The Week in Italian Startup

Sealence, a startup developing sustainable and innovative solutions for the marine industry, raised €7.5m in equity, debt, and grants.Underscore District, a fashion brands accelerator, 🇮🇹raised €4m in a round led by Kairos Ventures ESG One.Addax Biosciences, a biotech startup, raised €2.5m from Fintech Partners.Voidless, a packaging technology startup, raised €2.2m from CDP VC and 360cp.Okapi, a green-tech startup, raised €1m from Digital Magics and Innova Venture.Collecto, a luxury goods crowdfunding startup, 🇮🇹raised €750k in an angel round.Develop-players, an educative gaming startup, 🇮🇹raised €600k from Opes Italia, 20 Fund, and Privilège Ventures.Sense4med, a medtech startup, 🇮🇹raised €510k from Scientifica Venture Capital and Innova Venture.Dafne, a sexual wellness startup, 🇮🇹raised 250k in a pre-seed round participated by Lifegate, Over Ventures, and Open Seed.Paperbox Health, a startup addressing learning disorders in kids, raised €230k in a bridge round by VITA Accelerator.Sella Venture Partners SGR 🇮🇹announced its second fund of funds dedicated to investing in international VC funds.

Tau Group, an energy transition startup, raised €11m in Series B extension funding led by CDP Venture Capital and Santander Alternative Investments.Ventive, a consulting and investment firm for startups , 🇮🇹raised €2.4m from a syndicate of investors.Sikuro, a building site security startup, 🇮🇹raised €1m in a crowdfunding round led by Fleap Holding Spa and Azimut.Renewcast, an energy forecasting startup for wind energy, 🇮🇹raised €850k in a round led by Helen Ventures and Tech4Planet.Glutensens and VisioNing 🇮🇹raised €204k and €184k from Farming Future and ToSeed&Partners.Bending Spoons 🇮🇹announced it is preparing to raise a €200m round.1 I was impressed by their 2023 EBITDA reported in the article: €200m!Panakès Partners led a €30,4m round in Enterprise Therapeutics.Angelini Ventures 🇮🇹invested €8m in Noctrix Health Inc. and COUR Pharmaceuticals.Neophore raised an additional $12.2m in its Series B round from Neva SGR, LIFTT, and Simon Fiduciaria.CDP VC’s fund-of-funds arm invested in Seroba Fund IV, a €123m life sciences fund.Zucchetti 🇮🇹acquired a majority stake in Awms.Safilo 🇮🇹acquired a minority stake in Spaarkly.Poké House 🇮🇹acquired Poké House Belgium.SECO was accepted into the Qualcomm IoT Accelerator Program.Opyn 🇮🇹is expanding its BNPL service for businesses to Europe, UK, and Switzerland.🇮🇹15 startups incubated by the Startup Builder to keep an eye on.The Italian “Gazzetta Ufficiale” (the primary source of legal information and the official vehicle for the publication of new laws, decrees, regulations, and other acts of the Italian government) was released as a data set on HuggingFace. Will LLMs manage to understand the intricacies of our legal system?A ✍🏻 survey about the culture of growth in Italian startups: if you are a founder of an Italian startup with a couple of minutes to spare, 🇮🇹click here.Scalapay 🇮🇹appointed Andrea Fumagalli as country manager for Italy.More than 100 businesses 🇮🇹adopted JetHR since its launch.📈Yes, it is cricket: Italy gives the go-ahead to insect flour for human use.EU agrees new rules to cut the cost of listing companies.The 2024 State of Quantum.

