Angelini Ventures and EIB launch joint start-up financing

As part of the TechEU initiative, the EIB and Angelini will co-invest €150m in high-potential biotechnology, medical technology, and digital health start-ups.

Announced today at a press conference at Angelini Ventures’ headquarters in Rome, the initiative forms part of TechEU, the EIB Group’s investment programme to strengthen Europe’s innovation ecosystem and technological leadership. Through TechEU, the EIB Group plans to invest €70bn in equity, quasi-equity, loans, and guarantees between 2025 and 2027, aiming to mobilise €250bn in total investments.

The agreement reinforces Angelini Ventures’ position in the sector. Founded in 2022, the company received €300m from its Italian parent, Angelini Industries, of which €125m has already been invested in 22 start-ups.

“This important agreement with the EIB allows us to anchor our group’s commitment to innovation through venture capital within a strategic European framework,” said Sergio Marullo di Condojanni, CEO of Angelini Industries. “Being selected by the EIB for such an ambitious project—designed to strengthen Europe’s role in innovation and health—creates an opportunity to transform outstanding research into real products and services.”

According to Paolo Di Giorgio, CEO of Angelini Ventures, the joint initiative is “essential for accelerating market access for talent and innovative projects, facilitating strategic partnerships in the health sector, and offering scalable opportunities for investments and collaborators”—conditions he considers indispensable for the growth of European companies.

As a first step in the new partnership, Angelini Ventures and the EIB will invest in the second financing round of the French ADC specialist Adcytherix SAS.

Start-ups in Europe and Italy

The European Commission’s start-up and scale-up strategy aims to tackle what it sees as the two main barriers to start-up growth: the transition from research to market, and the leap from start-up to established business. The recently published European Spin-outs Report 2025 by Dealroom and five partners highlights gaps particularly in proof-of-concept financing before company formation and in late-stage financing exceeding €100m.

The EIB Group aims to accelerate the identification and financing of promising innovative companies in cooperation with corporate venture capital firms. Another objective is to stimulate a potential European IPO market, increasing the relevance of European stock exchanges and retaining more of the value created in Europe. According to the European Commission, this could be especially helpful, as nearly 30% of European unicorns left the EU between 2008 and 2021, and only 8% of global scale-ups are headquartered in Europe. The European Spin-outs Report 2025 also notes that 64% of exits occur in the US. Unlike the Commission, however, the report states that 2021 was the last major IPO year and that M&As have largely replaced IPOs as the main exit route since then.

Financing in the United States

In 2024, the United States recorded around 15,000 funding rounds worth €210bn, while Asia saw 11,000 rounds with an unspecified total volume, according to the Commission. Europe, by comparison, registered 10,000 rounds worth €57bn, with the number of deals decreasing by 16% compared with 2023 and the total volume falling by 8%. In the US, deal numbers rose by 4%, and total volume increased by 29% over the same period.

Venture capital investments in Italy, Angelini’s home base, reached €1.5bn across 417 rounds in 2024, according to the Venture Capital Report by Growth Capital, the Italian Tech Alliance, and CDP Venture Capital Sgr—an increase of 31% year-on-year. The Italian venture capital market focuses primarily on deeptech, software, and life sciences. In life sciences alone, €300m was invested across 62 rounds in 2024. A €12m investment in Serenis, co-led by Angelini Ventures, was one of the major deals of Q3 2025, recently surpassed by the €83m Series A of NanoPhoria Bioscience srl at the beginning of Q4.