The professional platform of Sébastien Gianfermi · London

Conviction in business.
Experience in markets.

A focused platform built around selected personal venture investments, specialist European fixed-income consulting and The Trading Floor.

Explore the venture portfolio

Personal venture investing

Early conviction.
Long-term perspective.

Selected personal venture investments made by Sébastien Gianfermi across retail AI, professional learning, SME finance and deep technology. These stories focus on public milestones and how each business evolved—not on portfolio returns.

Current

Retail AI

Pixoneye Edgify

An investment made in Pixoneye in 2017 continued through its pivot into Edgify. The company now brings product recognition, loss prevention and real-time intelligence directly to retail hardware.

  • $9m Series A+ announced in August 2026, backed by Rank Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners
  • 2,042 stores across 12 countries and more than 400m retail samples reported by Edgify in 2026
Read the investment story

Pixoneye began as a privacy-conscious consumer photo-analytics business, analysing images on a user's phone so they did not need to leave the device. The technology built to train and run machine-learning models within the constraints of a phone later became a platform in its own right.

The business relaunched as Edgify, applying on-device AI to self-checkouts, scales, scanners, point-of-sale systems and cameras. Pixoneye received the 4YFN Digital Media award in 2016.

Current

Professional learning

Finance Unlocked xUnlocked

An investment made in Finance Unlocked in 2019 continued as the business broadened into sustainability, AI and data, compliance, human skills and specialist academies under xUnlocked.

  • £5m Series A and strategic partnership with BPP Education Group announced in November 2023
  • 100,000 learners reported in 2023; Certified B Corporation since July 2022
Read the investment story

Finance Unlocked was created to modernise specialist financial education through expert-led, on-demand video. Sébastien invested when the business was focused on a single financial-learning platform.

Its progression into the wider xUnlocked group—from a focused initial product to a broader professional-learning platform—is the central investment story.

Exited

SME finance

Bolden RiverBank

An investment in French SME-lending platform Bolden continued through its acquisition by RiverBank in 2020. Sébastien later exited the investment.

  • Bolden featured among L'Usine Digitale's “50 de la Fintech” in 2015
  • Acquisition by RiverBank publicly recorded in 2020
Read the investment story

Bolden connected lenders with small and medium-sized businesses. Its acquisition by RiverBank marked the company's progression from an independent lending platform into a regulated European bank.

The story presented here is the evolution of the business—not the economics of the personal investment.

Historical

Deep technology

Alditech

An early investment in a Grenoble CEA-Leti spin-off founded in 1998 to commercialise integrated magnetic components on silicon. The company later ceased operations.

  • First prize in the CEA innovative-company creation competition in 1998
  • First prize in the Catapulte competition organised by 3i and Les Echos in 2000
Read the investment story

EDN reported in August 2000 on Alditech's silicon-batch-processed recording heads and a design intended to store more than 100GB of uncompressed data on a standard digital cassette. The technology attracted attention but did not reach commercial scale.

Alditech was often compared at the time with Soitec, another CEA-Leti spin-off. Their outcomes ultimately diverged: Soitec scaled and listed publicly, while Alditech ceased operations.

The two prize references are attributed to founder Jean-Baptiste Albertini's public profile. A €1bn valuation was proposed by 3i in connection with a transaction that did not proceed; it was not a completed financing, achieved valuation or independent market valuation.

These are selected personal venture investments made by Sébastien Gianfermi and are presented as professional background only. Company-reported figures are dated to their public source and may change. No investment performance or private transaction information is shown.

Selected paid assignments

Specialist insight where experience matters.

Independent assignments based specifically on more than twenty-six years of European fixed-income, trading, market-structure, risk and leadership experience.

I

European fixed income

Specialist perspective on sovereign, SSA, rates, relative-value, inflation, derivatives and financing markets.

II

Market strategy

Independent analysis of macro regimes, policy, market structure, liquidity and the forces shaping risk and opportunity.

III

Trading leadership

Practical experience in risk frameworks, business development, institutional relationships, team leadership and trader development.

Cover of The Trading Floor by Sébastien Gianfermi
Coming soon

The Trading Floor

Twenty-seven years inside the markets—and the people, decisions and defining moments behind the screens.

From a first morning in London in 1997 to leading a major European rates trading business, The Trading Floor follows a career through the launch of the euro, financial and sovereign crises, quantitative easing, the pandemic and the return of inflation.

More than a book about bonds or trading strategies, it is a personal account of judgement, ambition, discipline, friendship, resilience and trust—and of adapting when the game changes.

“The market doesn't adapt to you. You adapt to the market.”
Sébastien Gianfermi

Sébastien Gianfermi

Experience shaped at the heart of international fixed-income markets.

Sébastien Gianfermi created Sealma Square after a career spanning more than twenty-six years at BNP Paribas, where he was a Managing Director and Head of G10 Rates Bond Trading for EMEA.

A graduate of Ensimag in applied mathematics and computer science, Sébastien moved from Paris to London in 1997. His experience extends across European government bonds, sovereigns, supranationals and agencies, covered bonds, inflation, derivatives, relative-value trading and financing.

Throughout his career, Sébastien built and led trading businesses, developed generations of traders and navigated some of the most consequential periods in modern financial markets—from the launch of the euro and the global financial crisis to the European sovereign-debt crisis, quantitative easing, the pandemic and the inflationary repricing of 2022.

His approach combines quantitative discipline with judgement, curiosity, adaptability, trust and resilience.

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