TWIS #181
Energydome, Change Capital, Cents, and others raised funding. Fresh capital in the Apulia region. The EU AI Act.
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
Energydome announced €60m in funding for its first CO2-based thermo-mechanical energy storage system. The funding consists of a project-level grant commitment of up to €35m from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst and €25m venture debt financing commitment from the European Investment Bank.
Change Capital, a fintech company based in Arezzo, Italy, 🇮🇹raised €2.5m in funding from Banca Valsabbina.
Cents, a fintech startup, 🇮🇹raised a pre-seed funding round of €1.15m from SICI and other investors.
Ephos, WPE Research & Development, and LevelQuantum were among the 30 deeptech startups selected by the NATO accelerator.
Exor Ventures 🇮🇹joined a $138m round in Ursa Major, a space-tech startup.
Cyber Guru, a cybersec training startup, raised capital from Riverside Acceleration Capital. Amount undisclosed.
Credemtel 🇮🇹acquired a 10% stake in Flairbit. Amount undisclosed.
New Funds
Vertis, Eureka, AVM Gestioni, and Indaco are the 4 VC firms that 🇮🇹collectively raised €40m from the Apulia region.
Progress Tech Transfer closed its investment period. MiTo Technology is already 🇮🇹preparing the following fund, focused on climate tech.
Reading this week
The EU is the first major governmental body to approve an AI act. The “trilogue” found an agreement late on Friday night, and now we need to wait for the final document for details. Meanwhile, a comment from Gabriele Venturi, founder of PandasAI.
Dmitry Chikhachev, GM at Runa Capital, on 🇮🇹opening up an office in Milan.
The State of LLM apps → an interesting window on what LLM-related tech is being used in the Streamlit ecosystem.
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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.
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