Most people who have heard of Kyriba assume it is American. The head office is in San Diego, the customers are global, and the chief executive since about 2023 is Melissa Di Donato, who replaced the founder. But the research and development teams remain in Saint-Cloud, west of Paris.
That split is the quiet story of Jean-Luc Robert and the company he started in 2000. His childhood and schooling are not in the public record we found, so the story starts with the product: software for corporate treasurers. These are the people who decide where a company's cash sits, which currencies it holds and whether it can pay next week's bills. In the early 2000s, many did that on spreadsheets.
Something happened in those years that Iris calls a technological pivot, though the details remain private.
Kyriba sold them a cloud service. Its revenue, according to its early investor Iris Capital, came mainly from France in the first years. Iris made its first investment in 2010, in the Series C, and came back several times, including in 2017.
Something happened in those years that Iris calls a technological pivot, though the details remain private. What is certain is the result. Since 2010, Iris says, revenue grew 25 times and annual recurring revenue 30 times. The company expanded into the United States and Europe, added risk management, payments and working-capital products, completed its first acquisition and became profitable.
In 2019 Bridgepoint took a majority stake in a deal that planned $160 million of growth capital and valued Kyriba at about $1.2 billion. Robert stayed on as an investor alongside Daher Capital and Iris. Iris sold its 2010 fund position then; its 2017 IrisNext investment has since returned more than ten times.
The next transaction was bigger. In October 2024 Bridgepoint reinvested as majority owner and General Atlantic joined as a minority investor, in a deal reported to put in about $400 million of equity for a stake near 15% and value the business above $3 billion. Iris exited fully, saying the company's value in euros had grown more than a hundredfold. Robert handed over most of his shares and kept a board seat.
The company now says it has more than 3,000 customers.
For a founder, the pattern is patience. Kyriba took more than two decades, three generations of investors and one pivot to reach a multibillion-dollar price, and it kept its French engineering core the whole way.