ForePaaS Joins Forces with a French Tech Powerhouse

Although its 40% EBITDA margin gives it the resources to finance its growth initiatives, OVHcloud had opted to go public partly to accelerate its growth, particularly through acquisitions. The European hosting and cloud services provider has completed its first acquisition since its IPO six months ago, which raised €350 million (see below), and its fourth in two years after OpenIO, Exten Technologies, and BuyDRM.
The target, ForePaaS, counted Elaia — already an investor in OpenIO — Hi Inov, and Calao Finance among its shareholders. The three investors injected €5.6 million in 2017, followed by a €1.43 million bridge round two years later (see the article and company profile below). The sellers, including the management team led by co-founders Paul Sinaï and Vincent Michel, were advised during the negotiations by London-based boutique Icon Corporate Finance, with no competitive bidding process being launched.
OVH was already one of the partners of the software company, which develops a multicloud data analytics platform for building enterprise applications powered by artificial intelligence. “In our business, it is crucial to invest continuously to remain at the forefront of technology. We were therefore not yet at break-even and chose to scale up by joining an international group with very strong ambitions,” explains Paul Sinaï.
With €663 million in revenue, OVHcloud operates 400,000 servers across 33 data centers on four continents and serves 1.6 million customers.

Shift to indirect sales and workforce reduction to 23 employees

ForePaaS expands the product portfolio of the listed northern French company, which already comprises 70 PaaS solutions — cloud-hosted application development tools. Founded in 2015, the start-up helps customers build algorithms and develop AI-powered applications on its platform while retaining ownership of their data.
The company still does not disclose its revenue, but its headcount has declined since 2017, from 40 to 23 employees. The reduction reflects a shift from a direct sales model to an indirect one, with a partner network responsible not only for distribution, but also for consulting, training, and maintenance.
The expansion into the U.S., announced as part of the 2017 funding round, led to the creation of a San Francisco subsidiary, headed by Paul Sinaï. Europe still accounts for 60% of revenue, with the remainder split between North America and Asia, where a partnership with Mitsubishi Research Institute was signed last year.
ForePaaS’s customers include just under 20 mid-sized and large companies, among them Japanese construction giant Takenaka, Klépierre, Pathé-Gaumont, and ClassNK.