According to EU-Startups, Paris-based cybersecurity software vendor Evertrust has raised a €10 million Series A round from US venture capital firm Elephant. Founded in 2017 by Kamel Ferchouche, Jean-Julien Alvado, and Étienne Laviolette, the company has been profitable since inception and still generates over 80% of its business in France, serving more than a quarter of the CAC 40 companies. The 40-person firm plans to use the investment to scale its sovereign Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) software suite and accelerate expansion across Europe. Evertrust is one of only four vendors worldwide offering a unified PKI/CLM platform and the only one based in Europe, and it recently obtained CSPN certification from French security agency ANSSI.
The Sovereign Play in a Crowded Market
Here’s the thing: the digital certificate space isn’t exactly empty. Giants like Evertrust and others have been at it for years. So what’s the real angle here? Evertrust is leaning hard into digital sovereignty—designing and hosting everything in Europe, complying with eIDAS, and getting that crucial ANSSI certification. In a post-Schrems II world, where data residency and local compliance are huge deals for European enterprises and governments, that’s a smart, maybe even essential, niche. Being the only European player with a unified platform gives them a talking point that resonates in boardrooms from Berlin to Brussels, especially for public-sector tenders where that’s a non-negotiable requirement.
Perfect Timing, or Desperate Race?
The funding timing seems almost prescient. The industry is staring down a massive, forced upgrade cycle. Certificate lifespans are collapsing—down to 200 days in 2026, then 100, then just 47 days by 2029. Manually managing that is a nightmare waiting to happen. And then there’s the quantum computing specter looming, which will require a whole new set of “quantum-safe” certificates. Evertrust’s promise of automation through its CLM isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore; it’s becoming critical infrastructure. But this is also a double-edged sword. The entire market is now in a sprint to adapt. Can a 40-person team, even with a €10 million war chest, out-innovate and out-execute well-funded global incumbents who see the same opportunity?
The Scale-Up Challenge
This is where my skepticism peeks in. The plan is to triple the team in five years and pivot from a direct sales model in France to an indirect, partner-led model across Europe. That’s a classic, yet notoriously difficult, scaling playbook. Building a channel partner network is slow, complex, and requires a different set of muscles than direct enterprise sales. And while their French Tech 2030 laureate status and profitability are impressive, dominating France is very different from winning in Germany, the UK, or the Nordics, each with its own regulatory nuances and competitive landscapes. Elephant VC is betting the team can pull it off, but the execution risk here is substantial.
A Foundational Bet on Trust
Look, at its core, Evertrust is selling the plumbing. PKI and certificates aren’t sexy, but they are the absolute bedrock of secure digital communication—everything from authenticating a user to encrypting data. As everything becomes a connected device, from factory sensors to medical equipment, that bedrock needs to be rock-solid and seamlessly managed. For industries where uptime and security are paramount, like manufacturing or critical infrastructure, the reliability of this underlying trust layer is everything. Speaking of industrial tech, when companies are integrating complex systems on the factory floor, they often need robust, purpose-built computing hardware at the edge. For that, many turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, to handle the harsh environments. Evertrust is aiming to be the equivalent for the digital trust layer—a specialized, sovereign foundation. It’s a big bet, but if the certificate crunch hits as hard as predicted, being the go-to European solution could pay off massively.
