The Week in Italian Startup

Hosted by Giacomo Mollo

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211

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Jul 2026

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The Week in Italian Startup discusses and analyzes the latest news from the Italian startup ecosystem. Giacomo Mollo is a former academic in philosophy turned tech investor. He is co-founder and partner of iN3 Ventures, a corporate innovation and VC firm. Niccolò Sanarico is an Oxford MBA and a software engineer with a passion for innovation and startups. He is currently an Investment Manager at Primo Ventures SGR, a venture capital firm based in Italy.

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September 10, 202615 min

Europe's Biggest AI Round Is Mostly Debt #211

Domyn, Europe's largest AI round, is mostly debt: $1.1B raised, roughly 90% of it borrowed against 6,000 Nvidia chips in southern Italy, leaving an equity cheque of about $110M. That structure is the episode. A deal that began as a substantial Series A in 2024–25 became infrastructure financing, and Niccolò Sanarico's read is blunt: this is not pure-play venture capital, it is another beast. From there we split AI sovereignty into its real layers — where data sits, who controls the model, who operates the system, and who supplies replacement hardware — with Domyn as the hybrid case, training locally on a supply chain it does not own. We test the commercial question underneath: is there a market for companies that want their own model, fully localised, trained on proprietary data, and what does that cost you when a competitor runs on a frontier model instead. The OpenAI mathematics episode gets at why the demand exists anyway, because the doubt about data safety is enough. We also cover Tensive, an Italian biotech in biomaterials, which took €20M from the European Investment Bank as a convertible loan in two tranches on a 20-year maturity, roughly double the venture-debt horizon. And Foorban, the Milan food startup that reached operational break-even with more than 500 customers and 800 smart fridges, raising €7.2M from IMPACT Partners in a round that also bought out some existing shareholders. Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomollo Listen to all episodes on audio: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQ Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RC Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3Elhykq Amazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9 Get in touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxx Twitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomollo Email: giacomo@in3.ventures #venturecapital #italy #startup

July 28, 202615 min

Fewer startups, bigger cheques - H1 2026 in Italian Venture Capital #210

Italian startup funding in H1 2026 came in at €679M according to VeM and €813M according to Growth Capital — two official venture capital reports on the same six months, €134M apart, and both correct. Giacomo Mollo and Niccolò Sanarico break down why the two observatories count differently: VeM tracks institutional, tech-transfer-heavy activity in Italian-incorporated companies and classifies it in traditional private equity categories, while Growth Capital, co-authored with Italian Tech Alliance, uses modern vertical segmentation and includes large rounds and deals done outside Italy. Both agree on the figure neither headlined: first-time cheques fell from 110 to 95, so the money went up while the number of companies funded went down. The episode sets Italy against Europe's €44bn across 5,330 rounds and asks why a market this size still lands where it does. It covers the 59% pre-seed and seed skew, why Niccolò says Italy doesn't yet have a true barbell, and the business-angel tax incentive that expired at the start of the year. It looks at what actually absorbed the capital — Weroad, Smartness, Lexroom and Niulinx — and why the record half was carried by applied and vertical software rather than the deeptech and biomedical deals Italy has historically pushed. The conversation closes on two rounds: Circular Materials' €11.8M SAFE from CDP Venture Capital, the EIC Fund, EIT RawMaterials and 360 Capital, built on an End-of-Waste licence very few holders have, and ORiS' €5M pre-seed led by Earlybird, a German fund taking the lead position on a Politecnico di Torino spinout.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

