Kheops raises €12M Series A to bring AI-powered assortment to French supermarkets

Kheops has raised €12 million in a Series A from Odyssée Venture, ISAI, and Elaia. Founded in 2021 by Caroline Poinsignon and Thibault Boyeux, the company operates a B2B marketplace connecting local and regional food suppliers with individual stores within major French supermarket chains — bypassing the buying-central model that was built for volume, not variety.

The distinction matters. France's purchasing centrals work efficiently when a supplier can fill 5,000 pallets a week; they grind to a halt when a local cheesemaker delivers 20 crates to 15 stores. Kheops automates the full transaction cycle — product catalogue, order placement, delivery confirmation, invoice generation, payment — so a small producer can operate as a national brand would, without hiring a sales force to manage each store relationship individually.

The local-supply gap in grande distribution

The platform now reaches more than 500 stores across most French supermarket banners, with a formal partnership covering 100 Carrefour locations. Behind those stores are more than 3,000 local and regional suppliers and a catalogue of over 200,000 products — figures that would make the business economically invisible if managed by hand.

The traction numbers are striking. In the twelve months preceding the raise, order volume through the platform quadrupled and Kheops's own revenue tripled. Suppliers using the platform report average revenue increases of 20% per store, attributable to better visibility and frictionless reordering by store managers who would otherwise default to whatever the central catalogue carries.

The model complements rather than replaces centralised purchasing. Kheops's argument is that centrals are structurally optimised for a different problem — national brands, standardised logistics, and scale economies that depend on homogeneity. Local assortment is the opposite: heterogeneous supply, store-specific demand, and quantities too small to justify a line in a national catalogue. Software, not procurement teams, is the only cost structure that makes it viable.

What the AI layer adds

The €12 million goes toward headcount — roughly 30 hires across commercial and engineering — and toward what Kheops describes as the platform's next phase: AI-driven assortment personalisation. Rather than leaving store managers to decide which local products to carry, the system will model each store's catchment area, sales history, and competitive context to recommend an optimal local mix, and automatically generate replenishment orders based on predicted demand.

That capability transforms Kheops's market position. The current platform is logistics infrastructure — valuable, but replaceable if a larger platform moves into the space. An AI layer that learns which local products sell in which postcodes, and automates reordering accordingly, is closer to category management software: embedded in store operations and sticky in a way that a simpler order-relay platform is not.

Odyssée Venture is a Paris-based early-stage fund focused on French market transformation; ISAI backs B2B software with strong network effects; Elaia has a track record in marketplace and platform businesses. Three investors with different but complementary theses on what Kheops is building.

The 18-month question is whether the AI layer justifies the category-intelligence pitch, or whether Kheops remains a well-executed logistics bridge — useful, but competing on operational efficiency rather than data moats.