• Vento has launched a €75 million fund to support Italian founders regardless of where they're located.
  • The fund is chaired by John Elkann of the Fiat/Agnelli family and includes tech veterans on its investment committee.
  • Italy's tech ecosystem has grown significantly, with VC investment more than tripling over the past five years.

Vento, one of Italy's most active early-stage venture capital firms, has announced its second fund with a €75 million hard cap specifically targeting Italian startup founders both at home and abroad.

The sector-agnostic fund aims to replicate a strategy previously pioneered by firms like Paris-based Kima Ventures, investing in entrepreneurs from a specific country regardless of where they're based.

This approach has historically helped repatriate entrepreneurial mindsets and accelerate ecosystem development.

Vento has strong connections to Italian tech royalty, with John Elkann serving as chairman. Elkann is also chairman of Stellantis (Fiat's parent company) and Exor (the Agnelli family holding company that controls Fiat).

The fund emerged from the organizers of Italian Tech Week, an annual event in Turin that has hosted tech luminaries including Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk.

"Italy is quite behind compared to other European countries, but we think the trajectory is the same as the others," said Diyala D'Aveni, CEO of Vento. "The fact that there are not many success stories in Italy is kind of preventing the ecosystem from growing."

The fund's investment committee features industry veterans including Diego Piacentini, Mike Volpi (formerly of Index Ventures), and Jean de La Rochebrochard, who ironically recently joined Kima Ventures, the very firm Vento seeks to emulate.

Vento has already invested in 100 startups including Bee, JetHR, and Qomodo. Fund II plans to make 375 investments over five years with standardized €150,000 ticket sizes and some follow-on investments.

Despite Italy's historically less favorable company law for startups compared to the UK or US, Elkann remains optimistic: "Italy is making significant strides to become increasingly competitive in the international technology landscape, and we are confident that soon these regulatory differences between countries will become less and less relevant."

There are signs of progress in Italy's tech scene. According to Dealroom data, venture capital investment in Italian startups reached $5.72 billion across the last five years (2020-2024), more than triple the $1.7 billion invested in the previous five-year period.

D'Aveni emphasized that Vento is already building international connections through "micro-communities of Italians in New York, London, Berlin, and Paris," who are helping source deals from Italian founders abroad.

Edited by Annette George