# Nicolas Essayan

> Nicolas Essayan is a seed investor at Drysdale Ventures backing Artificial Intelligence. See 109 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Drysdale Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/drysdale-ventures)
- Location: Paris, France
- Total investments: 109
- Last investment: Jul 2026
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasessayan/
- Website: https://www.motier.vc/

Nicolas Essayan is a seed investor at Drysdale Ventures in Paris focused on Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology. 4x Co-Founder (Cyber, ML, VC), 17y XP in Venture Capital, Private Equity and M&A, Business School x Computer Science

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Artificial Intelligence | 15 | 14% |
| Information Technology | 12 | 11% |
| Software | 9 | 8% |
| FinTech | 7 | 6% |
| Internet | 6 | 6% |

94 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 50 | 46% |
| Series A | 12 | 11% |
| Pre-Seed | 11 | 10% |
| Series B | 1 | 1% |
| Series C | 1 | 1% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| France | 43 | 39% |
| United States | 10 | 9% |
| United Kingdom | 3 | 3% |
| The Netherlands | 2 | 2% |
| Canada | 1 | 1% |

8 countries tracked in total.

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ZML | ZML develops a production inference stack that decouples artificial intelligence workloads from specific proprietary hardware targets. The platform compiles open-source machine learning models directly into optimized code for multiple chip types without using traditional Python runtimes. | $20M | Seed | Jul 08, 2026 |  |
| Concord | Concord is an AI agent focused on media buying and workflow automation, especially for advertising operations. | $3M | Seed | Jun 23, 2026 |  |
| Noa | noa is a digital fitness and wellness company that offers premium, structured training programs for strength, pilates, and overall well-being through expert coaching and technology-driven experiences. | $5.8M | Seed | Jun 01, 2026 |  |
| Polsia | Polsia is an autonomous software platform that acts as a complete "business-in-a-box" for entrepreneurs. The platform replaces human employees by deploying nine specialized AI agents to manage daily operations. These virtual workers automatically handle critical business tasks like coding, marketing, sales, and customer service. Bylinking these roles together, it allows founders to launch and run an entire company on autopilot. Ultimately, it eliminates the need for solo creators to hire staff or pay for multiple software tools. | $30M | Series A | May 25, 2026 |  |
| White Circle | White Circle detects and fixes AI vulnerabilities automatically, keeping your system under control. | $11M | Seed | May 12, 2026 |  |
| Omniscient | Omniscient is a Paris-based AI-powered decision intelligence platform designed for boards and C-suite executives. It aggregates data from over 100,000 sources like media, social channels, and internal systems to deliver real-time, contextualized insights on corporate reputation, geopolitical risks, narrative strategy, and more. | $4M | Pre-Seed | Apr 03, 2026 |  |
| Piston | Piston is the first Agentic ERP that thinks, advises, and executes tasks autonomously. | $3.5M | Seed | Mar 26, 2026 |  |
| Topograph | Topograph is a corporate data & document provider to ease KYB procedures and business verifications, with worldwide coverage. #regtech #businessdata | $2.3M | Seed | Mar 18, 2026 |  |
| Advanced Machine Intelligence | Advanced Machine Intelligence develops artificial intelligence systems that model real-world environments using sensor data. The organization focuses on building machine learning architectures that form abstract representations of physical and digital environments, allowing systems to reason, predict outcomes, and plan sequences of actions. Itsresearch includes world models that process continuous and complex data while filtering unpredictable elements to support structured decision making. The technology is designed to enable AI agents to evaluate the consequences of actions and operate under defined safety and control mechanisms. Advanced Machine Intelligence collaborates with industry and research communities to explore applications of these systems in areas such as industrial automation, robotics, wearable technology, and healthcare. The company also publishes research and develops software frameworks that support experimentation, deployment, and evaluation of intelligent systems. | $1B | Seed | Mar 10, 2026 |  |
| Vertical Compute | Vertical Compute offers chiplet-based technology that cuts data movement to achieve up to 80% energy savings. | $42.9M | Seed | Mar 04, 2026 |  |

10 of 109 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Kima Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/kima-ventures) — VC Fund, 36 deals together
- [Financiere Saint James](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/financiere-saint-james) — VC Fund, 18 deals together
- [Seedcamp](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/seedcamp) — VC Fund, 15 deals together
- [Headline](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/headlinevc) — VC Fund, 12 deals together
- [Pareto Holdings](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/pareto-holdings) — VC Fund, 10 deals together
- [Bpifrance](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bpifrance) — VC Fund, 9 deals together

## About Drysdale Ventures

VC Fund · Paris, France

Drysdale Ventures is a brand-new angel fund managed by Nicolas Essayan, backed by international investors, tech entrepreneurs and several family offices.As Co-Founder of Motier Ventures, Nicolas has invested in 92 companies, including Dust, Mistral, Poolside, Filigran, Adaptive, Payflows, Autone, New Tales and more.We invest up to €500k asBusiness Angel from your day 0 and following on next rounds.We focus on FinTech & DeFi, Infra & Tooling, Consumer & Gaming, and Business Solutions, with Artificial Intelligence as transversal expertise.We support French founders and any human seeking a local partner in the French market.If you dare to explore undocumented territories, we would be happy to connect.

2 contacts available at Drysdale Ventures.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Nicolas Essayan | Co-Founder | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/nicolas-essayan |
| Nicolas Essayan | Co-Founder | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/nicolas-essayan-67a4 |

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## FAQ

### What does Nicolas Essayan invest in?

Nicolas Essayan invests primarily in Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology and Software startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 109 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in France. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Nicolas Essayan last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Nicolas Essayan closed in Jul 2026. Shizune tracks 109 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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