In 2022, total equity investments in Italian hi-tech startups reached a level of 2.1 billion euros, a value more than tripled compared to the 694 million quantified in 2019. Just twelve months after reaching the threshold of 1 billion euros in annual investments, the milestone of 2 billion euros in capital raised by formal, informal and international investors, is now recorded. The key data are emerging from the “Osservatorio Startup Hi-tech”, promoted by the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with InnovUp - Italian Innovation & Startup Ecosystem, now in its tenth edition.

More into detail, investments by formal players (independent VC funds, corporate CVC funds, and GVC funds) confirm their traditional leading role for the entire ecosystem, registering a 44 percent growth over 2021 to €731 million. The trend confirms the infrastructural role assumed by this sector, which, after ensuring the resilience of the ecosystem during the pandemic, is thus reconsolidating itself in 2022 as the pivot and accelerator of the entire ecosystem.

International funding has significantly determined the achievement of the two billion threshold of capital raised, with the value more than doubling from €435 million to over €1 billion (€1,029 million), and is now about half of the entire ecosystem. Startups, and especially scaleups, seem to be increasingly one of the preferred vehicles for attracting capital within Italy, an issue with which national policy-makers and institutions will have to continue to grapple continuously in the coming years.

"At a time when, due to inflation and geopolitical instability, the country is revising downward its growth estimates, startups are showing an opposite trend. A key boost in this direction, which promises to be long-lasting, has been provided by the more systemic and concrete intervention of institutional actors and the public and independent funds”, said Andrea Rangone, Scientific Director of the Osservatorio Hi-tech Startup.