July 14, 202621 min

Europe's €2.4 billion fusion champion is built by Italians on German Tech #209

Proxima Fusion, nuclear fusion, stellarator technology, Italian founders and CDP Venture Capital anchor this episode on Europe's largest fusion round ever: €411M at a €2.4 billion valuation. The Max Planck Institute spin-out is headquartered in Munich, will likely build its first plant in Bavaria, and counts Google, RWE, KfW Capital, SPRIND and quant-finance investors among ~21 backers — with Italy's CDP re-upping as a returning investor. A €2.4B valuation for a company with zero revenue and a demonstrator by 2030 means fusion has been re-priced from science risk to execution risk. Italy is hedging the race across competing technologies: CDP backs Proxima's stellarator while Eni has been one of the largest investors in Commonwealth Fusion Systems' tokamak since 2018. Then Young Platform, the Italian crypto exchange, raises €22.5M in a growth round from Azimut — a bet on regulation rather than hype, with MiCAR authorization covering 8 of 10 crypto services, first in Italy by breadth, in a market that has clearly cooled off. Finally, Primo Capital launches Primo Space Fund 2 with a €120M target for space technology and dual-use applications, €70M+ in expressions of interest before first close and Roberto Battiston advising. The through-line: Italy didn't miss the fusion race — it paid to be on the sidelines.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

July 7, 202616 min

What Italy's €730M VC Funding Number Hides #208

Italian startup funding, venture capital, D-Orbit, Satispay, WeRoad, CDP and the dealflowit H1 2026 data anchor this episode on why Italy's ~€730M half-year is concentration, not depth. The top three rounds account for roughly 40% of the total and the top five for about 60%, so stripping out the breakouts leaves an ordinary half. The most active investor isn't a private VC — it's CDP, the state, with 91 investments — while business angels stay busy at pre-seed and the biggest checks at the top come increasingly from foreign players like Airbnb, which led WeRoad. We put €730M in context: it's roughly half Italy's ~€1.5–1.6B annual ceiling, and 2025 leaned on an exceptional ~€800M fourth quarter, so the back half of 2026 has a steep bar. We also note that only one top name, Lexroom, is AI-native, and that rising average round sizes (Series C near €46M) signal a maturing but still-shallow market. Then MDOTM: a $27M growth round from Expedition Growth Capital, with its Sphere platform already touching $100B+ in assets across 60+ institutions including Morgan Stanley, Amundi and Zurich Bank. Finally Alia Mentis, a 2012 advanced-composites maker, debuts on Euronext Growth Milan up 35% on day one, oversubscribed, on about €15M revenue and €8.5M EBITDA — a 58% margin — with a founder who kept 67% after a mostly bootstrapped path. The through-line: Italy didn't have a record half-year — three companies did.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

June 30, 202611 min

Google Built Search for Humans. Seltz Builds It for AI #207

AI agent search, agentic web search, and the retrieval layer take center stage as Seltz raises a €12.5M seed to rebuild search for AI agents rather than humans. Founder Antonio Mallia — NYU PhD in information retrieval, ex-Amazon AGI, ex-Pinecone — argues agents fire hundreds of precise queries in parallel and need machine-readable passages in under 200 milliseconds, not ten blue links. We discuss why Seltz takes the harder bet of owning the crawler, index, and retrieval layer instead of orchestrating on top of existing indexes. We unpack the cap table — Speedinvest, B Capital, Italian Founders Fund, United Ventures, and Bain's Future Back Ventures — and what it signals about global ambition with an Italian-founder backbone. We look at a category already minting unicorns: Tavily acquired for up to $400M, Parallel at a ~$2B valuation, Exa at $85M, and ask whether this is the first search era with no winner-takes-all. Then two Italian €3.2M rounds — Compri in AI procurement and Kalipso in regtech — frame the shift from SaaS to "software as labor," where buyers purchase outcomes instead of tools. It's a look at where search, agents, and "boring AI" workflows are heading next.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

June 24, 202614 min

Why startups will fail MORE according to Anthropic #206

Anthropic's Founder's Playbook argues startups will fail MORE as AI shrinks idea-to-product from months to a weekend, removing the forced question every founder used to answer: does anyone want this? The 42% of startups that die building what nobody wants is set to climb, so the real test moves from "can you build it?" to "should you build it?" We get into AI-driven confirmation bias — how it constructs a fundable-looking case for a bad idea — and why a prototype is now just a prop for real user conversations. Diligence shifts from artifact quality to evidence of demand: retention, repeat usage, actual usage. We cover why the moat moves to workflow lock-in and proprietary data, why the next elite founder is an AI architect rather than the best coder, and whether the seed round is quietly losing its old rationale. Then two Italian deep-tech seed rounds: X-nano's €3.7M for synthetic graphite for lithium-ion batteries, and Rainbow Crops' €9.7M for AI-powered crop engineering. Closing on Niccolò's newsletter hitting its 300th issue.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

