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The home of Serie A football is suddenly doing quite well with Series A and other funding stages.
Italian tech started 2024 in strong fashion, with megarounds apiece for Milan-based software developer Bending Spoons and Pisa-based robotic surgery company Medical Microinstruments. The country also dominates Sifted’s recently published southern European leaderboard, with 24 startups in our list of the 50 fastest-growing companies in the region by revenue.
One reason for Italy’s catchup? Old money is beginning to find new tech. Exor, the holding company of the billionaire Agnelli family that owns Ferrari and Stellantis, set up a new seed investing vehicle, Vento, in 2022 to focus on Italian-founded companies. Alessandro Benetton, the heir of the billionaire Italian family behind fashion brand United Colours of Benetton, is the main backer of new VC firm 2100 Ventures. Experienced techies, moreover, are coming home to set up new ventures.
VC money is flowing into Italian tech. As recently as 2021, the country was 16th for volume of VC investment in Europe — today it's firmly in the top 10, according to Dealroom figures.
Italians would love to see that momentum grow, and for a few tech champions to emerge in government who can help blast annoying obstacles out of the way for companies. “It’s still quite cumbersome to create a company and hire people,” says Lorenzo Franzi, founding partner of VC Italian Founders Fund. “It’s pretty old school.”
Companies like Milan-based iGenius, which says it’s developed the first large-language model fully trained in the Italian language, could also help the country catch the GenAI wave. While most companies wait until they’ve secured funding to talk about it, the company did something different: in June it announced how much it wants to raise from investors to develop its AI models — a whopping €650m.
“I think the company needs to make some noise, they’re trying to play all the cards they have,” says Niccolò Sanarico, a general partner at Milan-based early-stage investor Primo Ventures. Still, some feel a round this size may be out of reach for Italy. “It’s hard to see it happening here for now,” says Franzi. Sanarico adds: “If they manage to pull it off, it will put our AI ecosystem on the map.”
In the meantime, global VC funds continue to discover Italy. “I see four or five GPs coming to Milan every week for deal flow,” says Andrea Gennarini, managing partner of 2100 Ventures. And why wouldn’t they come? “We’re smaller than London and Paris, but an hour away from beautiful lakes and in a couple of hours you can get to the Med or the Alps,” Gennarini says. “Drive two hours in London, meanwhile, and you’re probably still in London.”
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