You read the same numbers as everyone else this weekend: seven billion raised in a year, eighty funds mobilized around the DGA, banks finally opening the floodgates. You told yourself the window was open. It is. But not for everyone, and not for the reasons you think. Fresh capital is flowing in massive quantities to companies that investors already knew about before the upturn. If you run a technically sound but relatively unknown SME in the BITD sector, you’re not excluded from funding— you’re simply invisible to those who distribute it. Just as you sometimes are to your clients. This article breaks down this mechanism and shows you how to defuse it.
June 2026, Eurosatory, Villepinte. Amid the armored vehicles and loitering munitions, an unprecedented sight: bankers and fund managers are crowding the aisles. The French Banking Federation is meeting with defense contractors for the first time in its history. The taboo surrounding defense financing—maintained for twenty years by ESG exclusion policies—has been broken.
Three months later, the question is no longer whether the money is coming in. It’s a matter of who it’s going to.
The prevailing narrative is compelling, and it is true. The “public forum” held at Bercy in March 2025 served as a wake-up call. Over the past year, according toL’Express, some 30 dedicated investment vehicles have been created totaling more than seven billion euros—more than in the previous 30 years combined.
On the banking front, the figures speak for themselves. As of December 31, 2025, financing provided by the six major French banking groups to French defense companies exceeded 46.6 billion euros—including both on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet financing—up 25% from the end of 2024 and 75% from 2021. The revision of exclusion policies has been finalized: the concept of “controversial weapons” has been removed from the banks’ guidelines; only weapons formally prohibited by international conventions remain excluded.
All of this is good news for everyone. And that is precisely what makes the blind spot dangerous.
Because these billions are not distributed evenly among the 4,500 companies in the defense industrial and technological base. They are concentrated in certain areas. The main point of this article can be summed up in one sentence:the money is there, but it has not yet trickled down to SMEs with 20 to 200 employees, and the bottleneck is not a matter of industrial merit. It is a matter of transparency.
The finding is documented in black and white. The investment vehicles established by Weinberg, Tikehau, or their competitors focus primarily on mid-sized companies with full order books, with the aim of supporting their growth.
This is a recent development. In early September 2026, the Eiréné fund acquired I-4S, a Moselle-based manufacturer of military tents and shelters whose clients include the French armed forces and those of NATO countries. This is a secondary LBO: five years after an initial transaction with Galiena Capital, the company is restructuring its ownership base.
Keep this detail in mind—it says it all.This isn’t a new discovery; it’s just a rehash.The company was already on the financial community’s radar, had already been audited, and had a track record of growth validated by a previous fund. There was zero risk of misinterpretation.
This logic is perfectly rational from the fund manager’s perspective. A management firm that invests between 5 and 15 million euros cannot spend six months analyzing a target it does not understand. It will always favor assets whose value has already been demonstrated by a third party. The selection process isn’t working against you; it’s happening without you.
And public intermediation does not yet compensate for this bias. The “defense investors’ club,” launched by the DGA on June 23, 2025, aims to familiarize approximately 80 investment or debt funds with the specific characteristics of the defense industry and, in turn, to give these companies easier access to sources of financing tailored to their needs. The intention is sound. The implementation, however, remains in its infancy: just a few meetings over the past fifteen months, and, according toL’Express, no concrete action plan has emerged at this stage.
In practical terms, this means:no one will come looking for you.It’s the same mechanism described in our analysis ofBITD SMEs that lose defense contracts due to a lack of visibility, applied to the capital market.
Here's the point that few observers make: The financial deadlock and the trade deadlock have the same root cause.
When dealing with a client, a solid small business loses contracts it technically deserves because its proposal does not allow a buyer in a hurry to assess its capabilities within a few minutes. When dealing with a financier, the scenario is the same, with one additional challenge: the person you’re dealing with is not an engineer.
For fifteen years, exclusion criteria classified a subcontractor for fighter jet fuel tanks and a manufacturer of equipment prohibited by international conventions in the same category. Not based on implementation. Not based on the legitimacy of the project. It was based on an automatic categorization. Removing the concept of “controversial weapons” removes this fundamental barrier, but it does not, overnight, create the expertise needed for sector-specific analysis among the thousands of case officers who review applications in the regions.
