TWIS #290

Niulinx, TeiaCare, CareGlance raised funding. The EC approves €211m Italian State aid measure to support photonic chips development.

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.

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The Money 💰

• Niulinx, an autonomous taxi startup, raised €38m in a Early-stage round from a2a, CDP Venture Capital, Ferrovie dello Stato, Pirelli, Falck Family Office, VCPartners, MOST, Stefano Bernardi, Emilio Frazzoli.

• TeiaCare, a residential care startup, raised €7m in a Growth round from P101 SGR, Namarel, and Inderhabs.

• CareGlance S.r.l., an industrial monitoring startup, raised €3.5m in a Seed round from CDP Venture Capital, Eureka Venture SGR, and LIFTT.

The Money International 🌎

• Angelini Ventures invested in Lab0.

Reading this week📚

• The European Commission approves €211 million Italian State aid measure to support photonic chips development.

• Four investors answer: "🇮🇹Would you invest in a startup made by AI agents?"

• From fragmented funding to growing maturity: the Italian tech ecosystem | tech.eu

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!

New this week:

• SDR – Sales Development Representative at Data Masters

• Customer Success Manager at Vocations

Startup Events in Italy🎪

Keep an eye on the upcoming events in the Italian ecosystem. Feel free to add an event through this form.

New this week:

• Silicon Drinkabout Rome: pitch + networking (founders + digital workers)

Fundraising Tracker 📈

Q1 2026 in Italian Startups

Quick notes from the first quarter:

1. The quarter closed below expectations: the second worst in the last 5 years¹.

   

2. The top 10 rounds show one clear outlier, D-Orbit, and the only one in plausible “unicorn area”:

   

3. CDP is the most prolific investor, by far:

   

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Ending Notes📝

Don’t forget to check out the TWIS dashboard for the latest updates.

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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.

N.

1. I am not including in the computation the €100m round raised by Rent2Cash, since it is debt+equity and my hunch is that there is an important component of debt.