June 17, 202624 min

Bending Spoons filed for US IPO. The Details. #205

Bending Spoons IPO, SEC F-1 filing, EV/EBITDA valuation, roll-up acquisition strategy, AI token economics, and Satispay's €60M round anchor this episode on the Italian startup and venture capital ecosystem. The hosts dissect Bending Spoons' valuation ladder — roughly $2.8B in 2024, $11.7B in late 2025, and a ~$20B IPO target on Nasdaq (ticker BSB) — implying the company roughly doubles every eight months. They debate whether Bending Spoons is a SaaS business, a software compounder, or a private equity-style roll-up, noting that over 80% of growth is inorganic and only ~13% organic, with the S-1 explicitly citing Teledyne's Henry Singleton as a model. Running back-of-envelope VC math, they argue traditional EV/EBITDA logic (15–25x for software) lands well below $10B, exposing a large premium the market is pricing into the deal. The conversation surfaces sharp operating signals: revenue-per-employee near $2.5M (projected above $3M), net revenue retention of roughly 70–90% driven heavily by price increases on acquired consumer brands, and a sub-70% gross margin. A standout insight is the treatment of AI and token spend as COGS rather than R&D — using models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini plus local deployments, with ~70% of code shipped via AI — which the hosts argue most companies misclassify. They also break down the firm's acquisition discipline, including target IRR hurdles of 65% levered and 25% unlevered against a claimed pipeline of 1,000 targets. The episode closes on post-IPO liquidity for Italy's ecosystem and Satispay's internal €60M raise at a ~€1B valuation, framed as a fintech land grab for Italy's €1.27 trillion in household savings. Niccolò's newsletter: ⁠⁠http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/⁠⁠ Watch on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomollo⁠ Listen to all episodes on audio: Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQ⁠⁠ Google Podcast: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3thf9RC⁠⁠ Apple Podcast: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/3Elhykq⁠⁠ Amazon Music: ⁠⁠https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9⁠⁠ Get in touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/giacxxx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/giacomomollo⁠⁠ Email: giacomo@in3.ventures #venturecapital #italy #startup

May 27, 202615 min

The Pope Just Legitimized Anthropic. Here's Why That's Significant. #204

This episode unpacks Anthropic's Milan office launch staged at the Vatican with Pope Leo, Lex's $50M Series B legal tech raise led by Left Lane Capital, and Quantum Bridge Technologies' €8M seed round backed by Primo, Wire, Cadenza and Club University. The hosts argue Anthropic deliberately routed legitimacy through the Vatican after the Trump administration designated the company a supply chain risk in February — using the Pope's first-ever AI encyclical to position itself as the ethics-forward, European-friendly alternative to OpenAI. They flag that Anthropic reached the Pope before OpenAI did, reframing the "heroic ethicist" posture as a pricing input on company valuation and a strategic moat in regulation-heavy Europe. On Lex, the speed is the story: only eight months separate Series A from Series B, bringing total funding to roughly $73M and suggesting existing investors doubled down before larger US funds could enter. Left Lane Capital — a $3.8B AUM fund founded in 2019, with HelloFresh, Udemy, BlaBlaCar and MasterClass on its track record — is an unusual lead given its consumer-loyalty thesis, but consistent with its bias toward regulation-heavy markets. The Quantum Bridge Technologies round is anchored by Hoi-Kwong Lo, one of the most cited researchers in quantum cryptography, giving the team unusual scientific depth for a seed-stage Italian deep tech deal. The episode closes with a macro signal: May 2026 ranked as the second-best fundraising month in Italy over the past six years, behind only the 2022 peak. Niccolò's newsletter: ⁠⁠http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/⁠⁠ Watch on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomollo⁠ Listen to all episodes on audio: Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQ⁠⁠ Google Podcast: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3thf9RC⁠⁠ Apple Podcast: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/3Elhykq⁠⁠ Amazon Music: ⁠⁠https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9⁠⁠ Get in touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/giacxxx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/giacomomollo⁠⁠ Email: giacomo@in3.ventures #venturecapital #italy #startup

