Venture Capital, the Italian market grows by 32% and touches 1.5 billion

There is always a great deal of attention paid by economic analysts to the venture capital market, because investment figures are considered an indicator not only of the health of our economy, but also of its capacity and propensity for innovation and, hence, growth.

Well, looking at the numbers contained in the latest EY Venture Capital Barometer - EY's annual study analysing the trend of investments in Italian start-ups and scale-ups, which will be presented this afternoon in Milan - this propensity would seem to be steadily improving. In 2025, the Italian venture capital market in fact recorded total inflows of almost €1.5 billion (€1,488 million, to be precise), up 32% on the previous year, thanks mainly to large-scale operations. For the fifth consecutive year, Italian venture capital is therefore above the billion euro mark.

well, but not very well. In the sense that these values are certainly significant - and it is excellent news that in our country this market is growing steadily, while, for example, France and Germany are slowing down (-6.9% and -6.5% respectively). But the composition of this growth hides, in fact, a substantial stationarity of venture capital in Italy, as Marco Daviddi, managing partner EY-Parthenon in Italy, observes.

The increase is in fact largely driven by 'a limited number of large deals, while the market in the early and intermediate stages shows substantially stable trends over time,' notes Daviddi. In 2025, 238 investment rounds were closed, less than the 292 closed in 2024, although the average value of transactions still rose by 62%, from 3.9 million to 6.3 million. Data that, EY analysts explain, "highlight a trend towards consolidation towards larger deals and greater maturity in the Italian market". Five companies alone raised a total of around half of the resources, with Bending Spoons topping the list (EUR 233 million), followed by Exein (EUR 170 million, in two rounds in the same year), AAVantgarde Bio (EUR 122 million), NanoPhoria (EUR 83 million) and Generative Bionics (EUR 70 million).

"Italian venture capital is evolving towards a more selective and structured ecosystem, with more concentrated and larger operations, greater sectoral specialisation and a growing presence of international investors in the main rounds," observes Gianluca Galgano, Head of Venture and Startup at EY Italia. "This is a sign of maturation, but still partial. The challenge now is to transform this critical mass into a virtuous cycle of growth, strengthening the integration between industry, capital and innovation and increasing the system's ability to generate scaleups and industrial exits capable of retaining value in the country'.