Marie Ekelund

Founder & President

There are a thousand ways to introduce Marie Ekeland. But any effort to label her would deny her core identity as she is bridging worlds and cultures, constantly empowering innovators to achieve their visions.

Marie’s approach is rooted in an extraordinary journey within the French Tech. At the age of 30, within the investment fund Elaia Partners, she first detected Criteo, which she advised and followed until 2016, 3 years after its IPO. In the same spirit, she co-founded France Digitale to give voice to a sector that was still in its early stages of development. She became the first woman in Europe to create a €150 millions fund. In 2015, daphni was born with a value proposal that was already very different from the market. Her current portfolio is divided between London, New York, Montpellier, Paris and San Francisco. It reflects her taste for diversity: education (Holberton School), health and nutrition (Lifen and Zoe), culture (Keakr), finance (Shine, sold to Société Générale in the summer 2020), green mobility (Zoov), well-being at work (Swile). During her time as head of the French Digital Council (2017), Marie realized the urgency of moving forward on fundamental issues such as biodiversity and diversity, and sketched out the first steps of a new adventure targeting the world’s major challenges.