The week in Italian startups - Issue #23
The Money
Claris Ventures [cb], a new life sciences VC founded by Ciro Spedaliere and Pietro Puglisi, 🇮🇹 announced the first closing of their first fund, Claris Biotech I, at €30M, with a target closing at €80M. 🇬🇧 Here a recap in English of the announcement. Kudos to Ciro and Pietro!
Milan-based Reaxing, a company developing innovative training equipment and processes, sold 7.15% of the company to Innovative-RFK. Innovative-RFK is a Euronext-listed PE vehicle investing in "innovative SMEs", a special class of Italian companies developing innovative solutions/products and featuring, among other perks, tax credits to their investors.
M&A
SEA Vision, a company developing vision systems for the pharmaceutical sector, announced the acquisition of ARGO Vision, a Milan-based startup developing AI-based visual recognition software.
Neosperience [cb, BIT:NSP], a company specializing in digital customer experience solutions, 🇮🇹 announced the acquisition of 51% of Turin-based AdChange, a digital lead generation company founded in 2019.
Italy & AI & patents courts
Back in July, I discussed the proposal by a team of experts to create an Italian national program on Artificial Intelligence. It included the creation of a national institute and the deployment of at least €800M by the government. I was quite skeptical about its implementation, let alone the time it would take to move from "proposal" to "action". Well, I was wrong: 🇮🇹 the Italian Government has chosen Turin as the city to host the Italian Institute for Artificial Intelligence (I3A). The institute is expected to employ up to 1000 people, and operate on an €80M yearly budget.
IlSole24Ore adds an unexpected twist around the selection of Turin: 🇮🇹 according to the newspaper, the Turin Diocese played an active role in convincing the government about the city.
Still, I could not find any expected timeframe for making the institute a reality. 🙄
Meanwhile, the Italian Government proposed Milan as one of the three EU locations for the European Unified Patent Court, currently based in London.
CBInsights Fintech 250
Satispay [cb], one of the leading Italian fintech companies, made it to CBInsights' Fintech 250 (again).
Ending Notes
Looking at the streets (and at how many people are in line at supermarkets) I can safely assume that the week just ended marked a return to the cities - and possibly to making new deals. 😎
Please keep sending comments - and thank you for sharing the newsletter in your networks (this week it passed the 500-subscribers mark: I did not expect to get this far, this fast!).
Take care and have a great week,
Nico
