TWIS #278
Carol, Rara Factory, Small Pixels, Bricks.sh, Butterfly Decisions, and Liv4 raised funding. The EY Venture Capital barometer.
Hello,
Welcome back to The Week in Italian Startups. This is Niccolò from Primo Capital: every week, I publish my curated list of the latest news from the Italian startup ecosystem.
The Money 💰
Carol, a digital health startup, 🇮🇹raised €6.5m in a Growth round from Futura SGR and P101 SGR.
Rara Factory, a startup applying AI to finding novel materials and compounds, 🇮🇹raised €3.2m in a Seed round from Primo Capital, CDP Venture Capital, and Alberto Baban.
Small Pixels, an AI-based video enhancement startup, raised €1.67m in a Early-stage round from Match Ventures SCSp, Frontech s.r.l., National Technology Transfer Center for AI & Cybersecurity, and Fondo Toscana Next.
Bricks.sh, a AI-first admin panels builder for non-tech teams, raised €1.6m in a Pre-seed round from Primo Capital, Octopus First Cheque Fund, Eden Ventures, Vesper Holding, and Vento.
Butterfly Decisions, a decision support platform, 🇮🇹raised €1.2m in a Early-stage round from Vertis SGR, CyberXcelerator, and business angels including Maria Grazia Campanile.
Liv4, an AI-assisted process monitoring startup, 🇮🇹raised €0.5m in a Pre-seed round from Bernhard Konzet, Claudio Ognibene, Sean Milloy, Giovanni Giunchedi, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Banca d'Imola.
The Money - Italians in the world 🌎
Klearly raised €12m in a Series A round from PayPal Ventures, Italian Founders Fund, Global PayTech Ventures, Antler Elevate, and Shapers.
M&A🥩
Starting Finance 🇮🇹acquired Talkin Pills.
Reading this week📚
🇮🇹According to the EY Venture Capital Barometer, the Italian VC market reached almost €1.5b. The bottom line: Italy is growing but still lags behind its European peers.
AI Agents Map (already too many of them?).
🇮🇹A brief history of Muscope | StartupItalia (spoiler: Primo Capital is the unmentioned Italian fund 😁).
Primo Perspectives: 🇮🇹why decarbonization needs new materials | Primo Capital.
Vado 🇮🇹entered into a partnership with Nexi to digitalize vending machine payments.
The AI revolution is here. Will the economy survive the transition?
Jobs in Italian Startups🌟
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Ending Notes📝
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N.
The fact that Carol raised €6.5m in a growth round is interesting when compared to the earlier-stage rounds in the list. The spread from €500k pre-seed to multimillion growth rounds shows a pretty healthly ecosystem with capital available at different stages, which wasnt always the case in European VC outside of the usual hotspots.