Innoval acquires Dilepix: computer vision joins the Smart Décision division

Innoval, the cooperative group serving livestock farmers

Based in Noyal-sur-Vilaine, in Ille-et-Vilaine (Brittany), Innoval is the cooperative group for animal genetics and livestock services — genetics and breeding, advisory, animal-health management, feed — serving the 28,000 livestock farmers in its network. Unlisted by virtue of its cooperative status, the group generated EUR 228 million in revenue in 2024 with 2,000 employees and a presence in 29 French départements — one of France's leading livestock cooperatives. Its digital strategy is set out in the Innoval 4.0 programme and the Smart Décision division of its holding company Innoval Développement — collecting and using data for the benefit of farmers — built brick by brick: predictive monitoring with ITK, taken over in October 2023, twenty pilot farms in a research programme, and now computer vision with Dilepix.

Dilepix, the Rennes computer-vision deeptech

Based in Rennes, Dilepix designs computer-vision algorithms that analyse, in real time, video and photo feeds from livestock barns, farm machinery and drones — automatically detecting and locating agronomic threats and opportunities, from monitoring livestock activity to quantifying feed losses. Founded in 2018 by Alban Pobla and Aurélien Yol as a spin-off from work carried out with Inria — twenty-five years of computer-vision research — the company raised EUR 1 million in 2019 and generated EUR 930k in revenue in 2024 with around ten employees, backed by an unusual partnership model: cooperatives, pharmaceutical and veterinary companies, technical institutes, tractor and farm-machinery manufacturers. The published governance signals continuity: both co-founders join the group — Aurélien Yol takes the helm of Dilepix, Alban Pobla of the Smart Décision division — and the company keeps both its R&D agility and its partnership model.

What the press said

The deal, announced on 1 July 2025, was covered by the regional press, Brittany's business press and the agricultural trade press:

Why this acquisition, and why this target

For Innoval, the aim was to complete the digital chain of livestock farming. The Smart Décision division — whose mission the press release sums up as “collecting and using data for the benefit of farmers” to manage their operations — had been built brick by brick, from ITK's predictive monitoring to the twenty pilot farms of the research programme. It lacked the richest and least exploited data source: images. By taking control of the Rennes computer-vision specialist, the group gives its set-up eyes — real-time analysis of feeds from barns, machinery and drones — and addresses what no point sensor captures: animal behaviour observed continuously, health events detected at their first signs, automated daily monitoring.

On the target side, Dilepix brought what seven years of deeptech development build: technology born of twenty-five years of computer-vision research at Inria, proven real-time detection and localisation algorithms, and a rare partnership model — cooperatives, pharmaceutical and veterinary laboratories, technical institutes, machinery manufacturers — that multiplies outlets beyond livestock alone. What it lacked, the deal provides: the field. With the network's 28,000 farmers and the twenty pilot farms of the research programme, the start-up gains a scale of validation no young company can afford on its own — while keeping, as the press release states, its R&D agility and its partnerships. Governance seals the alignment: one co-founder at the head of the company, the other leading the division that welcomes it.

Precision livestock farming becomes a consolidation play

This deal illustrates the coming of age of French agtech: born in laboratories — Inria, INRAE — and funded by venture capital, the first generation of agricultural deeptechs has reached the age of choices. Between the next funding round and joining a larger group, one model is gaining ground in livestock farming: integration into cooperative groups, which hold what start-ups never will — the field, data at scale and farmers' trust — while the digital transition of farms becomes a matter of competitiveness, animal welfare and response to labour shortages. Cooperatives, for their part, are building their digital divisions through targeted acquisitions: the predictive brick, the monitoring brick, the vision brick — farm management is being reassembled as a software suite.

The deal also tells a story of short-circuit Breton capital: a few kilometres away, in Ille-et-Vilaine, the Noyal-sur-Vilaine group takes control of the Rennes Inria spin-off — local public research finding its industrial outlet in local agricultural cooperation, without a sale to a foreign industrial buyer. For the founders and the team, joining the group offers scale while preserving agility; for the region, it anchors applied artificial-intelligence expertise in Rennes; and for the group's deals in this collection — the takeover of formulator Orcad, the stake in Ratdown, control of Dilepix — it outlines a method: for each brick, its own structure, from minority stake to control, serving a single cooperative project.

Collaboration Capital's added value on this buy-side mandate

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. A cooperative group taking control of a deeptech plays out in four stages — and the asset, a research team and its algorithms, gives each of them its own requirements.