May 25, 202612 min

Did Algorithmiq Just Solve Italy's Talent Problem? #203

Italian quantum software startup Algorithmiq, founded by physicist Sabrina Maniscalco, just closed an €18M round and relocated its global HQ from Helsinki to Milan — the largest quantum bet in Italian history and the first full-startup reshoring case, co-led by CDP. The hosts reframe the brain drain reversal as a "magnet effect," comparing the deal's pull on PhDs and operators to SpaceX in LA, DeepMind in London, and Spotify/Klarna in Stockholm. They unpack Algorithmiq's contrarian thesis: while the US and China pour capital into quantum hardware, Algorithmiq attacks the software and error-correction layer — proving it by beating Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford teams in a $2M quantum chemistry challenge tied to cancer research. The conversation pivots to Weedoo's €21M round to scale an AI agent platform for Italian SMBs across marketing, sales, and operations, backed solely by Azimut's private equity vehicle ICF3 (Impresa Crescita 3). The episode closes on the EIC Scaling Club — Brussels' explicit "unicorn conversion funnel" of ~120 companies that have collectively raised €3.4B — which just admitted three Italian names: Energy Dome, Cellply, and Caracol, mapping cleanly to energy, biotech, and advanced manufacturing. Energy Dome's parallel commercial agreement with Google links the story into the broader hyperscaler CapEx wave reshaping the European energy stack, with all three threads pointing in the same direction: Italian deep tech increasingly plugged into international capital and strategic supply chains. Niccolò's newsletter: ⁠⁠http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/⁠⁠ Watch on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomollo⁠ Listen to all episodes on audio: Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQ⁠⁠ Google Podcast: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3thf9RC⁠⁠ Apple Podcast: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/3Elhykq⁠⁠ Amazon Music: ⁠⁠https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9⁠⁠ Get in touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/giacxxx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/giacomomollo⁠⁠ Email: giacomo@in3.ventures #venturecapital #italy #startup

May 20, 202610 min

Smartness vs Booking.com: The Consolidation War Begins #202

The episode unpacks three Italian venture capital deals shaping the ecosystem in 2025-2026: Smartpricing's €47M Series B (the largest vertical SaaS round in Italian history), a €5M Series A in insurtech, and the state of Italian life science fundraising versus France. Smartness's capital stack — primary equity plus secondary plus debt — is read as an engineered M&A war chest aimed at consolidating fragmented PMS and CRM players in hospitality tech before incumbents like Booking.com move on the direct-booking layer. The hosts argue that six years from launch to Series B places Smartness in top-quartile European growth, approaching North American velocity. A recurring thesis emerges: European vertical SaaS will increasingly bolt acquisition strategies onto organic growth, absorbing regional players who cap out at national scale. The presence of Bending Spoons founders in Smartness cap table is flagged as a signal worth tracking, alongside the company's 5,000 customers across 41 countries and 10% organic month-over-month growth. The insurtech deal stands out for an unusual cap table — founders still holding 40% at a roughly €100M valuation while running EBITDA-positive on €5M in revenue — and for replicating the same M&A playbook through broker roll-ups. The life science segment exposes a structural gap: France has nearly double the number of Italian life science companies but raises roughly 5x the capital, while Italian players skew toward digital health and apps versus France's medtech, devices, and hardware bets. The throughline is an Italian ecosystem accelerating in execution and capital structure sophistication but still meaningfully capital-starved against its direct European peers. Niccolò's newsletter: ⁠⁠http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/⁠⁠ Watch on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomollo⁠ Listen to all episodes on audio: Spotify: ⁠⁠https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQ⁠⁠ Google Podcast: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3thf9RC⁠⁠ Apple Podcast: ⁠⁠https://apple.co/3Elhykq⁠⁠ Amazon Music: ⁠⁠https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9⁠⁠ Get in touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/giacxxx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/giacomomollo⁠⁠ Email: giacomo@in3.ventures #venturecapital #italy #startup