Fleet’s €100M LBO signals SME IT shift in Europe

Fleet’s first LBO at a €100M valuation

A Paris-based IT fleet management scale-up, Fleet, has announced its first leveraged buyout (LBO), bringing ISAI Expansion into its shareholding via the ISAI Expansion III fund at a €100 million valuation. This marks Fleet’s first external-capital transaction after years of bootstrapped growth, and it is positioned as a structured step that also provides liquidity to founders and employees while keeping the founders as majority shareholders.

Fleet operates in the increasingly mission-critical layer of modern business operations: the devices, security posture, procurement workflows, and lifecycle management that keep distributed teams productive. As hybrid work becomes normal and small-to-mid-sized companies run global teams, the “IT stack” is no longer just apps—it is also hardware availability, endpoint compliance, and reliable support across geographies, which is exactly the problem space Fleet has built its offering around.

This development is relevant to the ai ecosystem not because it is “about AI” on the surface, but because the fastest-growing AI adoption stories inside SMEs are built on reliable infrastructure, secure endpoints, and clean device lifecycle processes. In other words, the practical foundation that enables AI-driven work at scale is often operational, not glamorous—and that operational reality is a recurring theme in the conversations we curate at the ai world organisation.

What ISAI Expansion is backing

Fleet said ISAI Expansion entered its capital through ISAI Expansion III at a €100 million valuation, framing it as a strategic move that aligns with scaling ambitions while keeping the company’s independence. ISAI Expansion is described as an investment strategy within ISAI Gestion that targets profitable, fast-growing companies with at least €10 million in revenue, investing as either a majority or minority shareholder alongside founders and/or management.

Fleet’s CEO and co-founder, Sevan Marian, described the transaction as a major milestone and highlighted that the business was built through bootstrapping. He also positioned the decision as a “structuring choice,” emphasizing shared entrepreneurial culture and ambition with ISAI Expansion, alongside the ability to provide liquidity to contributors while keeping the founders as majority shareholders.

From ISAI Expansion’s side, General Partner Christophe Poupinel said the firm was convinced by Fleet’s commercial efficiency as a historically bootstrapped business, its growth trajectory—especially internationally—and its ability to scale profitably with a lean organisation. That combination (commercial efficiency, international expansion, and discipline) is precisely what later-stage investors look for when a company moves from “growing” to “scaling predictably,” especially in operational B2B categories.

Fleet’s model: procurement, platform, lifecycle

Fleet was founded in 2019 by Alexandre Berriche and Sevan Marian, and it positions itself as simplifying IT management for SMEs with 5 to 500 employees through an all-in-one approach. The company’s offering combines an equipment catalogue spanning computers, accessories, and furniture with a fleet management platform called the “Cockpit,” plus premium customer support for hardware incidents and end-of-life device management options such as refurbishment, donation, or recycling.

In practice, that combination matters because device procurement and device governance are often handled in silos inside SMEs, where speed and cost pressures can easily clash with consistency and security. Fleet’s pitch is that businesses should not have to stitch together multiple vendors and workflows to equip teams, manage incidents, and handle device retirement responsibly.

Fleet also states it has built its positioning around three pillars: IT procurement (including deliveries to over 120 countries in under 48 hours), day-to-day IT fleet management, and cybersecurity. It currently employs 45 people across Paris and Barcelona and says it serves nearly 2,000 clients, naming examples such as Swedish unicorn Lovable, restaurant group Nouvelle Garde, and Les Merveilleux de Fred. The company also says it is active in around ten European countries and operates in the United States as well.

Why an LBO now, and what it signals

Fleet’s announcement describes this as its first time opening capital to external investors, with the primary LBO providing liquidity to the two founders and employees while still preserving a majority-independent shareholding structure. In plain terms, that suggests a business that believes it has found repeatable unit economics and now wants to professionalize and accelerate without giving up control.

The company describes a strong recent operating story, stating that in 2025 it achieved growth of over 90% while staying profitable and maintaining a deliberately lean organisation. Profitability plus rapid growth is a combination that can make an LBO-style transaction more feasible, because the model depends on operational strength and the ability to sustain performance while the organisation matures.

The broader backdrop presented alongside the announcement points to continued activity in European B2B software, IT management, and adjacent operational technology categories, including references to Qargo’s €28 million Series B (December 2025), Zepo Intelligence’s €12.8 million raise (January 2026), and Spiich Labs’ €600k pre-Seed (earlier in 2025). Those numbers are presented as roughly €41 million of disclosed funding into enterprise software, security, and operational management platforms during 2025 and early 2026. Against that context, Fleet’s entry into a primary LBO at a €100 million valuation stands out for both scale and for arriving after an extended period of bootstrapped growth.

From an SME buyer perspective, this kind of transaction matters because it often brings a “next phase” mindset: more predictable product roadmaps, deeper specialization, and stronger international coverage. That can be positive for customers who want a stable platform partner, but it also raises expectations: with fresh capital and a new ownership dynamic, the pressure increases to execute, hire well, and ship improvements faster.

What Fleet plans to do next (and why AI leaders should care)

Fleet describes this news as the start of a new phase focused on structuring the organisation, accelerating development (particularly internationally), and expanding the product offering, while staying anchored to operational excellence, commercial efficiency, and financial discipline. It also states an ambition to reach €100 million in ARR within four years, driven by accelerating in core markets, moving upmarket with its client base, and developing higher value-added adjacent services. To support that trajectory, Fleet says it plans to recruit more than 20 people this year and continue investing in its platform to further simplify IT management for internationally deployed SMEs.

What’s especially relevant for AI-focused business audiences is that device and endpoint realities increasingly shape what AI adoption looks like on the ground. If an SME wants to roll out AI copilots, deploy secure enterprise chat, or standardize AI-enabled workflows, it still needs consistent device fleets, secure access, and clean offboarding processes—otherwise the organization spends more time fighting operational fires than extracting value from AI.

That is one reason this story fits naturally into the editorial lens of the ai world organisation: “AI impact on the ground” is rarely only about models, prompts, or dashboards—it’s about execution systems that keep teams productive, compliant, and resilient.

In that spirit, this is the kind of operational-growth storyline we bring into our conversations at the ai world summit, because leaders want practical answers about scaling responsibly, staying secure, and keeping unit economics healthy while expanding across borders. The same themes also connect to our broader ai world organisation events and the ongoing track record of ai conferences by ai world, where builders and operators compare tactics that work in real companies (not just on slides).