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 💰
Tundr, a welfare startup, raised €11.6m in a Series A round from CDP VC, 360 Capital, Azimut, Kairos Partners, Crédit Agricole Italia, Sella Direct Ventures, Alessandro Fracassi, Claudio Erba, Enrico Mattiazzi, and Paolo Basilico.
Clastix, a kubernetes management startup, raised €2.9m in a Seed round from CDP Venture Capital Sgr, Mistral, and Vertis SGR.
Gamindo, a corporate training startup, raised €1.4m in a Seed round from Club degli Investitori, Vento, Doorway, Zanichelli Venture, Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella, Luca Maestri, Riccardo Zacconi, Claudio Erba, Alessio Artuffo, and Duccio Vitali.
Tiledesk, an AI startup, raised €1.1m in a Seed round from Zest, Vertis, and OpenT.
FlexyGrid, an energy management company, 🇮🇹raised €750k in a Seed round from Techbricks.
Hlpy, a road assistance company, raised €20m in a round including debt and equity from BNP Paribas BNL Equity Investments (BBEI).
The Money International💰🌍
HeyDiga raised €5.5m in a Seed round from Italian Founders Fund and K Fund.
IPO📈
Newcleo makes its debut on the rollercoaster ride that is Wall Street: raises 200 million net | IlSole24Ore.
M&A 🥩
US-based Ciena acquired 100% of PhotonPath.
New funds💫
Mamacrowd ventures into venture capital: launches MamaVentures, a club deal backed by Azimut | Inverti.
Vertis 🇮🇹announced Vertis Venture 8 Lazio, a €50m fund.
Connect Ventures announces first close of $80M Fund V to back Europe's technical founders | Tech.eu
Reading this week 📚
An 🇮🇹interview with Giovanni Strocchi | StartupItalia.
A video interview with Luca Cartechini (CEO, Circeus) | Tech Funding News
$1,000,000,000!
Matteo Franceschetti@m_franceschetti.@eightsleep is on track to surpass $1B in lifetime Pod sales by year-end, a defining milestone for our team and the category we set out to build. Pod 6 marks our next phase: making our technology even better and more accessible while expanding into healthcare and medical …
2:00 PM · Sep 25, 2026 · 4.15M Views100 Replies · 79 Reposts · 2.3K Likes
Jobs in Italian Startups🌟
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Startup Events in Italy🎪
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New this week:
Fundraising Tracker 📈
Ending Notes📝
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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.
Hlpy pulling in a 20M hybrid round for roadside assistance is the quiet highlight of this whole digest, not because it's flashy, but because it proves that unsexy, operationally heavy sectors still get funded in Italy when the unit economics actually work. Everyone chases the AI headline, but Clastix raising on sovereign Kubernetes infra with Mistral in the cap table is the far more interesting bet on where European tech independence is actually heading.
And newcleo debuting on Wall Street while most Italian startups are still fighting for Seed rounds domestically says something uncomfortable about the ecosystem's maturity curve, the companies solving genuinely hard infrastructure problems increasingly skip the local stage entirely and go straight for global capital. Worth watching whether that becomes the norm rather than the exception.