October, founded in 2014 as Lendix by Olivier Goy, was the reference platform for SME crowdlending in France and across Europe. More than one billion euros deployed, over 44,000 retail investors, 4,342 projects financed in France, Spain and Italy. In May 2026, the platform was officially acquired by Aether, an independent firm specialising in complex financial transactions. This acquisition marks the definitive end of October as a crowdlending platform accessible to retail investors.
If you are an investor on October with outstanding loans, here is what happened, why, and what you need to know to manage your portfolio.
October's closure was not a sudden event. It unfolded in several stages over three years.
2022-2023: the environment turns. The ECB's sharp rate hikes undermined the business model of SME crowdlending. When risk-free rates moved from 0% to 4%, retail investors demanded higher returns to compensate for default risk. For borrowers, participatory financing became less competitive against traditional bank loans. October began reducing new loan origination.
Early 2024: full stop on origination. October definitively ceased offering new projects to retail investors. The platform entered portfolio run-off mode.
1 February 2024: technology sold to Sopra. October sold its technology engine, called October Connect, to Sopra Banking Software. This signalled clearly that October had abandoned any plan to relaunch participatory lending.
May 2026: acquisition by Aether. Aether, already approved as a payment institution by the ACPR since July 2023, acquired October to launch Aether Asset Management Services, targeting institutional and professional clients using October's AMF licence and team expertise. October disappears as a retail brand.
Several structural factors explain the failure beyond the rate cycle alone: a difficult unit economics model at European scale, competition from state-guaranteed loans during Covid, a deteriorating existing portfolio (investors with over 30,000 euros invested reported near-zero or negative net returns on recent loans), and no successful pivot to more resilient segments such as real estate or renewable energy.
Your loans do not disappear. Loan contracts are legally independent of the platform's commercial survival. As long as a borrower repays, you continue to receive cash flows. Recovery of late or defaulted loans is now managed by Aether. Expect resolution timelines of two to four years for defaulted loans. No new projects will be offered to retail investors under any scenario.
Platform risk is as real as project risk. You can have selected excellent individual loans: if the platform shuts down or degrades its recovery process, your returns suffer. This is exactly what the CrowdPickr platform quality score measures. Never concentrate more than 20-25% of your crowdlending capital on a single platform, and diversify across segments: renewable energy and short-term residential real estate proved far more resilient than SME lending during the 2022-2024 rate shock.
For real estate crowdlending: ClubFunding, La Premiere Brique, Homunity and Fundimmo remain operational. For renewable energy: Enerfip and Lendosphere show solid portfolios. See our platform rankings for a current comparison.
Sources: Boursorama / Aether press release May 2026, Crowdfund Insider (February 2024), MoneyVox, Finyear, argent-et-salaire.com. CrowdPickr is an independent analysis service with no affiliation with October or Aether.