TWIS #167

Focoos AI raised funding. Yakkyo considering an IPO. The Italian fund for AI is getting real. A sleepy late summer week in the Italian ecosystem.

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

• Focoos AI, an AI optimization startup, raised €335k from CDP and Obloo.

IPO

• Yakkyo, a dropshipping platform, is 🇮🇹considering an IPO. The platform had revenues equal to €6.5m in 2022m with a 15.2% EBITDA margin.

Italy & AI

• Do you remember the AI fund that was announced by the Italian government in May? The fund 🇮🇹will begin with €200m from the government and will be managed by CDP VC. Its aim is to raise up to €600m from private investors.

Reading this week

• The 🇮🇹problem of the Golden Power for Italian startups.

• 🇮🇹Reid Hoffman will be in Bologna on the 8th of September, giving a speech to the students of the Bologna Business School.

• An interview with Federico Wengi.

• Moneyfarm announced 2.6Bm under management and more than 100k customers, growing at 15% y-o-y.

• The SaaS growth report by ChartMogul - a very interesting benchmarking tool for SaaS businesses.

Shift

• Before the summer break, I had a conversation with Giovanni Binello, author of Shift, a Spotify podcast on the Italian tech ecosystem (in Italian). Head there if you are keen to know how I ended up in VC and some quick thoughts about the present and future of the market.

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.