Sofia Dahoune

Partner

2025

Lecturer and advisor on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

2024

Advisor for the AI@ENS program and Lecturer on entrepreneurship, with a focus on scientific fields (AI, quantum, climate). Helped launch initiatives to build bridges between academia, startups, and industry: Club Inno, Prix Innovation ENS, Climate projects class, Workshops for Phds..

Consultant for IFC (World Bank Group)

2025

Mission on AgTechs in Africa - with Bank Al Maghreb

Strategic advisor & Angel Investor

2023 - 2025

Strategic missions in VC and innovation, operating across Europe & North Africa: -Founder of QARAWIN (www.qarawin.com) -Advising NUS, UM6P, and IFC SheWins on startup and incubation programs. -Angel Investor (Heal.dev, Theremia, Presti AI, Bending Words…) and advisor to No Label Ventures. -Mentoring with Plug&Play Morocco and StemAI.VC. -Founder of Moroccans in Tech (200+ members). -Lecturer in entrepreneurship & VC at IFP School.

Partner

2018 - 2023

Elaia is a leading European venture capital firm with €800M+ under management. As Partner, I played a key role in the deep tech seed investment strategy. I participated to the fundraising and deployment of two flagship seed vehicles (PSL Inno Fund and Alpha 2 Inria Fund) designed for Deep Tech startups. I led pre-seed investments in science-based companies such as: Aqemia (AI for drug discovery), Alice & Bob (quantum computing), Eyepick (industrial automation), QantEv (AI in insurance), HarfangLab (cybersecurity), Nuclia (AI search engine), Olympe.legal (compliance AI), Kheops.io (agri supply chains), and Namla.cloud (edge cloud orchestration). Beyond investment, I was in charge of some relationships with key institutional partners and LPs, including Inria, PSL University, ENS Ulm, Institut Pasteur, Institut Curie, Mines Paris, and Collège de France and majors corporate LPs.

Head of the acceleration and incubation programs at Ecole polytechnique

2017 - 2018

At École Polytechnique, I led the start-up innovation program. I was responsible for the X-Up and X-Tech projects (20+ startups), working with researchers, students, and corporations. This included an acceleration program, incubation program and student programs.

Co-Founder

2016 - 2018

Little Panda enables people to buy and sell clothings for children in order to promote a new way of shopping. Our main value is to deliver a simple and reliable solution for sellers and a great shopping experience for the buyers.

Private Equity and Venture Capital associate

2012 - 2017

Bpifrance Investment is the French sovereign fund offering private equity and venture capital funding. I was Investment Analyst in the Mid & Large cap team working on private equity deals. In 2014, I was promoted to senior associate in the venture capital team. I particpated in the investments in Famoco, iAdvize, Synthesio, Cardiologs, Captain Contrat.

Investment Analyst (Mid & Large Cap)

2012 - 2014

French Sovereign fund (size of the fund: 20bn€) - focus on mid and large cap companies - merged to create Bpifrance in 2013