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.
It seems everyone waited for Italian Tech Week to announce their rounds: this was probably the week most packed with funding news since I started TWIS.
The Money 💰
D-Orbit, a spacetech company, 🇮🇹announced the completion of the Series C from December 2023. The company raised a total of €150m in the round.
Genespire, a biotech company, raised €46.6m in a round co-led by Sofinnova Partners, XGEN Venture and CDP Venture Capital forming a strong syndicate with Indaco SGR.
JetHR, a HR-tech startup, raised €12m in a round led by Picus Capital. Existing investors Exor, IFF, and 2100 participated in the round, alongside notable business angels.
Kleecks, a martech startup, 🇮🇹raised €6.5m in a round co-led by Blacksheep and Axon.
Vitesy, a consumer hardware startup focusing on food waste, raised €4m from CDP VC and Mediaset.
Mela Works, an ERP for the construction industry, 🇮🇹raised €2.4m from CDP VC and Terna Forward.
TrueScreen, a cybersecurity startup, raised €2.4m from Cysero.
Aptadir Therapeutics, a biotech startup, raised $1.6m in pre-seed funding from EXTEND.
Data Masters, an AI-focused tech academy, 🇮🇹raised €1.15m in a round led by Primo Ventures and participated by Zanichelli Venture and business angels.
Xbooks, a cryptotax startup, raised €1m from Primo Ventures.
Mapo Tapo, a traveltech startup, raised €1.15m in debt and equity from Zest, VeniSia, business angels, and others.
Sestre, a woman’s wellness startup, 🇮🇹raised €400k from TerraNext and the Fund for Female Entrepreneurship run by the Italian Ministry of Industry.
Raffaele Terrone’s new startup, UK-based Desia, raised $3.3m in a pre-seed round led by Dig Ventures.
ZCube 🇮🇹led a CAD$2m round in Canada-based Hyivy Health, a femtech startup.
New Funds 💫
Mito Tech Ventures, a new fund focused on net-zero transition, announced its first closing at €55m.
Kyip Capital 🇮🇹announced Kyip Impact Mission, a new PE impact fund, with a first closing of €30m.
The Lazio region 🇮🇹announced a new investment program in direct and fund-of-funds investments for a total of €75m.
M&A 🥩
Improovo 🇮🇹acquired Formatoriitaliani.it.
Reading this week📚
Carlo Tassi 🇮🇹named best Italian Business Angel of 2024.
An Innovup 🇮🇹study on the impact of startups on the Italian economy.
🌟Jobs in Italian Startups🌟
If you want to share or more job positions relevant to the Italian ecosystem, fill out this form. Looking for a new job? Check out this link!
Startup Events in Italy🎪
Keep an eye on the upcoming events in the Italian ecosystem1. Feel free to add an event through this form.
Fundraising Tracker 📈
Q3 is ending with an important uptick, with more than €300m in capital raised1, putting us on track to push the total above €1 billion by the end of the year (perhaps even €1.2B?). September was the second-best month in 2024 so far2, right after February, with more than €213m in rounds announced.
Looking at the absolute number of announced rounds, I added 145 deals to the tracker in the first 9 months of 2024, compared to 131 for the same period in 2023. That's a solid 10% increase in the number of announcements.
Ending Notes📝
Don’t forget to check out the TWIS dashboard for the latest updates.
I am experimenting with sponsorships in the newsletter. If you want to know more about sponsoring TWIS (and/or the podcast episodes), read some info here and send me a note!
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.
Note: since D-Orbit announced a 100m Series C round back in December 2023, I am only accounting for the incremental 50m in the latest announcement.
Note: I bundle rounds by issue of the newsletter, not by the specific day of announcement - this might cause some misalignment at the end of each month or quarter when these happen mid week: in these cases, I’ll attribute the entire week to the following period.