Maxime Dantec

Maxime Le Dantec is a French engineer-turned-venture-capitalist. He graduated from CentraleSupélec (Centrale Paris) with an MSc in Data Science, and began his career on the operating and technical side, including serving as CTO and co-founder of Conv.ai, a conversational-AI startup for customer support. He also spent time in venture early on, including as an analyst at the Paris firm Alven, before moving into a full investing career.

He joined Balderton Capital around 2018 and spent roughly four years there, rising to Principal and leading the firm's investing efforts in France. During his London-based tenure he sourced or worked on a series of notable French deals, including GitGuardian, Kili Technology, Sweep, Photoroom, Numeral and Request Finance. His last day at Balderton was in late 2022, after which he moved back into building a firm of his own.

In October 2022 he co-founded Resonance VC, a Paris-based €150m fund backed entirely by Otium Capital (Pierre-Édouard Stérin's family office), investing €100k–€10m at Seed and Series A across European enterprise software, fintech, web3, consumer and SaaS. In 2025, he and partner Antoine Veret launched Cleo Ventures, an AI-native firm building on that platform, with a €30m pre-seed/seed fund (writing €300k–€1m checks) dedicated exclusively to AI companies. Cleo is anchored by Otium Capital and organized around a "Trailblazers Club" of 40+ AI operators — including Aircall co-founder Olivier Pailhès, ex-Contentsquare CPO Lucie Buisson, and Meta's Llama lead Thomas Scialom — who hold carried interest in exchange for coaching portfolio founders.

• Stage: Pre-seed and seed today (Cleo), backing founders very early — "often before product or code exists." Previously seed/Series A at Resonance.
• Check size: €300k–€1m at Cleo Ventures; historically up to €10m at Resonance.
• Sector: AI-native companies, spanning both consumer and enterprise AI; the broader team's track record covers AI infrastructure, enterprise SaaS, cybersecurity, fintech and quantum.
• Geography: Europe, with deep roots in the French/Paris ecosystem.
• Style: Highly selective, concentrated portfolios with heavy hands-on founder support on hiring and fundraising. At Balderton he noted, "During normal times, we invest on average in one company per month," and emphasized spending "time we used to spend travelling towards spending more time with founders."
• Edge: Single-LP / operator-network model — a stable anchor backer (Otium) plus an operator "Trailblazers Club" that supports founders, reducing pressure to deploy quickly.