Brevo, a Paris-based innovator in customer engagement software, has closed its latest €500 million financing round, officially becoming a unicorn and accelerating its external growth strategy.
General Atlantic, and Oakley Capital are joining the Company’s shareholders. Bpifrance and Bridgepoint remain minority investors, with the latter reinvesting via Bridgepoint Development Capital V. Partech, an investor since 2017, is fully exiting its stake.
Armand Thiberge, founder and CEO of Brevo, comments: “I’m very pleased to welcome Oakley Capital and General Atlantic, two global investment firms that share our vision and high standards. Our ambition remains unchanged: to build a global European CRM leader capable of competing with US players through product excellence. This new phase will allow us to further accelerate our product roadmap, notably by leveraging AI, and to strengthen our operational excellence.”
In 2025, several European startups operating in CRM, customer-engagement and AI-driven sales tooling have secured new funding, illustrating strong investor interest across the sector.
The UK saw notable activity with Ascendx Cloud raising €97 million to enhance AI-powered CRM data applications, while Attio secured €44 million to expand its AI-native CRM platform for go-to-market teams. Early-stage innovation also emerged, including Sweden’s Spiich Labs with a €600k pre-Seed round for its agent-first CRM automation assistant, and Belgium’s Donna raising €4.1 million to scale its AI assistant for field sales teams.
Altogether, these companies account for approximately €145.7 million in new funding, signalling substantial and diverse investment across CRM and sales-enablement tools.
Within this landscape, Brevo’s €500 million round represents a significantly larger capital injection than its European peers, positioning it as one of the most heavily backed CRM-oriented platforms in 2025 and strengthening France’s presence in a market otherwise dominated by UK and Nordic funding announcements.
Peter Dubens, co-Founder and Managing Partner at Oakley Capital, adds: “We’re pleased to be partnering with a proven founder like Armand. He has built a remarkable company combining a unique product offering, international scale, and profitable growth. We see significant opportunity to further internationalise the business and expand into the mid- market, and we look forward to working in partnership with Brevo and General Atlantic to achieve this.”
Founded in 2012, Brevo offers a Customer Platform for the sustainable growth of all businesses and organisations (including nonprofits). With Brevo, companies benefit from a unified view of the customer journey through an all-in-one marketing and sales platform featuring email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat campaigns, and more.
Originally focused on email marketing, the company has significantly expanded its offering over the years, aiming to become one of the most comprehensive, intuitive, and efficient Customer Platforms on the market. It integrates marketing automation, CRM, Customer Data Platforms, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, all the way to social CRM.
Today, more than 600,000 companies including eBay, H&M, Louis Vuitton, Carrefour, and Michelin trust Brevo to deepen their customer relationships.
The new funding will support continued large-scale investments in AI, accelerated growth in the United States, and an intensified M&A strategy. Brevo will surpass €200 million in ARR in 2025, with a double-digit EBITDA margin.
Brevo operates in 180 countries, including France, Germany and USA, the three of which account for 65% of total revenues. The Company aims to reach one billion Euros in annual revenue by 2030.
Historically, over 50% of Brevo’s workforce and talent have been dedicated to product development and R&D . This long-standing focus on research and innovation will now be amplified to leverage the rapid pace of technological progress.
Sascha Günther, Managing Director at General Atlantic, adds: “We see strong secular tailwinds in AI-driven customer engagement software platforms that serve SMBs and mid- market clients. Brevo is uniquely positioned at the centre of this shift with a product-led, capital-efficient foundation, and a visionary founder in Armand. We’re excited to support Brevo in becoming a global category leader.”
Announced last February with a €50 million investment over the next five years, the Brevo AI Lab has already given rise to new features such as Marketing, Sales and Conversations agents and the MCP (Model Complex Protocol) connector, which links Brevo’s Customer Platform to AI assistants and applications such as Claude, ChatGPT or Mistral’s Le Chat.
At the same time, Brevo is seeing traction on its Sales CRM, which helps sales teams better track opportunities and automate lead conversion. This momentum is driving the Company to further accelerate investment in this strategic product, which has become a key driver of its growth.
The United States, which already represents a meaningful share of Brevo’s revenue, continues to show substantial long-term potential. Growth in the region is accelerating, with the U.S. now generating 24% of all new revenue.
To support this trajectory, Brevo will continue to invest significantly in the market through 2030, with over €100 million planned for investment .
Thomas Moussallieh, Partner at Bridgepoint, commented: “Brevo’s journey over the past five years has been extraordinary. Together, we’ve scaled the business internationally, expanded its capabilities, and built a platform that now leads its category in Europe. The five-fold ARR growth and nine strategic acquisitions under our partnership reflect the vision and ambition of Armand and the team. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved together and look forward to supporting Brevo’s next chapter through our reinvestment via BDC V.”
This new funding round will enable Brevo to accelerate its external growth strategy. With 11 acquisitions since its creation, Brevo leverages M&A with two objectives: integrating new, differentiating technologies into its platform, and expanding market share in key geographies.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/12/ebay-hm-and-louis-vuitton-partner-with-newly-minted-french-unicorn-brevo-as-it-secures-e500-million/
