Italy draws global tech investors as Europe races to build its own champions

The Bologna Gathering brought 500 investors, founders and corporate leaders to Emilia-Romagna, with attending funds managing more than €50bn and participating start-ups having raised more than €1.2bn

Italy’s start-up scene is drawing a new wave of international investor attention as Europe tries to build its own technology champions in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, space, defence and sovereign cloud.

More than 500 venture capital, corporate and technology leaders from Europe, the Americas and Asia gathered in Bologna this week for the fourth edition of The Bologna Gathering.

Attending funds had more than €50bn in assets under management, up from €39bn at last year’s event, while participating start-ups and scale-ups had raised more than €1.2bn.

The invitation-only event, which took place on May 11 and 12, was designed to connect global investors with founders, major corporates and emerging European technology companies across more than 15 sectors.

It came as Italy recorded one of its strongest recent quarters for venture capital activity. 

According to PitchBook’s Q1 2026 Italy Market Snapshot, the country recorded 225 VC funding rounds in the first quarter of 2026 – 80 per cent more than the same period last year and the highest quarterly figure of the past decade.

The gathering was held as Europe intensifies efforts to reduce reliance on non-European technology in strategic sectors, from AI and cybersecurity to autonomous driving and cloud infrastructure.

Bologna and the Emilia-Romagna region used the event to position themselves as a platform for that wider European push, helped by assets such as the DAMA Technopole, home to Leonardo, one of the world’s ten most powerful AI supercomputers, and the IT4LIA AI Factory.

The event took place across venues including Bologna Business School, the Ducati Museum, BI-REX, Palazzo Magnani, DAMA Technopole and Palazzo Re Enzo.

Several participating companies raised large rounds in recent months. Axelera AI, a Dutch scale-up of Italian origin specialising in artificial intelligence, raised $250m in February 2026. Exein, an Italian cybersecurity scale-up, raised €70m and €100m in what the organisers describe as Italy’s record double round in 2025.

Niulinx, an autonomous driving start-up, raised €38m in April 2026, described by organisers as the largest European seed round recorded in the sector. Smartness, an AI hospitality start-up, closed a €47m Series B round in May 2026, while humanoid robotics start-up Generative Bionics closed a €70m round in December 2025.

The investor line-up included LocalGlobe and Phoenix Court co-founder Saul Klein, CDP Venture Capital chief executive Emanuele Levi, White Star Capital, BlackRock, Woven Capital, ETF Partners, DTCP, Hitachi Ventures and Eurazeo.

Major corporates attending included SAP, Leonardo, Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking, Scaleway, Klarna, Lamborghini, Fastweb + Vodafone, Zanichelli, Mitsubishi Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ducati and Ferrari.

Marina Silverii, executive director of ART-ER, said: “ART-ER is among the founders of The Bologna Gathering because the event represents a unique opportunity to connect Emilia-Romagna’s innovation ecosystem with the most advanced international networks in venture capital and technology.

“Our objective is to strengthen the region’s positioning as a strategic hub for European technological sovereignty, attracting talent, investment, and high-impact projects.”

She said ART-ER had also launched the first edition of R2I Research to Innovate Italy alongside The Bologna Gathering, with the aim of putting regional innovation ecosystems at the heart of national and European policy.

Matteo Lepore, Mayor of the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Bologna, added: “Bologna is increasingly establishing itself as a European point of reference for innovation and emerging technologies.

“The Bologna Gathering is a concrete opportunity to connect talent, capital, and businesses, strengthening the role of our city and Emilia-Romagna as a strategic platform for the development of a competitive technology ecosystem that is open to the world.”

He added: “In a complex global context, investing in research, artificial intelligence, and new businesses means building Europe’s future starting from our regions, and Bologna is ready to play its part with vision and responsibility.”

The programme included European Commissioner for Start-ups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva, ART-ER president Francesca Bria, Emilia-Romagna president Michele de Pascale, technology policy expert Alec Ross, CINECA president Francesco Ubertini, Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali, SAP global private markets managing director Frédéric Pascal and BlackRock executive director Xixi Richter.

Stefano Onofri and Alessandro Cillario, originators of the event and co-founders of Cubbit, said: “Never before has Europe asked itself so urgently how to turn the continent’s new technology companies into global champions.

“At a time when tech made in Europe will become increasingly strategic, Italy must play a central role in this journey.

“The Bologna Gathering was created precisely to connect the best international investors with the best Italian companies, creating, through a private, relationship-driven format, the conditions for the best of our ecosystem to grow with European and global ambition.”

READ MORE: Is Europe regulating the future or forgetting to build it? The hidden flaw in digital sovereignty. As Europe builds on the GDPR and AI Act, the next frontier lies beyond rulebooks and penalties, writes Vendan Kumararajah, who argues that digital sovereignty will endure only if governance, legitimacy and distortion detection are engineered directly into the architecture of AI systems themselves, rather than imposed from outside through compliance alone.

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_{Main image: Courtesy, Cubbit}