Italian unicorns in 2026: the full list and what they have in common

Eleven. That’s how many Italian companies are worth a billion dollars or more right now, going by Dealroom’s October 2026 numbers. Two of them carry most of the weight: Bending Spoons, the Milan app company that went public on Nasdaq on June 30, and Technoprobe, a maker of chip-testing gear from a small town in Lombardy. Add up the other nine and you still don’t reach those two.

Is eleven a lot? Not really. France, Germany and the UK each have dozens. What makes the Italian list worth a closer look is how differently these companies got there, and what that means for anyone raising money here today. Full list first, then a quick profile of each, then the lessons.

New to all this? Read the beginner’s map first: it goes from zero to a first round. Keep the startup glossary in another tab for the jargon.

The full list of Italian unicorns in 2026

Company	Founded	Headquarters	Sector	Valuation*
Bending Spoons	2013	Milan	Software (apps)	$26B
Technoprobe	1993	Cernusco Lombardone	Semiconductors	$19B
Yoox Net-a-Porter	2000	Milan	Luxury e-commerce	$5.5B
Reply	1996	Turin	IT services	$3.9B
MutuiOnline Group	1999	Milan	Fintech	$1.9B
Domyn	2016	Milan	Artificial intelligence	$1.9B
Satispay	2013	Milan	Fintech (payments)	$1.8B
Namirial	2000	Senigallia	Digital trust software	$1.2B
Florence Group	2020	Milan	Luxury manufacturing	$1.1B
Prima	2014	Milan	Insurtech	$1.1B
Facile.it	2008	Milan	Price comparison	$1B

One caveat. Lists of unicorns never fully agree with each other. The Italian Tech Landscape report presented in Milan last April sets the bar at €1 billion and counts nine names, Scalapay among them at €1.1 billion. Dealroom no longer puts Scalapay above $1 billion.

The companies, one by one

Bending Spoons

Odds are you used one of its apps this week without knowing it. Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Meetup, even AOL: Bending Spoons owns them all, and its products get more than 500 million users a month. The playbook is buying apps with a loyal audience and rebuilding how they’re run. Founded in 2013, it started trading on Nasdaq as BSP on June 30, 2026, after an offering of about $1.68 billion.

Technoprobe

Outside the semiconductor world almost nobody knows the name. Technoprobe makes probe cards: think of them as extremely fine test instruments that tell a chipmaker whether a chip works before it’s cut from the wafer. Giuseppe Crippa got it going in Cernusco Lombardone, in the province of Lecco. Today it trades in Milan and ships to chip factories all over the world.

Yoox Net-a-Porter

Back in 2000, when hardly anyone in Italy bought clothes online, Yoox launched in Milan anyway. In 2015 it merged with Net-a-Porter from London, and the new group grew into one of the biggest names in online luxury.

Reply

Reply was born in Turin in 1996 and works as a federation of small, specialised consulting firms: cloud, data, AI and so on. It has been on the Italian stock exchange for years.

MutuiOnline Group

If you’ve compared mortgages or car insurance in Italy, you’ve probably met this group through MutuiOnline.it or Segugio.it. Behind the comparison sites there’s a large back-office business serving banks and insurers. Founded in Milan in 1999, it trades on Euronext Milan.

Domyn

Domyn used to be called iGenius. It makes AI systems for companies and public institutions that can’t send their data just anywhere, and it has been based in Milan since 2016.

Satispay

Satispay is the payment app you see on stickers at Italian bars and shops, pitched as a cheaper alternative to cards. Alberto Dalmasso, Dario Brignone and Samuele Pinta launched it in 2013.

Namirial

Namirial is the outlier on the map. It’s based in Senigallia, on the Adriatic, and sells e-signatures, digital identity and similar trust services to companies all over Europe.

Florence Group

Florence Group is a less obvious name: it owns Italian workshops that manufacture clothes for the big luxury houses. It was put together in 2020 and has grown mostly by buying family-run suppliers.

Prima

Prima sells car and motorbike insurance online, and since 2014 it has become one of the best-known digital insurers in the country.

Facile.it

Facile.it started in Milan in 2008 as a comparison site for insurance, energy, mortgages and phone deals. The private equity firm EQT controls it today.

What Italy’s unicorns have in common

• Milan, mostly. Eight of the eleven are headquartered in Milan. The exceptions are Technoprobe (near Lecco), Reply (Turin) and Namirial (Senigallia).
• Time. The median founding year is 2008. Only Florence Group, created in 2020, got there quickly, and it was assembled through acquisitions.
• Not the textbook path. Technoprobe, Reply and MutuiOnline are listed on the stock exchange, while Facile.it, Namirial and Florence Group are backed by private equity. Fewer than half of the eleven grew round after round on venture capital.
• Fintech leads. Four of the eleven are financial services businesses: MutuiOnline, Satispay, Prima and Facile.it.
• Customers abroad. The two biggest sell mostly outside Italy. Bending Spoons’ apps are used around the world, and Technoprobe’s customers are global chipmakers.

Why Italy has fewer unicorns than its neighbours

The short answer is capital. Italian venture capital invested about €1.7 billion in 2025, its second-best year on record, which is still a fraction of what founders can raise in France or Germany. We went through the numbers in our guide to raising capital in Italy.

What’s missing is the big late-stage money. Seed capital is there: business angels, accelerators, public programmes like Smart&Start Italia. But when a scale-up needs €50 million or more, the cheque usually comes from a foreign fund, and plenty of Italian founders end up raising abroad or selling sooner than they’d like.

What it means if you’re raising in Italy

1. Plan for a long game. Most of these companies needed ten years or more. Investors know it, and they will ask how you plan to get through the difficult middle years.
2. Think beyond Italy early. The biggest names here sell abroad. An Italy-only market can work, but you’ll need to show investors it’s large enough on its own.
3. Prepare like money is scarce. It is. With fewer rounds closing every year, the founders who get funded tend to show up with tidy numbers, a short deck and a precise plan for the money.

Frequently asked questions