TWIS #308

Tensive, Foorban, Holifya raised funding. Compagnia del Gusto acquired Winelivery. Domyn starts talking billions. The US designated Autistici/Inventati a terrorist organization.

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. Summer is (mostly) behind us and the news machine has started grinding again. Let’s dive into what happened in the last few weeks.

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The Money 💰

• Tensive, a biotech startup, 🇮🇹raised €20m in a convertible loan from the European Investment Bank.

• Foorban, a food startup, raised €7.2m in a Growth round from IMPACT Partners.

• Holifya, a health-tech startup, raised €2m in a Early-stage round from Next Age, Growth Engine, Doorway, 20Fund, Zooga VC.

M&A 🥩

• Compagnia del Gusto acquired Winelivery.

Reading after the summer break 📚

• Milan’s Domyn raises over $1bn Europe’s largest AI round, mostly in debt, according to Sifted.

• Speaking of Domyn, Sharka (CEO) announced they are “a few quarters away from $1bn ARR”.

• TEF and CITRIS at the University of California - Berkeley, joined forces to strengthen Europe’s deep-tech ecosystem | Tech Europe Foundation.

• 🇮🇹Italian Space Economy: startup, capital and corporates in the new space economy | Economyup.

• D-Orbit Space received $24m in financing from the the Defense Innovation Unit, a US agency.

• Autistici/Inventati was designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States government.

• Hedge funds upped short AI bets in July, Hazeltree says.

• My notes on Pre-Seed in 2026, (Brett Calhoun):

  

  Brett Calhoun@brettcalhounn

  https://t.co/CZtl3u6Pzo

  2:52 PM · Sep 1, 2026 · 43.4K Views

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  17 Replies · 12 Reposts · 317 Likes

• 💯🎯

  

  Alexandr Wang@alexandr_wang

  to put ai progress in perspective: 9 months ago: most developers wrote code by hand now: misaligned multi-agent swarm finding and collaborating on 0-days undetected (OpenAI/hugging face) 9 months in the future likely much crazier

  6:42 PM · Aug 9, 2026 · 619K Views

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  318 Replies · 390 Reposts · 6.48K Likes

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:

• Structural & thermal engineer at FAST Aerospace

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:

• AI Salon Torino

Fundraising Tracker 📈

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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.