- P101 SGR has partnered with seed investor PranaVentures in what is being described as Italy’s first venture capital integration agreement. Together, the two companies currently manage over €600 million in assets.
- The new platform supports startups at every stage, from pre-seed to international growth. This kind of integrated approach is still rare in European venture capital.
- PranaVentures founder Lisa Di Sevo says AI has reduced early-stage capital needs by up to 70%. This shift is changing seed investing and making scale even more important.
When Lisa Di Sebo launched PranaVentures in 2021 with around 40 million euros, the venture required a large initial investment to launch a technology startup. Four years later, this requirement has dropped significantly, she notes, with a significant impact on early-stage investments.
Di Sebo says artificial intelligence has reduced early-stage capital needs by up to 70% and accelerated execution by eight times. With this change, PranaVentures has partnered with P101 SGR to create the so-called Italy’s first VC integration deal and platform with over 600 million euros under management.
Why integrate and why now?
It may come as a surprise, but when AI lowers the cost of starting a company, investors who act quickly and offer more than just money will have an advantage. Supporting operations, subsequent funding, and a strong network will be just as important as the initial investment.
This trend is changing the European VC market. PitchBook’s Q1 2026 European Venture Report shows that while experienced managers are closing more funds than last year, new companies are seeing an 18.6% decline compared to 2025. Additionally, 35.3% of funds that closed in the first quarter were smaller than before, the highest in a decade. Investors now prefer larger, specialized funds, while smaller generalist funds are disappearing.
Italy’s venture capital scene has similar problems. In 2025, nine funds raised a total of approximately €400 million, down 13% year-on-year, while no fund raised more than €150 million. The report shows that local investors accounted for 71% of the capital, with European and North American investors accounting for 19% and 4% respectively. In this situation, a larger and more institutional platform needs to be built.
P101 SGR, I started Founded in 2013 by Andrea Di Camillo, it manages assets through nine investment vehicles. Over 12 years, he has made around 300 deals and 23 exits, investing around 250 million euros in more than 60 companies. Since 2021, PranaVentures, founded by Di Sebo with around 40 million euros in support, has built a portfolio of 20 companies and made more than 50 transactions, including three exits.
Post-merger, Di Sebo and Guido Giordano will lead the seed strategy and continue the company’s original approach.
“The integration of PranaVentures is a key milestone in P101’s growth strategy. It strengthens our position in seed investing and brings together our scale, expertise and international network to help build companies from inception to global expansion. The market is increasingly demanding stronger, more professional and well-capitalized platforms that can compete at European level.
€100 million fund for a new era of AI-driven startups
To implement the new model, the platform launched Prana101, a €100 million fund for pre-seed and seed investments in Italian and European technology startups. First closing is expected in late 2026. The fund is looking for founders working on artificial intelligence, next-generation digital infrastructure, business software or consumer software.
Di Sevo calls this focus the “new agent era.” This means AI systems that can handle multi-step tasks on their own.
If the target is achieved, the platform’s nine funds could manage a total of 700 million euros. Di Camillo also hopes to eventually manage more than 1 billion euros in assets.
The portfolio includes more than 80 active companies with revenues of approximately EUR 2 billion in 2025 and employing more than 5,500 people. P101’s investors include the European Investment Fund, Azimut, CDP, Compagnia di San Paolo, Banco BPM, Sella Direct Ventures, Unicredit Banca, Cassa Nazionale di Previdenza e Assistenza Forense, Enpam, Inarcassa, ISP Group Pension Fund and Italy’s top entrepreneurial families.
In a press release, Di Sebo was candid about why this moment requires a different approach, saying, “Artificial intelligence has fundamentally reshaped the economics of company formation, reducing capital requirements for early-stage startups by up to 70% and increasing execution speed by up to eight times. In this new environment, speed of decision-making and operational efficiency have become as important as access to capital.”
Italy’s structural gaps and the need for scale
Although the agreement is ambitious, Italy still faces major challenges. Despite being Europe’s fourth largest economy, per capita VC investment in 2025 will be just €127, the third lowest in Europe after Greece and Slovenia. France and Germany each raised nearly four times as much VC funding as Italy over the past decade.
In 2025, Italy will receive nearly 500 million euros in investments in AI and machine learning, more than double the 2024 level, but still far behind France’s 3.7 billion euros and Germany’s 3.3 billion euros.
During the growth period, the difference becomes even larger. In 2025, Italy hosted approximately 53 Series A rounds, but only 14 Series B rounds. This creates a bottleneck that prevents early-stage advances from growing into large European companies. The P101-PranaVentures platform aims to solve this problem by investing from pre-seed and staying involved into later rounds, rather than exiting with a Series A.
Seed investing in Europe remains highly competitive. Cross-border funds such as Speedinvest, Seedcamp and LocalGlobe have strong brands and large portfolios that domestic funds struggle to match. P101’s plan is to provide startups with practical technology, financial and market development assistance and additional follow-on funding. In this way, they hope to become a better option for Italian and European founders than funds that just offer money.
It is not yet clear whether this integrated model will work in other parts of Italy’s fragmented VC market. But smaller funds are under enormous pressure to grow and consolidate as European investors seek larger companies with a clear path to profitability.
The deal between P101 and PranaVentures may be the first of its kind in Italy, but it probably won’t be the last.
