French enterprise AI software maker Pigment has raised $250 million in a financing round valuing the company at $2.3 billion, positioning itself as the leading European challenger to Microsoft’s Excel and PowerPoint, as first reported by Bloomberg.

What Was Announced?

The round was led by the Scaleup Europe Fund, with participation from Nvidia, World Innovation Lab, and existing investors Iconiq, IVP and Meritech Capital, according to Bloomberg’s reporting. The financing was set to be announced Tuesday, and it marks one of the largest AI software rounds in Europe this year.

Pigment AI planning software
Image: Pigment.

Nvidia’s involvement was not entirely a surprise. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had hinted at the investment during a visit to France last week, Bloomberg noted. Pigment co-founder and CEO Eléonore Crespo also said the company plans to add several Asian investors to the round to support regional expansion.

Key Figures and Details

The headline metric behind the valuation is revenue. Pigment’s annual recurring revenue has passed $100 million, doubling year over year, and Crespo expects it to double again, per the report.

Pigment key figures: $250M raised, $2.3B valuation, over $100M in annual recurring revenue
Graphic: GPTOnline, using Pigment assets.

Founded in 2019, Pigment builds AI-powered software for financial forecasting, operational planning, scenario modeling and slide-deck generation. Its tools span finance, HR, sales and supply chain, and the company says more than 90% of its customers use the product across multiple departments. Users interact with the platform in natural language, and it connects with tools teams already use, including Notion, Google Drive and Slack.

On enterprise adoption, Crespo told Bloomberg: “If an AI system isn’t fully designed from the start to communicate with you in natural language, make you feel comfortable and at home, and have all your data and systems seamlessly integrated, you’ll find it hard to adopt it.”

Customers and Competition

L’Oreal is rolling Pigment out to 95,000 employees for salary planning, and Unilever, Uber and Siemens are also customers, according to the report. Crespo also said Pigment supplies a financial planning system to Anthropic, and that the company is now targeting customers of SAP, Oracle, IBM, Anaplan and Microsoft.

The framing is deliberate: like Microsoft, Pigment is trying to convince the broader office workforce to weave AI into everyday planning, a harder task than selling coding tools to engineers. With Nvidia’s backing and a fresh $250 million, the Paris startup has the capital to press that fight across Europe, the US and Asia.

Why It Matters

Enterprise planning software has been one of the least disrupted corners of AI adoption. Pigment’s raise shows investors now believe AI-native interfaces can pry open categories long owned by spreadsheets and slide decks. The Nvidia participation also signals alignment between Pigment’s roadmap and the chipmaker’s interest in expanding AI across enterprise segments.

Sources