Venture capital in Italy: how it works and who invests in 2026

In the first half of 2026, venture investors put €813 million into 145 Italian rounds. Divide one by the other and you get about €5.6 million a round, a figure that fits very few of them. Pre-seed and seed made up 59% of the rounds and raised roughly a fifth of the money.

This guide explains how venture capital in Italy works: where a fund’s money comes from, why funds ask for such big outcomes, how large the market really is, who invests here and how to tell whether a given fund fits your company. Newer to all this? The beginner’s map from zero to a first round comes first.

How does venture capital work?

A venture fund is a pot of money run by a management firm, with investors who can’t touch it for years. Those investors are the limited partners, or LPs, and in Italy they include public money: CDP Equity put €150 million into the first closing of the Large Ventures fund. The firm running the fund is the general partner, and it earns in two ways. A management fee keeps the lights on. A share of the profit, called carried interest, is the real prize.

Carta describes “two and twenty”, a 2% management fee and 20% carried interest, as a common model, with some managers asking up to 30%. It also notes that carry only arrives after the fund has first returned a minimum amount to its LPs.

Now the arithmetic, with an invented example. Say a fund has €50 million. Two per cent a year is €1 million to pay the team. The LPs want their money back and then some, say €150 million, three times the fund. If the fund owns 8% of a company when it’s sold, that one company would have to sell for about €1.9 billion to deliver all of it. Real funds spread the load over several winners, but you can see why a VC asks a question your bank never would: could this company be worth hundreds of millions?

Companies valued at more than $1 billion are called unicorns, and our list of Italian unicorns shows which ones got there.

The arithmetic also shapes the funnel. A survey of almost 900 venture capitalists, by Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev, found that the average firm screened 200 companies and made only four investments in a year. Only 10% of deals came inbound from company management. And 47% of the firms called the team the most important factor, with 95% counting it as an important one.

How big is the venture capital market in Italy?

Smaller than the headline totals suggest. And two reports count the same year differently, so here are both.

Count	Period	Invested	Rounds	Notes
Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance	2025	€1.735 billion	436	Second best year; 354 active investors, a record; 53 Series A and 14 Series B rounds; 31 M&A exits, no IPOs
Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance	H1 2026	€813 million	145	Q1: €411 million in 69 rounds; Q2: €402 million in 76 rounds
Venture Capital Monitor (LIUC, AIFI)	2025	€2.3 billion and over	419	Includes about €600 million in 32 deals by foreign companies founded by Italians; Italian startups alone: €1.6 billion in 313 operations

Strip out the foreign companies and the Monitor’s figure for Italian startups, €1.6 billion, lands close to Growth Capital’s €1.735 billion. That explains most of the gap.

More telling than the total is who gets it. Pre-seed and seed are the earliest, smallest rounds; Series A is usually the first large one from institutional funds. In H1 2026, pre-seed and seed made up 59% of the rounds but raised €172 million, about a fifth of the capital. Series A and later rounds were 21% of the deals and took 68% of the money. By our arithmetic that’s roughly €2 million on average for a pre-seed or seed round, and roughly €18 million for a Series A or later one.

For scale abroad, Carta’s data on US software rounds in the six months to July 2026 shows a median seed round of $4.1 million, with 18% dilution, and a median Series A of $14.4 million. The comparison isn’t one to one (medians for software against our averages for every sector), but it’s a reminder to size your ask against local numbers first.

Capital has a geography too. Lombardy hosted 99 of the companies backed in 2025, 48% of the market, with Lazio at 8% and Piedmont at 6%. And the funds themselves are thin on the ground: Italy saw nine new venture funds launched in 2025, raising €545 million in total, a clear drop on 2024, and three new funds raised €104 million in the first half of 2026.

Who invests in Italian startups?

Four kinds of investor write cheques to Italian startups. The firms below are examples, not a ranking or a recommendation. They’re named because their own websites show activity in 2026.

Public money. CDP Venture Capital, the venture manager of the CDP group, reports €4.9 billion under management across 15 funds, direct and indirect. Its Large Ventures fund, launched in 2022, set minimum tickets of €10 million for Series B or C rounds above €20 million. The mechanics are in our guide to CDP Venture Capital.

Independent Italian funds. United Ventures, in Milan, describes itself as an independent venture capital firm and invests in early-stage technology companies. P101, also in Milan, reports €500 million under management and 180 founders backed, and on 10 September 2026 announced that it was leading a €5.2 million round in Biorsaf. Italian Founders Fund, managed by Koinos Capital SGR, invests from pre-seed to Series A with initial tickets of €250,000 to €3 million.

Corporate and bank-group funds. Neva SGR belongs to the Intesa Sanpaolo Group and is based in Turin. At an event on 30 September 2026 it said it had raised €600 million across six funds and invested €273 million in more than 50 companies. Across the market, the Monitor says corporate investors took part in about a quarter of the rounds, as lead or co-investor.

International funds. Foreign money is a growing slice: international participation reached 46% in 2025, up from 24% in 2020. Every round above €20 million had at least one foreign investor. A recent case is Complaion, an Italian company, which announced a €13.5 million Series A in September 2026, co-led by Eurazeo and Italian Founders Fund.

Business angels and accelerators come earlier in the chain. Our guide to business angels in Italy covers the first group.

How do you know if a VC fund fits your startup?

Start with the one thing a fund can’t change: its size. Italian Founders Fund states initial tickets of €250,000 to €3 million. CDP’s accelerator fund backs pre-seed startups with €70,000 to €200,000. Large Ventures set its floor at €10 million, so a €500,000 round was never its game, however good the company.

1. Does the fund write first cheques at your stage, or only follow-ons?
2. Is your round inside its cheque range? Many funds say so on their website.
3. Sector: judge it from the last five investments, not from the slogan on the homepage.
4. Is it still active? United Ventures, P101 and Italian Founders Fund all post dated news, and that’s the signal to look for.
5. Some funds lead rounds, others co-invest. The lead investor sets the terms, so find out who that will be.

Then cut the list. Only 10% of the deals in that survey started with company management getting in touch. That doesn’t make cold approaches hopeless, but it does mean a short, researched list beats a long generic one. Our guide on how to find investors for a startup shows how to build it, and how to raise capital for a startup in Italy puts VC next to the other sources.

A slice of the company goes with the money, too. Carta puts median dilution in US software rounds at 18% at seed and 18% at Series A. Want a feel for your own number? Start with our piece on how much equity to give away at pre-seed and seed.

Your checklist before you contact a fund

• Pin your round down: how much, in what valuation range, and what the money must achieve before the next raise.
• Shortlist ten funds whose stage, cheque and sector match.
• Read each one’s latest three announcements.
• Work out how much of the company the round would sell.
• Get the deck, the model and a data room ready before the first call.
• Decide who on the team does the talking.

This article is general information, not investment, legal or tax advice. Fund terms and market data change: check each fund’s own pages before you write to it.