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 💰
MDOTM Ltd., a fintech startup, raised $27m in a Growth round from Expedition Growth Capital.
Health Triage, a deep-tech startup, 🇮🇹raised €3m in a Early-Stage round from Vertis Sgr (Vertis Venture 6 Digital Sud), and Health 1.
Archimede, a satellite connectivity and IoT startup,🇮🇹raised €1.5m in a Seed round from Primo Capital, Cdp Venture Capital, Plug and Play, Elis, 40Jemz Ventures, and Irritec.
Banyan Biotech, a biotech startup, 🇮🇹raised €1m in a Seed round from Berrier Capital.
Musthad, a circular economy startup, raised €1m in a Seed round from Alante Capital, Style IT, NextStep, and Ragnarson.
Sencare, a health startup, raised €0.5m in a Seed round from Consis, Gama Partecipazioni, and Startup Bakery.
New funds💫
Panakes Partners announced BII Catalyst Fund I for Italy, a biotech fund focused on Lazio-based biotech startups
IPO
Bending Spoons IPO prices above range at $18.4 billion valuation | Yahoo!Finance.
Alia Mentis 🇮🇹went public on the Italian Stock Exchange.
M&A🥩
Pirelli acquired a 24.99% in RideSense.
iPratico 🇮🇹acquired Aivesp, a university spin-off from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
P101 integrated Prana Ventures (and announced a new €100m seed fund).
Reading this week📚
16 new unicorns 🇮🇹minted in defence and spacetech in 2026 | Ilsole24ore.
🇮🇹Intacture, a 6 MW datacenter built inside a mine, 100mt underground.
Hercle Secured MiCA and EMI Licenses, Bridging Regulated Cross-Border Payments and Stablecoin Settlement.
The State of the AI Economy | Exponential View.
Jobs in Italian Startups🌟
If you want to share or more job positions relevant to the Italian ecosystem, fill out this form (note: fixed - it was offline for most of last week). Looking for a new job? Check out this link!
Startup Events in Italy🎪
Keep an eye on the upcoming events in the Italian ecosystem. Feel free to add an event through this form (note: fixed - it was offline for most of last week).
Fundraising Tracker 📈
Q2 in Italian Startups
A quick recap of the first two quarters:
My final number for the first 6 months of 2026 is almost EUR 730m.
The top 5 rounds were raised by four well established companies, and only one “AI-native” startup:
D-Orbit (founded 2011, latest round EUR110m)
Satispay (2013, 60m)
Weroad (2017, 49.7m)
Smartness (2020, 47m)
Lexroom (2023, 43m)
Q2 was the most performant since my time series started - but it was the weakest on many previous years. Q3 and Q4 will be tough to match.
The monthly chart draws a better picture than the aggregate data tells: 2025 had a great Q4, with almost 800m in new rounds announced. We are still a long way to go for the 1.5b mark!
Seed and pre-seed rounds account for the majority of stages (unsurprising).
You can navigate these and more charts on my streamlit dashboard.
Ending Notes📝
Don’t forget to check out the TWIS dashboard for the latest updates.
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.
N.
I value the European space-tech field as slightly underrated: steady investments and focus on harmonizing the policies of the member states
--> I think the long-term planning will reveal the true value of our companies (obv rooting for Italy)