Positive, a French group that sells software for marketing and sales teams, has acquired Humanlinker, a startup whose AI tools help salespeople research prospects and write personalised outreach. Positive announced the deal on its website on October 27, 2026. Regional business press in northern France reported it over the following days.
Neither company disclosed the price or other financial terms. According to Presse Agence, the investment bank Raisers Partners advised Humanlinker on the sale.
Humanlinker will keep running as a product. Positive told customers that nothing changes for them and that they keep the same support. The startup's co-founders, Thibault Brioland and Régis Viarre, have become managing directors of Positive's sales division. That division now groups Humanlinker with noCRM, a lead and pipeline management tool that Positive already owned.
What Humanlinker built
Brioland and Viarre started Humanlinker in late 2020. The SaaS News reported at the time of its seed round that the company was founded in Montpellier and also had a base in Paris. La Gazette France now gives Paris as its head office.
The software works at the very start of a sale. It suggests which companies and contacts are worth approaching, pulls together information on those businesses and their decision-makers, and drafts personalised prospecting messages. It can also prepare briefing notes before a sales meeting. Humanlinker's own site lists features such as email and phone enrichment, buying-signal alerts, DISC personality analysis and a single inbox for replies, along with integrations for HubSpot, Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook and Slack.
Positive said Humanlinker has more than 350 business customers and users in more than 100 countries. The customers it named include Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs, Keyrus, Equancy, Kwanko, Weglot, Paragon and Eurecia. The companies did not give a headcount or revenue figure for the startup.
“With Humanlinker, we're strengthening a core capability for our customers: starting the right sales conversations. Its expertise in AI prospecting complements noCRM's expertise in deal tracking.”
Why Positive is buying
Positive's pitch is that finding a prospect and closing a deal are parts of the same process, but usually sit in tools that do not share data. Humanlinker handles the first part: who to contact and how. noCRM then tracks the opportunity through follow-ups to a signed contract.
The two products have already been connected. Positive said noCRM's 8,000 users can use Humanlinker's prospecting features from inside noCRM. La Clé Publique reported that the integration lets a noCRM contact list feed a Humanlinker campaign, checks new suggestions against existing contacts to avoid duplicates, and logs email, social and phone exchanges back into the sales record. A Chrome extension adds Humanlinker data inside noCRM. Users still need a separate active Humanlinker subscription, though noCRM offers its customers a discount, according to the same report.
Mathieu Tarnus, Positive's founder, said Humanlinker adds a core skill for the group's customers: opening the right sales conversations. He said its AI prospecting work fits alongside noCRM's deal tracking. Positive said the purchase supports one of three areas it focuses on: gaining visibility, engaging audiences and growing sales.
The founders and the funding
Humanlinker raised a €2.5 million (about $2.7 million) seed round in April 2022, led by Karista with Founders Ventures and a group of business angels, The SaaS News reported. The angels named included PeopleDoc co-founders Clément Buyse and Jonathan Benhamou, and Pascal Colin, a former DocuSign executive. The company said at the time it planned to hire more than 20 people and grow in Europe.
In total, Presse Agence and La Gazette France report that the startup raised €3 million (about $3.5 million) from venture funds and around 60 business angels. Humanlinker's own investor page puts the total at more than $3.5 million and lists board members from Karista and Founders Ventures. It also mentions support from Bpifrance and banks.
Brioland said Humanlinker began from the idea that salespeople should spend their time selling and building relationships rather than hunting for information, and that the same thinking had shaped noCRM.
A steady buyer of software companies
Positive is based in Hem, near Lille. La Clé Publique reported that the group started in 2001 as Sarbacane, which sold newsletter software. It later moved into sales tools by buying Datananas, a prospecting automation company, and noCRM joined the group in September 2023. Its current brands include Surfer for search content, Iconosquare for social media, User for CRM and marketing automation, Signitic for email signatures and rapidmail.
The group reported more than €70 million (about $81 million) in revenue and has more than 400 staff in France, Germany, Italy and Poland. Presse Agence said it is mostly owned by its founders, with backing from European investors. La Gazette France described Humanlinker as Positive's sixth acquisition in 18 months, and said the group had refinanced close to €110 million (about $128 million) the month before to fund international growth.
Positive has not published revenue or sales targets tied to the deal. La Clé Publique noted that no independent figures yet show how much time the combined tools save sales teams.
