Arlequin AI raises €28M to advance its topological neural network technology
Paris-based AI company Arlequin AI has raised €28 million in Series A funding to accelerate the development of its topological neural network technology and expand its international reach. The round was co-led by redalpine and OTB Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance’s Defence Innovation Fund. Existing investors Vsquared Ventures and 10x Founders also increased their stakes, while Xavier Niel joined the round as a new investor.
Founded in 2024 by Hugo Micheron, a specialist in terrorism studies and geopolitical instability, and Antoine Jardin, a former CNRS research engineer focused on data science and human behaviour, Arlequin develops AI systems for organisations that need to make critical decisions using large and fragmented datasets.
The company’s platform analyses relationships across different types of information, including documents, transactions, video and operational data. It helps users uncover links and patterns within complex datasets while allowing them to trace findings back to the underlying evidence.
Arlequin is now developing its own AI models based on topological neural networks, an architecture designed to learn not only from individual data points but also from the relationships between them. The company says this approach can identify complex interactions involving multiple elements at once, making it suitable for analysing large and interconnected datasets that are difficult to interpret using traditional AI systems.
Today, another revolution is taking shape: the development of new AI systems capable of understanding highly complex dynamics hidden within millions of data points,
said Hugo Micheron, CEO and co-founder of Arlequin AI.
Arlequin sees potential applications in security and defence, criminal investigations, fraud and money-laundering detection, information integrity, cybersecurity, and AI safety and security. Its technology is already being used by governments and large organisations across Western and Eastern Europe.
Antoine Jardin, CTO and co-founder, said the company believes further AI advances will require different architectures rather than simply larger models trained on more data and computing power. Arlequin’s approach is also intended to require less compute than large-scale AI systems, reducing its reliance on energy-intensive infrastructure and advanced semiconductors.
The new capital will be used to expand the international team developing and training its proprietary models, and to support commercial deployment in Europe and internationally. The company has opened offices in London and Berlin and plans to establish an AI lab in Silicon Valley in the coming months.