This is where things get concrete. Your regional banker will know how to read a balance sheet. But he or she won’t be able to assess on their own the value of a DGA certification, a listing with a prime contractor, or a dual-use positioning. Yet companies in the BITD sector are structurally more indebted than others, which makes qualitative analysis crucial: it is the only factor that can justify taking on additional risk.
An ambiguous positioning then becomes a direct financial liability. That is the crux ofthe issue when assessing an unclear positioning between the civilian and defense sectors: what is not explicitly stated is not valued; it is set aside as a risk.
The need, however, has been quantified. The government estimates that the BITD will still need 4 to 6 billion euros in equity capital by 2030. The funding is available. The question is who will qualify.
A funding proposal follows the same process as a technical proposal for a request for proposals.The format determines whether the content is even considered.An analyst spends twenty minutes on an initial screening. In those twenty minutes, they aren’t evaluating your technology—they’re evaluating your ability to make it understandable.
The four criteria we have established for requests for proposals apply almost verbatim to the financial world.
| Filter | Question from a public procurer | Investor Question |
|---|---|---|
| Proof of Performance | Have you ever made a delivery under these conditions? | Are your references verifiable and consistent? |
| Sector-Specific Legitimacy | Are you recognized by the industry? | Who else—someone credible—has ever placed their trust in you? |
| Clarity of Positioning | What specific need are you addressing? | What exactly am I funding? |
| Understandability to a non-specialist | Does my non-technical evaluator understand? | Can my investment committee make a decision without an expert? |
This fourth filter is the one that business leaders underestimate the most. Yet it is crucial: our analysis ofRETEX as a wasted business asset in SMEs in the BITD sectorshows that the evidence already exists within the company. It is simply never formatted for an outside reader.
In April 2026, at the École Militaire, Roland Lescure and Catherine Vautrin invited bankers and investors to “shift gears.” For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), shifting gears has a very specific meaning: stop waiting for financiers to come to you, and make yourself visible before the need arises.
That’s where the difference lies. An SME with a “solid but invisible track record” finds itself in direct competition with fifty others, with no prior history. An SME already identified by the fund—featured in the trade press, cited by a client, and visible within its ecosystem—doesn’t come across as just another application; it comes across as a long-awaited opportunity. The same track record, interpreted in two different ways.
Financial transparency isn't something you can create just when you need cash. At that precise moment, any communication effort is interpreted as a sign of financial strain.
It is built over time through the accumulation of consistent signals: a structured presence in professional organizations, confident public statements by the CEO, carefully managed visibility at trade shows, and marketing materials that tell a story of the company’s industrial journey rather than simply presenting a product catalog. This is exactly what we’re describing regarding thetrue cost of BITD executives’ silence on LinkedIn: absence is never neutral; it is interpreted as a lack of direction.
This preparation also applies to companies planning a medium-term transaction. The case we analyzed—involvingthe brand-building efforts of a defense-sector SME in the run-up to its fundraising round—shows that the strategic narrative must be developed months before the first meeting with investors.
The time factor is the real risk. A fund raised in 2025 deploys its portfolio over three to four years. The major investment decisions are made within the first eighteen months. If you’re not on the radar when those decisions are made, you won’t be considered for the next round: you’ll be compared—unfavorably—to investments already in the portfolio.The window isn’t just open—it has an expiration date.
The thaw is real, massive, and likely to last. But a market that’s opening up is also a market that’s sorting things out. In both cases—trade defense and financial defense—the deciding factor is no longer your technical excellence: it’s the ability of a busy, non-specialist third party to understand in a matter of minutes what you’re worth.
This third party could be a buyer from the DGA. It could be an analyst at a €400 million fund. They apply the same rule of thumb: when in doubt, they move on to the next file.
That is precisely the purpose ofCapital Confiance & Expérience. Assess how your company is actually perceived by an outside observer who has no knowledge of your history, your business culture, or the time to dig deeper. Identify the gaps between who you are and how you come across. Develop materials and a positioning strategy that pass all four filters—whether before an investment committee or a bid evaluation committee.
👉Learn more about the Capital Confiance & Expérience packageand schedule a brand clarity audit before investment portfolios are finalized.
