Prominent French investor Jean de La Rochebrochard, who leads French billionaire Xavier Niel’s VC investments through pre-seed and seed-stage VC Kima Ventures, is joining US-based early-stage VC Cassius as a partner.
In a LinkedIn post, De La Rochebrochard announced that he is “joining forces” with Cassius founder Emmanuel Seugé to deploy the third Cassius fund, “with Cassius 4 already on the horizon”.
Seugé, a former Coca-Cola exec, launched Cassius in 2017 to invest across North America and Europe. The firm is currently deploying its third $50m fund, focusing on seed deals, and is planning to raise a fourth fund in 2026.
Cassius has backed high-profile French startups including tradable sports token platform Sorare and amo, a social media platform launched last year by ex-Zenly founder Antoine Martin.
“As a US based fund run by Europeans, we will continue to back those founders who draw from the strengths of both worlds,” wrote De La Rochebrochard.
De La Rochebrochard will keep his role with Kima Ventures, where he has been a managing partner since the firm launched in 2015, alongside general partner Alexis Robert and partner Chloe Timsit.
Kima is one of France’s most active early-stage VCs, backing up to 100 startups a year with €150k tickets in all sectors. The firm was an early investor in healthtech unicorn Alan, fintech Payfit and Poolside, which builds AI models that can create software code.
Newwave drama
In 2020, De La Rochebrochard also cofounded French VC firm Newwave alongside former Accel vice president Pia D’Iribarne. But his time at the firm was rocky: in early 2024, he was ousted from the fund for “a number of reasons” that made it “not possible anymore for him to stay at Newwave”, as D’Iribarne previously told Sifted. In response, De La Rochebrochard told Sifted that he had chosen to leave the firm to focus on Kima Ventures, but added that he was pushed out by D’Iribarne, who owned 60% of the management company, following disagreements on the terms of his departure.
In October, De La Rochebrochard and D’Iribarne’s VC fund was taken over by Niel’s holding company (the fund’s largest LP). Sources close to the firm told Sifted at the time that there was drama behind the scenes: they said that shortly after De La Rochebrochard was ousted, LPs called an assembly at Newwave to change the constitution documents of the fund such that it would enable the LPs to dismiss the management company. (De La Rochebrochard, Niel and D’Iribarne declined to comment at the time.)
Sources told Sifted at the time that De La Rochebrochard would return to manage the fund.
“New Wave does not make new investments anymore,” De La Rochebrochard told Sifted. “I am still managing the existing portfolio, just like I have for all of our investments [with Kima] since 2015.”
Newwave invested in heavy-hitters like French OpenAI challenger Mistral and social app BeReal.
De La Rochebrochard wrote on LinkedIn that “If the past 10 years in venture have taught me one thing, it is the importance of building with the right partners; those you respect deeply, who inspire shared values and offer complementary strengths. Much like the partnership built with Xavier [Niel] or the one forged with Alexis [Robert].”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/jean-de-la-rochebrochard-joins-vc-cassius-news/
