TWIS #168

Shop Circle, Arduino, T4i and QuantaBrain raised funding. Connect Ventures Fund IV. Cortilia has a new CEO.

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

• Shop Circle, an e-commerce software startup based in London, has successfully secured $120m in Series A funding through a combination of debt and equity. The funding was raised from 645 Ventures, NFX, QED, and 3VC. 🇮🇹A syndicate of Italian investors including CDP VC, The Techshop, BlackSheep Ventures, and Primo Ventures joined the round. Finally, I80 Group provided the debt facility.

• Arduino, the maker of an open-source electronics platform, raised an additional $22m in its Series B round, with CDP Venture Capital and Anzu Partners being the main investors.

• Avio invested €2.5m in T4i, a spin-off of the University of Padua that specializes in innovative propulsion systems.

• QuantaBrain, a start-up focused on improving the diagnosis of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders using AI algorithms, 🇮🇹raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Scientifica Venture Capital.

Reading this week

• Do startup valuations matter for investment returns? (AngelList)

• A 🇮🇹profile of Panakes.

• Pietro Bezza announced Connect Fund IV 💪🏻💪🏻

• Andrea Colombo 🇮🇹is the new CEO of Cortilia.

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.