TWIS #180

WeRoad, Soplaya, Sendabox, and others raised funding. Blacksheep announced the final closing. Accenture and Almaviva made acquisitions.

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

• Milan-based company WeRoad has secured €18m in a Series B funding round to revolutionize group adventure travel for millennials. H14 led the funding.

• Banxware, a German fintech that offers embedded lending solutions, has announced a new Series A funding round of €15m. UniCredit, Fabrick, and existing investors such as 13books Capital, VR Ventures, D4 Ventures, and Force over Mass participated in the investment.

• Soplaya, an Italian start-up that operates as a digital wholesaler for restaurants, 🇮🇹closed a funding round of €12.5m. The round was led by Sinergia Venture Fund (Alkemia Capital), including previous investors P101, Azimut, Cdp Venture Capital (through Italia Venture I fund), and Intesa San Paolo.

• Keyless, a British startup specializing in biometric authentication technology, has secured $6m in a funding round led by Rialto Ventures.

• Sendabox, an online logistics platform based in Milan, raised €5.25m in Series A funding. The round included an equity portion of approximately €4.2m from Italmondo and Supernova Hub and new financing lines totaling €1.05m from Banca Intesa Sanpaolo and Banca Centropadana.

• Winelivery 🇮🇹raised €1.5m out of a €3.5m SAFE. Gellify and Xequity, among others, joined the round.

• RISE Technology, an innovative high-tech company specializing in manufacturing machines and production lines for photovoltaic cells and modules, semiconductors, and biomedicine, has raised a seed round of €1.5m. The funding was led by Tech4Planet, with participation from Progress Tech Transfer, an investment fund launched by MITO Technology.

New Funds

• Blacksheep 🇮🇹announced the final close of its fund at €50m.

M&A

• Accenture 🇮🇹acquired Ammagamma.

• Almaviva 🇮🇹acquired a majority stake in Water Venture.

Reading this week

• The state of European tech.

• Musixmatch, a music lyrics platform, has appointed Rio Caraeff as its Chief Business Officer.

• What is the right slide order for a seed?

• Alec Ross to Italian VCs: 🇮🇹We need more boldness.

• Cercaofficina.it 🇮🇹rebranded as Veycore.

• Axyon AI received a grant from ELISE, a network of AI research hubs in cooperation with ELLIS, to apply their AI-based financial modeling engine to Quantum computing.

• LIFTT and Techstars 🇮🇹signed a strategic partnership in Turin.

• The winners of the European Capitals of Innovation Award.

• Apogeo Space launched Italy’s first private satellite constellation to provide a telecommunication service for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

• ICOS and Cubbit 🇮🇹signed a distribution agreement.

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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.

1. The following events are welcome, but feel free to submit your entry!

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