TWIS #150

Alia Therapeutics, Wearable Robotics, and others raised funding. Q1 in Italian startups. RIP Elserino Piol, the father of Italian venture capital.

Hello,

Welcome back to The Week in Italian Startups. This is Niccolò from Primo Ventures: I publish my curated list of the latest news from the Italian startup ecosystem every week.

The Money

• Alia Therapeutics raised a 4.4m bridge round from Sofinnova, Indaco, and business angels.

• Wearable Robotics, a robotic-aided training and rehabilitation startup, 🇮🇹raised €2.5m from LIFTT, RoboIT, Progress Tech Transfer fund, and business angels.

• FoodU, a food-tech startup, 🇮🇹raised €1m in equity and debt from CDP VC and Smart&Start.

• PipeIn, a predictive maintenance startup for pipelines, 🇮🇹raised €725k from CDP VC and Pariter Partners.

• RestWorld, an HoReCa jobs platform, 🇮🇹raised €500k from SWG, Bakeka.it, and several business angels.

• WaitHero, a QRcode-based payment service for restaurants, 🇮🇹raised €1m and announced the acquisition of Mangiatutto.

Investments abroad

• Panakes Partners participated in a €72m round raised by Complement Therapeutics, a German biotech startup.

• Angels from IAG joined a $2.27m SAFE round in Votis, an Israeli startup.

M&A

• TIM 🇮🇹acquired TS-Way, a cybersecurity company.

Q1 in Italian startups

• 🇮🇹AIFI/VEM and ITA/GC published their report regarding investments in Q1. The numbers from the two reports differ quite a bit, but they agree about a quarter that was well below expectations.

Reading this week

• RIP Elserino Piol.

• ToscanaNext: €13.5m of co-investment capital available for startups launching in Tuscany

• 🇮🇹L’Innovazione degli italiani e l’Italia

Fundraising Tracker

Ending Notes

Giacomo Mollo and I comment weekly on the latest news: subscribe to our podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, 🔥Amazon Music🔥, and other platforms to get additional insights on what is happening in the Italian ecosystem.

Have a great week,

N.