Rocapine, a Paris venture studio building a wellness app, has raised a $13m Series A led by Educapital, the company said. The pitch is a clean conversion: take a playbook that has made addictive mobile games, fast iterations, AI-native development, performance marketing, and aim for a different result. Not screen time, but, in the studio’s phrase, time well spent.
A base starts with a number. The average person, the company says, citing DataReportal, spends about five hours and 16 minutes a day on a smartphone designed to connect to it, the better part of 15 years of their lifetime. Rocapine apps are designed to “hold instead of drag,” finding a place in the daily schedule by being useful rather than forcing developers.
The studio was founded in late 2024 by Stanislas Marchand, formerly of Voodoo for mobile games, with Jean-Gabriel Boinot-Tramoni and Sammy Teillet. Its model is that of a high-speed publisher: test hundreds of concepts a year, often with independent developers, then sketch and rate the few that make sense.
The company says it reached $6m in annual recurring revenue within nine months of launch, on more than 2.5 million downloads, with 70% of revenue coming from the United States. One app, it says, reached $1m ARR 16 days after launch.
The portfolio so far includes women’s health, fitness, and compulsive behavior that breaks the law, with apps including Harmony, That Girl, and Unchained. The new money will continue to turn flagships into category leaders, grow the search engine to 400 apps this year, and build AI, data, and marketing infrastructure underneath.
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“Technology was supposed to make us smarter, healthier and more connected,” said Stanislas Marchand, founder and CEO. “Instead, much of it has become addictive, draining and exhausting.” He pointed to a cultural moment around the problem, noting that Oxford named “brain rot” its Word of the Year for 2024.
The aftermarket is doing the studio a favour. In-app purchase revenue from non-gaming apps will surpass gaming for the first time by 2025, reaching nearly $85.6bn, according to Sensor Tower, and well-being among fast-growing and younger scanning segments. Rocapine says it aims to improve the lives of at least 40 million people over the next five years.
The cycle attracted notable actors. It was led by Educapital with participation from Daphni, who led the 2024 seed, Ring Capital, and Center Court Capital, as well as Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve from Alan and founders of consumer apps including Opal and Yubo.
“Best-selling products earn trust by improving people’s lives,” said Samwelian-Werve, an early backer, who praised the studio for using AI to personalize apps and scale quickly. Educapital, which led the round, is a Paris-based impact fund focused on edtech and the future of work, with about $200m under management and a portfolio that includes Preply and 360Learning. Its Glaser investment director, AlexanderAlexandone of the most impressive stories we’ve seen in European consumer technology. “
The studio operates across Paris, Nantes, and Barcelona, and its extensive list of supporters goes deep into French consumer circles and games, taking in creators from Mojo, Photoroom, Knowunity, and Sandbox, among others. The hard test, which funding doesn’t solve, is whether apps designed to reduce screen time can grow in metrics that often reward the opposite.
