reducing global carbon emissions, few sectors come to mind faster than commercial and consumer transport - responsible for around a fifth of all emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Transport is of course something most of us engage with on a daily basis in one form or another, and many billions are being poured into solutions to find cleaner vehicles and fuels as the world inches closer to its 2050 carbon commitments.

France is one of the leaders in the quest for greener transport, with billions of public funds earmarked for various types of transport via the France 2030 public investment scheme set up to foster home-grown innovation and a thriving ecosystem of sustainability-minded VCs. A lot of the focus is on electric vehicles and low-carbon aviation, but there are many more kinds of innovation to be found too, from designing energy-efficient routes for the maritime industry to bringing back old fashioned of transport with a carbon-cutting twist.

Here are ten transport-related startups we're keeping an eye on at Impact Loop.

Beyond Aero

Aviation is often in the spotlight when it comes to global carbon emissions, and this startup has had a lot of buzz in 2024. Toulouse-based Beyond Aero has seen a gap in the market for hydrogen-powered small planes in the six to eight seater range, and has raised around €42m. Potentially more promising is its list of clients ready to buy as soon as the company brings its planes to market, which it intends to do by 2030. That’s a blink of an eye for such a game-changing product, and co-founder Eloa Guillotin tells Impact Loop she’s confident about the firm's roadmap: “I do believe in a vision and we have a vision, but I also believe that a vision without an action plan is a dream.”

Syroco

We’ll be coming back to aviation, but let’s take to the seas for a moment. Maritime emissions - particularly cargo shipping and cruises - are a big costly problem to fix. Marseille-based Syroco offers a solution to reducing emissions which does not require any vessel retro-fitting, or indeed any hardware at all. Its AI-backed software charts a course for captains that they say can reduce emissions - and fuel costs - by 10-25% depending on conditions. They’re already onboard around 60 ships, and like Beyond Aero are setting their sights on 2030, when they hope to be on 5,000 vessels. "Of course it’s ambitious," co-founder Alex Caizergues tells Impact Loop. "But without ambition you don’t progress."

Electra

So that’s planes and ships, but what about cars. One of the main obstacles to more people buying EVs is the lack of charging infrastructure. French scale-up Electra is making charging easier, more accessible and quicker. Since being founded in 2021 by Aurélien de Meaux, Augustin Derville and Julien Belliato, three entrepenerus with tech backgrounds, the company has grown at breakneck speed. They’ve raised hundreds of millions of euros and have around 1,000 charge-points already deployed across nine European countries. And of course, they have a 2030 goal of their own: 15,000 charging points across Europe.

Flying Whales

Let’s turn back to aviation, though you probably weren’t expecting airships to appear on this list. Paris-based Flying Whales is backing its modern take on the zeppelin - a floating ship held aloft by gasses lighter than air. It hopes to take the emissions out of heavy-cargo shipping, particularly to remote areas. Aside from being lower-emissions than an ordinary plane, airships can load and unload while hovering, meaning in theory there is less need for on-the-ground infrastructure. It's an idea that’s got the backing of the French government’s French Tech Next40/120 programme, and while the flagship LCA60T airship appears to still be in the development phase, the company has raised well over €100m and already has plans for bases in Australia and North America.

Anod

Electric bikes encourage car owners to drive less, so the potential for expanding this sector to cut carbon-emissions can be huge. Paris-based Anod has caught a lot of attention - and just under €4m funding - as it works towards the 2027 launch of its light and, it claims, ultra-recyclable hybrid bikes. The company, founded in 2022 by the father-and-son team of Arnaud and Christophe Malrin, is banking on tech combining a small lithium battery with a supercapacitor to give users a longer lifecycle while reducing the use of critical materials like cobalt.

Hype

Next on our list is something visitors to Paris for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics may be familiar with. With a background in engineering and accounting, Mathieu Gardies founded what would become Hype in 2009, with the vision to decarbonise France’s taxis. Major milestones came about in 2015 when Hype’s fleet of hydrogen-powered taxis became the largest in the world, and this year when they were an official sponsor, and chauffeur, for the Paris games. The company is well-established in Paris and is now hoping to further expand outside of France. With reportedly over €125m raised, the company is also working to build up its infrastructure of green-hydrogen charging stations.

QINOMIC

Sticking with cars, and while European countries have set various targets for new EV purchases, there are hundreds of millions of cars on Europe’s roads right now that could be converted to become greener themselves. Based in Aix-En-Provence in the south, QINOMIC is in the low-carbon conversion game. They retro-fit existing cars, particularly light commercial vehicles, taking out their combustion engines and replacing them with electric battery- or hydrogen-powered engines. The company raised €6m in 2023 and in 2022 signed a deal with Stellantis to work with its Circular Economy Business Unit, offering green retrofitting to Stellantis’ commercial customers.

Ascendance

Another startup with promises to decarbonise aviation is Ascendance, which is working on hybrid-electric propulsion. Since founding in 2018 by four ex-Airbus employees, the company has raised at least €31m and is focussing on regional aviation for now with its proprietary STERNA hybrid technology.

The company is based in Toulouse, the same location as Beyond Aero and its hydrogen-backed planes which featured earlier in this list. Toulouse has emerged as a major hub for companies working towards sustainable aviation, not least due to heavyweights Airbus working on their own solutions there.

OpenAirlines

One more aviation startup for this list, and take a guess where it’s based. OpenAirlines, founded in 2006, basically does for commercial airliners what Syroco does for maritime operators: use AI-backed software to get the most efficiency out of existing operations. Based in (unsurprisingly) Toulouse, the company already works with around seventy airlines, and claims to have saved around 420,000 tons of fuel and 1.4 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2023. They’ve reportedly been profitable since 2021 and in 2024 received €45m in funding, including from sustainability-heavweights Mirova partners.

QOMMUTE

The final startup on our list, Marseille-based QOMMUTE, is working on a problem many of us have experienced but probably haven’t connected to the larger climate issue. The reliability of public transport is regarded as one of the most important factors in whether people opt for it, rather than just getting in their car. QOMMUTE’s idea is to improve real-time passenger information to make journeys more reliable. If you’ve travelled around France, it’s quite possible you’ve benefitted from their software services without realising it, as they already work with around 70 transport companies here. In mid-2024 they received €2.5m and are working to expand across Europe.