Vates raises €30M while founders retain majority ownership

Vates has raised €30M in growth funding, with its co-founders retaining majority ownership and every licence in the stack remaining open source. The round was announced on 6 October 2026 and led by IRIS, with Bpifrance participating. The company says the financing will support platform development, international expansion and a wider partner ecosystem.

Vates is based in Grenoble, France, and develops XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra. The company’s announcement presents the round as its first external funding after 14 years of operating. It also says the business has been profitable and self-funded since 2016. That history places the new capital within an established operating business rather than a newly formed venture.

The funding leaves ownership with founders

The co-founders will keep majority ownership after the investment, according to the announcement. Majority ownership means they retain more than half of the company’s ownership interests collectively. The source does not specify the precise ownership percentages or the terms agreed with the investors. It does state that every licence in the software stack will remain open source.

IRIS led the growth round through its Growth fund, while Bpifrance invested through its Large Venture vehicle. The materials identify Olivier Lambert as Vates’s CEO and co-founder, and attribute a statement about accelerating the existing strategy to him. No further detail is provided about board arrangements, investor rights or the allocation of ownership between the co-founders. Those terms remain undisclosed in the supplied information.

The platform spans several technical priorities

Vates says funding will support a next-generation platform covering performance, storage, security, automation and AI workloads. These are the areas named by the company; the announcement does not provide a delivery timetable or product specifications. It describes the platform work as an expansion of its existing direction. The company also identifies international growth and partner development as uses for the capital.

Xen Orchestra started as an internal tool and later became a management product under an AGPLv3-licensed model with paid support, according to the source. XCP-ng, the platform built around it, has been hosted under the Linux Foundation Xen Project since 2020. The materials do not describe changes to either product’s licence as part of the funding. They instead state that all licences in the stack remain open source.

Customer reach shapes the expansion plan

The company reports more than 1,000 customers across roughly 100 countries. It also says the team numbers 150 people, and that growth exceeded 65% in 2025. According to the announcement, 90% of revenue came from outside France, with about half of revenue coming from North America. These figures indicate the existing international footprint that Vates says it intends to build on.

The stated expansion priorities are North America and key European markets. Vates also plans to develop a partner ecosystem involving distributors, integrators and service providers. The announcement does not identify specific new countries, partners or hiring targets. It therefore sets out broad destinations and channels without quantifying the expansion programme.

Several investment details remain undisclosed

The available account does not state how the investment will be divided between platform work, geographic expansion and partner development. It also gives no timetable for the planned work or further detail on investor protections. The company’s stated response is that funding accelerates its existing strategy, while the founders retain majority ownership and the stack’s licences remain open source. Follow-up disclosures would clarify execution milestones, partnership additions and how the platform’s capabilities develop.