TWIS #141
Aryel raised a new round, Panakes raised €175m for its Purple fund, Casavo let go 30% of its workforce, and the EIB put together a €3.75Bn fund-of-funds for European startups.
Hello,
Welcome back to The Week in Italian Startups. This is Niccolò from Primo Ventures: every week I publish my curated list of the latest news from the Italian startup ecosystem.
The Money
Aryel, an AR startup, raised €3m in a round led by Prana Ventures with the participation of several business angels.
ABZero, a drone delivery startup, 🇮🇹raised €200k from business angels and crowdfunding.
Aspire, a Singapore-based B2B fintech startup funded by two Italian entrepreneurs raised US$100m in a Series C round.
VC
Panakes Partners 🇮🇹announced the final close of its Purple fund, at €175m.
CDP Corporate Partners I, a “corporate VC” fund managed by CDP VC, reached €300m§, with the participation of Newlat and Terna as LPs.
The European Investment Bank and 5 EU countries announced €3.75bn fund of funds to invest in VCs that back European scaleups.
Troubling signals
Casavo announced a 30% reduction in its workforce.
The Rock Trading, Italy’s oldest crypto exchange, 🇮🇹suspended trading and withdrawals, in a move that eerily resonates with similar cases in crypto (FTX?).
Reading this week
Looking for new tools to solve specific tasks? There’s an AI for that.
Crunchbase’s January recap: OpenAI raised a third of all funding in the world.
Pitchbook released its European VC Valuations report for 2022.
Fundraising Tracker
Interviews from TechChill Milan 2022
During the last edition of TechChill Milan 2022, Giacomo and I interviewed a few friends. We are now releasing these videos, one per week: please enjoy our conversation with Cavalry Ventures’ Alessandra Mazzilli!
Ending Notes
Giacomo Mollo and I comment weekly on the latest news: subscribe to our podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, and other platforms to get additional insights on what is happening in the Italian ecosystem.
Have a great week,
N.