K-Sport World, a sport-tech startup, raised €5m in a round led by Rialto VC. Axyon AI, an AI fintech company, raised €3.9m in a round led by US-based VC firm Montage Ventures and accompanied by The Techshop SGR, alongside other angel investors. Doorway, a crowdfunding platform, 🇮🇹raised €1.76m in fresh capital from CDP VC, Angels4Women, and other business angels. Jampy, a startup developing products for pet wellness, raised €1m in a pre-seed round led by 360cp, alongside other business angels. Volta Structural Energy, an energy storage startup, 🇮🇹raised €1m from Tech4Planet and Leonardo SpA. Cellex, a medtech startup, 🇮🇹raised €830k from Innova Venture and business angels. Weforguest, a travel-tech startup, 🇮🇹raised €500k in a pre-seed round from CDP VC, LVenture, and other investors. On top of that, the startup received €480k in debt instruments. Playtomic 🇮🇹acquired Sportclubby. Xenon Private Equity Small Cap 🇮🇹acquired a controlling stake in Kettydo+, Hic Mobile, and UrbiStat. LLMs are finally speaking Italian! Two open-source models fine-tuned in the Italian language have been recently released: LLaMAntino, released by a team from the University of Bari, is a fine-tuned version of LLaMa 2 (here is the paper, and of course, the models are available on HuggingFace in the 7b and 13b variants). Zefiro is an LLM model fine-tuned to the Italian language based on Mistral 7b. The models are available on HuggingFace, on the author’s page. But we have higher aspirations: Cineca and iGenius (an AI startup) 🇮🇹announced a partnership to create Modello Italia, a foundational LLM built from scratch. Will it stand against the big, deep-pocketed foundational LLM behemoths?

FTNet, a sales-tech startup in the pharma sector, 🇮🇹raised €3m from angel investors. SPiN, a space-tech startup, raised €1.64m from Galaxia, ScientificaVC, and Lazio Innova, 1Control, a smart access startup, 🇮🇹raised €1m from CDP VC and Azimut Alicrowd II. Lexroom.ai, an AI-for-law startup, 🇮🇹raised €500k from business angels. Ticketoo, a secondary ticketing startup, 🇮🇹raised €400k from Digital Magics, Lazio Innova, and business angels. Deeva, a beauty-tech startup, 🇮🇹raised €400k from Mamazen and business angels. Lendit, a B2B credit-sharing startup, raised an undisclosed amount from dpixel in a natively tokenized fundraise. Seed Venture was the platform enabling the deal. Panakes Partners joined Sofinnova Partners and other investors in the €20m seed round raised by DISCO Pharmaceuticals, a biotech startup. Stellantis Ventures joined the €22m round raised by Tiamat, a French sodium-ions batteries startup. TXT e-Solutions acquired 51% of Arcan, a startup developing solutions for software technical debt. Winelivery 🇮🇹acquired Become Somm.

D-Orbit confirmed the closing of the €100m announced back in November 2023 (seed issue #177). Marubeni led, with Avantgarde, CDP VC, United Ventures, Primo Ventures, Neva SGR, Indaco Venture Partners, and Seraphim Space Investment Trust following. Contents.com, an AI-based content generation platform, raised USD$18m in a Series B round led by Alkemia Capital and Thomson Reuters Venture. SQIM, a biotech startup, raised €11m in a round led by CDP VC, with participation from ECBF VC, Kering Ventures, and Progress Tech Transfer. Indigo.ai, an AI-first startup, 🇮🇹raised €2.5m from its controlling shareholder Vedrai. Your Personal Trainer, a sports-tech startup, raised 723k from CDP VC and Lazio Innova. Fedrigoni Group invested in Sharpend, an IoT startup. Neosperience Health, controlled by Neosperience, raised 1m and plans to go public on the Nasdaq. Bending Spoons acquired Meetup. Bending Spoons also acquired Mosaic Apps (for allegedly more than $100m).🤯 L’Orto di Jack, a fresh groceries company, 🇮🇹acquired Ristoking (and is preparing to raise €10m). LuisaViaRoma announced the acquisition of Holding It. Almawave 🇮🇹acquired Mabrian Technologies.

Resalis Therapeutics, a biotech startup, announced a €10m round led by Sunstone Life Science Ventures with participation from existing investors.Vitesy, a green-tech startup, 🇮🇹raised €3.2m from Doorway and business angels.Algor Education, an AI startup, 🇮🇹raised €1.4m from Emerge Education, Club degli Investitori, 40Jemz Ventures, and Gustaf Nordbäck.OhmSpace, a space-tech startup, 🇮🇹raised €1.2m in a round led by Scientifica Venture Capital, with Innova Venture and Galaxia joining the round.Mbility, a mobility startup, 🇮🇹raised €1m from FNM.Excellis, an investment holding, 🇮🇹announced its second capital increase (and 10 investments).IH1, an investment holding, 🇮🇹reached €5m in capital raised.

