Milan and Rome-based Eureka! Venture today announces the launch of Eureka! Fund II – Deep Tech Lazio, a €20 million early-stage fund investing from PoC and pre-Seed through Seed and other early-stage rounds.
The fund is managed by Eureka! Venture, with Lazio Innova participating as an anchor investor with a commitment of €16 million under European funds PR Fesr 2021-2027.
“With our first fund, we demonstrated that Italy possesses proprietary technologies capable of meeting the needs of industry and the market, even at an international level. With Eureka! Fund II, we remain committed to this vision and, thanks to our partnership with Lazio Innova, we aim to attract new investors to DeepTech – a strategic asset class that is still under-represented in Italian investors’ portfolios.
“The new fund, in fact, features an innovative and unique mechanism for the asymmetric allocation of profits and losses to the benefit of private investors, which represents an important tool for reducing barriers to entry and, over time, helping to build a broader base of private capital dedicated to innovation,” says Stefano Peroncini, Chief Executive of Eureka! Venture SGR.
“Through our investment in Eureka! Venture, we are consolidating a investment model in Lazio that is specifically geared towards maximising the value of research and proprietary technologies, involving one of the leading national operators to be active in this field. The incorporation into the regional venture capital platform of specialist expertise in DeepTech and technology transfer processes not only expands the tools available to the regional ecosystem but also helps to create an increasingly effective link between research, business and the market,” adds Andrea Ciampalini, Director-General of Lazio Innova.
Founded in 2019, Eureka! Venture is an independent investment company focused on venture capital and private equity. It is supervised by the Bank of Italy and Consob and invests in startups and growing businesses.
“With Eureka! Fund II, we are taking a further step towards consolidating our investment focus on DeepTech and technology transfer, building on the experience gained with our first fund and broadening its scope to include strategic, high-potential technologies such as Physical AI.
“Lazio offers a particularly favourable environment, thanks to the quality of its scientific research, the presence of world-class technological expertise and a well-developed industrial base,” says Anna Amati, Partner at Eureka! Venture SGR.
The fund will look for promising startups across Italy. It will focus on companies that already have, or plan to build, an active presence in Lazio.
The goal is to help grow the regional startup ecosystem while bringing more technology, talent, businesses, and investment capital to Lazio.
