Biodiversity across Europe is collapsing at an alarming rate. In 2025, 19% of European animal species face the threat of extinction, and France is among the hardest-hit countries, with over one-third of its wildlife species at risk. Due to urbanisation, intensive agriculture, and infrastructure projects, France loses 25,000 hectares of land to development annually, equivalent to four football fields every hour. Versant, a Paris-based nature tech startup, is tackling this crisis by helping essential infrastructure developers build while preserving nature.
Versant has secured €500K in its first funding round. The investment comes from Antler, the world’s most active early-stage VC firm, alongside Climate Leaders Fast Track, a French impact fund, and several high-profile business angels. Additionally, Versant has received grants from the European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre and BPI France.
Speaking exclusively with TFN, Martin de Stoppani, cofounder of Versant, shared: “We’ve raised a total of €500K, with €350K in equity and €150K in grants. Our valuation was set through a BSA AIR mechanism.” The funding will help develop a comprehensive solution for renewable energy developers to meet environmental obligations more efficiently at every project stage.
How Versant identifies land with high restoration potential to improve France’s biodiversity
Luc Bettaieb (CTO) and Martin de Stoppani (CEO), co-founders of Versant, met at an Antler founder residency in Paris, sharing a vision to create a company that positively impacts nature. De Stoppani brings startup operations experience from Pulp (acquired by Partoo) and nature tech expertise from BGV, a cross-border venture capital firm. Bettaieb, from the US, contributes software development and team leadership skills gained at Fetch Robotics (acquired by Zebra), Postmates (acquired by Uber), and Autodesk.
Martin de Stoppani told TFN: “We created Versant in response to a clear and growing market need. There’s surging demand for ecological data, but limited capacity to produce and organise it, mainly due to a shortage of trained ecologists and naturalists. This bottleneck particularly affects renewable energy developers, causing costly delays and suboptimal environmental decisions. That’s where technology can help. Versant emerged from our belief that data can bring greater transparency, speed, and rigour to nature protection and restoration.”
Since launching in 2024, Versant has partnered with major renewable energy developers in France, including EDF Renouvelables, and has identified over 50 hectares of land with high potential for ecological restoration.
Martin de Stoppani, co-founder and CEO of Versant, commented, “Our long-term goal is to build the go-to platform for project developers to better manage their ecological impact. We believe biodiversity can’t be an afterthought — it must be efficiently integrated into the early decisions of every infrastructure project.”
A deeptech solution to identify suitable land with high restoration potential efficiently
In France, infrastructure project developers must navigate strict regulations around biodiversity. Each project requires a biodiversity impact assessment, with measures to avoid and reduce environmental damage. When these measures prove insufficient, developers must compensate for the remaining impact.
Compensation is a mandatory ecological restoration project that follows three key principles: equivalence (restoring biodiversity similar to what was impacted), proximity (within a few kilometres of the project site), and additionality (restoration must occur on degraded land).
Currently, compensation site identification relies heavily on manual methods, causing delays for project developers and often leading to suboptimal choices for nature. The Versant team has developed a deeptech solution that efficiently identifies suitable land with high restoration potential by aggregating and processing ecological and remote sensing data.
Martin de Stoppani remarked, “We aggregate and model large volumes of environmental data. A key area of our R&D has been species distribution modelling, a niche in which our lead ecologist, Greta, holds a PhD. This modelling provides a powerful proxy for biodiversity, highly relevant to our use case.
Our first product automates the identification of land suitable for ecological compensation. Species presence is a core input in our analyses.
What sets us apart is our specific focus on ecological compensation for renewable energy projects. Unlike others, we specialise in identifying and qualifying land for compensatory measures, helping developers meet regulatory obligations efficiently and rigorously.”
Do EU directives drive Europe’s future?
Martin de Stoppani concluded: “We plan to grow our presence in the renewable energy sector, our primary market today. At the same time, we see strong potential to expand into other industries facing ecological constraints in project development, including infrastructure, industrial, and urban development.
Given the regulatory push across Europe — driven by EU directives — our ambition is to scale beyond France and establish a broader European footprint. We’ll continue to strengthen our AI and data capabilities to refine our models and improve decision-making. We’re also exploring partnerships and integrations with ecological consultancies and compensation operators to build a more complete and collaborative solution.”
“Versant is tackling a growing ecological and regulatory market with a highly innovative solution,” said Christoph Klink, Partner at Antler. “The founding team combines deep industry knowledge with high-quality technical expertise. Their pragmatic understanding of the challenges, paired with a genuine commitment to biodiversity, makes them uniquely positioned to transform how ecological impact is managed. We are delighted to have backed Versant from inception and have every confidence in their future success.”