Unobravo, a mental health and wellbeing startup, raised an undisclosed growth round from Northzone, with the participation of H14. CDP 🇮🇹sold its stake in the startup, exiting its 2020 seed investment. Smartpricing, a revenue management software for hotels, raised €11m in equity and €2m in credit lines in a round led by Partech (through its new fund Partech Ventures, also invested by CDP). Techshop, Azimut, and the founders of Bending Spoons participated in the round. CAEmate, an Alto Adige-based digital twin startup, 🇮🇹has secured €3m in a post-seed funding round. The round was led by CDP Venture Capital and 360 Capital, with contributions from private investors Marco Carlini and Matti Kuivalainen. nCore, a HR-tech startup, raised €2m from Vertis. Eureka! invested in two PoC projects from CNR and the University of Bologna, Reflex and Proxy. Amount undisclosed. Indaco Venture Partners and Angelini joined a $38m investment in Freya Biosciences, a biotech company specializing in women's health, led by Sofinnova Partners and OMX Ventures.

This episode features Tommaso Migliore, CEO of MDOTM Ltd. We cover a range of topics in AI including the impact of AI and Machine Learning in investment management and asset management, the rise of large language models like GPT-4, the democratization of AI and Machine Learning, and the differences between analytical and generative AI. It also delves into the evolution of AI in finance, challenges and future trends in AI adoption in financial sectors, and specific case studies demonstrating AI applications in institutional investment processes. The discussion provides insights into how AI technologies are transforming investment strategies and decision-making. MDOTM Website: https://www.mdotm.ai/ Tommaso Migliore on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommaso-m... - Subscribe to the channel for weekly updates. Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/ Listen to all episodes on audio: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQ Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RC Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3Elhykq

Milan-based company WeRoad has secured €18m in a Series B funding round to revolutionize group adventure travel for millennials. H14 led the funding. Banxware, a German fintech that offers embedded lending solutions, has announced a new Series A funding round of €15m. UniCredit, Fabrick, and existing investors such as 13books Capital, VR Ventures, D4 Ventures, and Force over Mass participated in the investment. Soplaya, an Italian start-up that operates as a digital wholesaler for restaurants, 🇮🇹closed a funding round of €12.5m. The round was led by Sinergia Venture Fund (Alkemia Capital), including previous investors P101, Azimut, Cdp Venture Capital (through Italia Venture I fund), and Intesa San Paolo. Keyless, a British startup specializing in biometric authentication technology, has secured $6m in a funding round led by Rialto Ventures. Sendabox, an online logistics platform based in Milan, raised €5.25m in Series A funding. The round included an equity portion of approximately €4.2m from Italmondo and Supernova Hub and new financing lines totaling €1.05m from Banca Intesa Sanpaolo and Banca Centropadana. Winelivery 🇮🇹raised €1.5m out of a €3.5m SAFE. Gellify and Xequity, among others, joined the round. RISE Technology, an innovative high-tech company specializing in manufacturing machines and production lines for photovoltaic cells and modules, semiconductors, and biomedicine, has raised a seed round of €1.5m. The funding was led by Tech4Planet, with participation from Progress Tech Transfer, an investment fund launched by MITO Technology.

Aptus.AI, a Pisa-based reg-tech startup, raised €3m in a pre-Series A funding round led by Programma 103, an investment fund managed by P101 Sgr. The round also saw participation from business angels and Fin+Tech, the accelerator of CDP Venture Capital.Digital Magics 🇮🇹is preparing to launch Step Ventures (paywall).Walliance acquired Lymo, France's first crowdfunding platform.TestBusters 🇮🇹acquired UniAdmissions, a UK-based company offering test and admission preparation to Oxford and Cambridge.Dealroom’s ranking of VC investors in EMEA.Italian Tech Alliance’s 🇮🇹report on the performance of equity crowdfunding in Italy.Qomodo 🇮🇹announced a partnership with Mastercard.Chatwin and Over Ventures 🇮🇹teamed up to support startups raising capital.Banca Valsabbina, Azimut, Fleap, and Integrae Sim 🇮🇹announced Fleap Holding, an investment vehicle aiming at investing in startups across Europe and raising capital through quasi-equity instruments (🇮🇹SFP, in Italy) fully tokenized on the blockchain.