University spinouts, 1 billion endowment for hi-tech and life sciences

Italy's spinouts (i.e. start-ups born out of academic projects) still remain an emerging ecosystem, but if we take a look at medium-term data, we can see a clear acceleration. Since 2020, according to Dealroom, a platform of digital tools for private equity, more than 230 university spinouts of innovative technologies based on scientific discoveries and life sciences financed and supported by venture capital have been counted. They have raised nearly $1 billion ($948 million), of which more than a quarter, $250 million in 2025 alone. Compared to 2017, when the entire sector was raising around $30 million, there has been an eightfold multiplication of funding: it has now risen to $360 million and the valuation of the ecosystem's value is around $5.2 billion, with more than 75 per cent of the capital raised 2024.

The Italian picture is part of an international European context of great effervescence, as highlighted by the European Spinout Report of 2025, carried out by Atlantic VC, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Dealroom, MITO Technology, Northern Gritstone and Oxford Science Enterprises: the deep tech and life sciences start-ups born as spinouts from European universities have a total value of USD 399 billion and occupy an increasingly influential position in the technology ecosystem.

Leading the value creation of technology companies are the UK, Switzerland, France and Germany, while Belgium, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries generated significant value. In particular, there are four universities - none of which are Italian - that stand out in spinout value creation, namely Cambridge University, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and, finally, University College London (UCL), limited to the top five.

Coming to the present day, with more than 7,300 startups and more than 167,000 jobs created, Europe's deep tech and life science spinouts have already raised $7.9 billion in venture capital in 2025 alone and are likely to close the year with a €9.1 billion raise, up sharply from €8.9 billion in 2024. All of this means that, compared to 2019, i.e. compared to the period before the pandemic crisis, funding has more than doubled and projects born from universities and research centres now account for 40% of new deep tech and life science startups launched from 2019 onwards. "The European scientific ecosystem remains one of our most undervalued strategic assets," interprets Massimiliano Granieri, full professor of Comparative Private Law at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Brescia and president of MITO Technology, the only venture capital operator that is part of the consortium that produced the report. The opportunity today is "to transform this excellence into industrial scale and global competitiveness, ensuring that Europe succeeds in commercialising its innovations at home, instead of exporting ideas abroad," Granieri continues. "The data confirm the effectiveness of Italian institutional initiatives, from CDP Venture Capital resources, to Netval's Knowledgeshare platform, Invitalia's Smart & Start Italia calls, and MIMIT's UTT and Proof of Concept measures.

Returning to the Italian data, as mentioned, they show a still emerging ecosystem. When compared with the large continental benchmarks, the differential is still wide but not unbridgeable: France has over 830 spinouts with $7.5 billion raised by 2020 (more than $1 billion in 2025 alone) and $42 billion in aggregate value, while Germany has over 570 spinouts, $9.3 billion in funding from 2020 and $125.6 billion in enterprise value. Spain, which a few years ago was much closer to Italy, has already risen to 360 spinouts and $1.5 billion raised by 2020 and $10.5 billion aggregate value, with over $500 million raised by 2025. In absolute terms, Italy starts from a smaller base, but shows higher growth rates, with funding raising 8 times in a decade. The driving force is the very vertical specialisation on life science, with medtech and biotech in particular, and an accelerating deeptech, especially in technologies for decarbonisation and the intersection between industrial research and advanced manufacturing.