TWIS #201
Glaut and Qromo raised funding. Exor Ventures and LIFTT invested abroad. Tether announces record profits. A new season of the Masterclass by Italians in VC.
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 💰
Glaut, an AI-driven marketing startup, 🇮🇹raised €1.4m in a pre-seed round led by the Italian Founders Fund. Investors include Brainstorm Ventures, Alecla7, Ithaca, BHeroes, Club degli Investitori, Eden Ventures, Delirus Capital, and angel investors David Clarke (ex Workday) and Pietro Cesati (ex Soisy).
Qromo, a payment startups in the Ho.Re.Ca. sector, 🇮🇹raised €1m from a syndicate of angel investors and family offices.
The Money - Italians in the world 🌎💰
US-based Rubedo Life Sciences secured $40M in Series A Funding led by Khosla Ventures.
LIFTT 🇮🇹joined a €3m round raised by French-based Touch Sensity.
Reading this week 📚
An 🇮🇹interview with Bending Spoons’ CEO about their merger-based growth strategy.
An 🇮🇹interview with Gelsomina Vigliotti, Vice-President at the European Investment Bank, about the Italian startup market.
Babylon Cloud 🇮🇹issued a €1.5m mini-bond to fund the construction of a green data center.
H-Farm’s board of directors 🇮🇹recommended against a €0.15 per-share tender offer by the company’s controlling shareholders. As of last Friday, the stock was trading at €0.157, well below its IPO price in 2015 but still above the offering price.
Tether announced a $4.52B net profit in Q1 2024. What. The. HELL. 🤯
LLama3-8b fine-tuned on the Italian language.
The Masterclass - Season 2 🇮🇹
Italians in VC announced a new edition of the Masterclass, a series of live sessions featuring some of the most successful founders, operators, and investors. Mark Tuesday, May 7th on your calendar, with the first episode featuring Francesco Simoneschi, the co-founder and CEO of TrueLayer.
Here’s the link to apply → https://lu.ma/jeregta6.
🌟Jobs in Italian Startups🌟
If you want to have one or more job positions relevant to the Italian ecosystem listed, fill out this form. The positions will remain visible for 30 days at this link.
Latest positions:
Startup Events in Italy🎪
Keep an eye on the upcoming events in the Italian ecosystem1. Feel free to add an event through this form.
Newly added events:
Fundraising Tracker 📈
March and April were disappointing months regarding funding announcements, with €47m and €31m respectively, and only one round per month >= €10m.
Ending Notes📝
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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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