WiSEED
WiSEED is a pioneering French equity-crowdfunding platform, founded in 2008 in Toulouse, that lets retail investors back startups and projects. Its water activity is modest: it has backed two water companies, solar-desalination firm OSMOSUN and UV-C disinfection startup Uvoji, both at seed stage. In December 2025 WiSEED was acquired by the Advenis group.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
WiSEED is where French crowdfunding more or less began. Founded in Toulouse in 2008 by Thierry Merquiol and Nicolas Sérès, it was the first platform in France to let ordinary people buy shares in startups, years before equity crowdfunding had a legal framework. Two decades on it has channelled more than 580 million euros from a community of some 33,000 investors into well over a thousand projects, from real estate to renewable energy.
WiSEED is a broad marketplace, and water is only a small corner of it. In my Leviathan database it appears on just two water deals, both back in 2019: OSMOSUN, which builds solar-powered reverse-osmosis units that desalinate seawater without diesel, and Uvoji (also sold as T-Zic), whose LED UV-C systems disinfect water without chemicals. The centre of gravity here is property and energy, and this page is honest about that.
WiSEED has had a hard couple of years. The French real-estate-crowdfunding slump that began in 2023 cut its revenue and pushed it into an accelerated court procedure, and in December 2025 the Toulouse commercial court validated its takeover by a subsidiary of the Advenis group, a Paris-based wealth manager. WiSEED keeps its AMF and ACPR licences through the transition and still operates under its directrice générale, Mathilde Iclanzan.
WiSEED now tells you as much about the state of French crowdfunding as it does about water. Its two seed-stage water bets are years old, and whether the Advenis era brings fresh cleantech listings or a tighter real-estate focus is the open question. For a newcomer, it remains a way to put small cheques behind early water companies, with all the illiquidity and default risk that early-stage crowdfunding carries.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 2 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What is WiSEED?
- WiSEED is a French equity-crowdfunding platform founded in 2008 in Toulouse, one of the first in France to let retail investors buy shares in startups. It also funds real-estate and renewable-energy projects through bonds, and is regulated by the AMF as a crowdfunding service provider.
- Does WiSEED invest in water?
- WiSEED has backed two water companies, both at seed stage in 2019: OSMOSUN, which makes solar-powered reverse-osmosis desalination units, and Uvoji, whose LED UV-C systems disinfect water without chemicals. Water is a small part of a platform focused mainly on real estate and renewable energy.
- Who runs WiSEED?
- WiSEED was founded in 2008 by Thierry Merquiol and Nicolas Sérès. Its day-to-day chief executive is Mathilde Iclanzan, the directrice générale, who also serves as a vice-president of Financement Participatif France, the country's crowdfunding industry body. Following a 2025 court procedure, WiSEED's activities passed to the Advenis group.
- What happened to WiSEED in 2025?
- WiSEED was hit by France's real-estate-crowdfunding downturn and entered an accelerated court procedure in October 2025. In December 2025 the Toulouse commercial court validated the takeover of its activities by a subsidiary of the Advenis group, a Paris-based wealth manager. WiSEED kept its AMF and ACPR licences.
- Is WiSEED a venture capital fund?
- No. WiSEED is a crowdfunding platform, not a traditional venture-capital fund: the money comes from thousands of individual investors rather than institutional limited partners. Investors pick individual deals, from startup equity to property bonds, and WiSEED vets and lists them, taking a fee rather than managing a pooled fund.