Presentation short abstract

Focusing on french critical minerals policy, this communication explores the emergence of new financial instruments such as public-private funds to secure critical minerals supply chains, while highlighting the existing tensions between strategic autonomy goals and the lack of capital discipline.

Presentation long abstract

This communication explores the emergence of new financial instruments deployed by the French government to secure access to critical metals, and argues that these instruments illuminate a broader transformation toward what recent scholarship has conceptualized as the “Investor State.” (Lepont, Thiemann, 2024). Building on ongoing work about the politics of criticality and state intervention, it analyzes how France has incrementally expanded its toolkit—from public guarantees to direct equity investments—culminating in the creation of dedicated national investment vehicles such as the critical minerals fund operated by the private equity company INFRAVIA.

Drawing on documentary research and qualitative interviews with investors and public authorities, the communication shows that this fund materialize new forms of public–private intermediation. It reshapes the boundaries between industrial policy and financial regulation, redistribute responsibilities for supply-chain risk, and reorganize the State’s relationships with mining firms. The governance structure of this fund, its selection criteria and expected returns reveal the tensions inherent in state-led investment: between strategic autonomy and capital discipline, long-term supply security and short-term profitability, environmental objectives and accelerated project development.

By tracing how this national fund was designed, negotiated, and justified, the communication ultimately highlights the political and epistemic work involved in constructing “criticality” as an investment problem. It argues that studying these state-backed investment funds offers a privileged vantage point to understand contemporary public arbitrations and the evolving role of the State as a market-shaping actor in the energy transition.