Weekly update #115

Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market and the VC industry.

Builders is back! The latest episode was released last week! In this one, I sit down with Sir Gabriel Holbach, partner and CPO at 0TO9 | Bank of Entrepreneurship. You can find the full episodes here on YouTube, or here on Spotify and here on Apple Podcast, but here a short clip from the video:

Sir Gabriel Holbach is Partner & Chief Product Officer at 0TO9, where he helps founders turn early-stage ideas into scalable, user-centered fintech products. With over 13 years of experience in product design, UX strategy, and digital brand development across fintech, healthtech, and SaaS, he combines creative vision with operational precision.

Before joining 0TO9, Gabriel co-founded Penta (today Qonto ), one of Europe’s leading SME-focused digital banks, where he led product design from MVP to 50,000+ users. He built and scaled design teams, managed agile squads, and developed a cohesive user journey from onboarding to dashboard through a reusable design system. Later, at Index Health, he led UX strategy and design systems, improving product–market fit to 68% and reducing customer acquisition costs by 66%.

0TO9 is a fintech venture builder and investor aiming to launch 1,000 profitable European fintechs by 2045. Founded in Sweden in 2025, the company provides entrepreneurs with capital, compliance, talent, technical, and operational support needed to start and scale licensed financial companies in months rather than years.

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading a very interesting report from EY this week, the “EY Venture Capital Barometer 2025. The report is an overview on the Venture Capital ecosystem in Italy in terms of investments and number of deals, with a strong comparison on 2024 and with the major markets in Europe. Here my main takeaways:

Let’s start from cold numbers. Venture capital in Italy shows two key trends: rising average ticket sizes and growth in Series A and B rounds. The average deal value increased by 62%, from €3.9m to €6.3m, while Series B rounds recorded an annual growth of 83%. The ecosystem is increasingly attractive internationally, with at least one foreign investor participating in each of the five largest rounds. In 2025, the first half saw more rounds (132 vs 106), while the second half recorded significantly higher invested volumes (~€1.030bn vs ~€458m), driven by Bending Spoons (€233m), Exein (€170m), AAVantgarde Bio (€122m), NanoPhoria (€83m), and Generative Bionics (€70m).

The total amount invested in 2025 is €1.48 billion, with a +32% increase on 2024.

In 2025, investor interest remained concentrated on large rounds and strategic sectors already prioritised in 2024. Deep Tech recorded the strongest momentum, rising from third place in 2024 to first in 2025 and overtaking Health & Life Science, driven by increased investment in advanced industrial technologies, particularly robotics and cybersecurity. Health & Life Science confirmed its role as the second most dynamic sector. Activity was concentrated in the second half of the year. At a regional level, Northern Italy strengthened its lead with €1.171bn raised, driven by Lombardy (€932m) and Liguria (€93m). Lazio ranked second with €222m. Southern Italy saw an estimated year-on-year decline of ~37%.

The report also confirms Italy’s structural gap within the European venture capital landscape, despite the positive dynamics observed domestically. In 2025, Italy reached €1.5bn in VC investments, up from €1.1bn in 2024, but it remains significantly behind major European peers. The UK leads with €18.4bn, followed by Germany at €6.6bn and France at €6.3bn, all broadly stable or slightly down year on year, while Spain stands at €2.6bn, ahead of Italy but on a smaller scale. These figures suggest that Italy’s recent growth in ticket size and late-stage activity is meaningful, yet insufficient to close the gap with more mature ecosystems.

The data confirms that Italy is improving on a per-capita basis, but remains structurally behind major European peers. In 2025, venture capital investment per capita in Italy rose to €25 from €19 in 2024, equivalent to 0.07% of GDP. While this reflects a solid recovery, the gap with other ecosystems remains wide. The UK reached €265 per capita, equal to 0.55% of GDP, following a 42.4% increase, while Spain recorded the fastest growth at +60.9%, reaching €55 per capita. By contrast, Germany and France saw declines of 6.5% and 6.9% respectively. Overall, Italy’s trajectory is positive, but scale and capital intensity remain the key challenge.

Anyway, we saw some very interesting news last week.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days. Checkout.com secures a Georgia bank charter license, BitGo launches an IPO at $17 per share, Klarna launches P2P payments across 13 European markets and Revolut prepares a standalone launch for GlobalHire. But also, Polygon Labs acquires Coinme and Sequence, BVNK powers Visa direct stablecoin pilot and X introduces smart cashtag for real time crypto price tracker. Lot of movement in the VC ecosystem too! Rosberg Ventures closes a $100M fund II, Andreessen Horowitz closes $15B in new funds, but also e2vc, Somersault Ventures and PureTerra Ventures. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like VelaFi, Klearly, Monet, Whale, Wint Wealth, ARKK, Meld and many others.

But let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• PhotonPay raises Series B to scale stablecoin centric global payments infrastructure
• Quideos secures €5.2M to scale agricultural price hedging in Europe
• VelaFi raises $20M Series B to scale stablecoin infrastructure across LatAm
• Builders #36
• Klearly raises €12M Series A led by PayPal Ventures to scale hospitality payments
• Monet raises $24M Series A to expand formal credit access in Colombia
• BlackOpal secures $200M to tokenize Brazilian card receivables for institutional yield
• Deepgram raises $130M at $1.3B valuation, expands voice AI with strategic acquisition
• Onsetto raises $2.2M Seed to modernize business banking onboarding
• bluecopa raises $7.5M Series A to scale AI native finance operations globally
• Mal raises $230M to build the world’s first AI native islamic digital bank
• Alpaca raises $150M Series D at $1.15B valuation to scale global brokerage infrastructure
• Corgi raises $108M to build an AI native insurance carrier for startups
• Whale raises $4M Seed round to modernize rental security deposits
• Project Eleven raises a $20M Series A to build post quantum cryptography infrastructure backed by Coinbase
• WithCoverage raises $42M Series B to rebuild insurance brokerage with AI
• Parloa raises $350M Series D at $3B valuation as customer service AI accelerates
• Slate raises $1.3M pre-seed to embed lending directly into business platforms
• MagicCube, Inc. raises $10M to expand payments security into biometrics and identity
• Wint Wealth raises INR 250 Cr Series B to scale retail bond investing in India
• ARKK secures £4.5M follow on investment to scale RegTech platform
• Ripple commits $150M to LMAX Group in strategic push to converge TradFi and digital markets
• Meld raises $7M to scale global stablecoin and fiat infrastructure
• GrowthPal secures $2.6M to scale AI driven M&A deal sourcing

VC funds

• Rosberg Ventures closes $100M Fund III, passing $200M in AUM
• Andreessen Horowitz raises $15B, reaching $90B AUM
• e2vc reaches first close on €100M Fund III to double down on CEE early stage founders
• Somersault Ventures closes $20M Seed fund to target overlooked technical market
• PureTerra Ventures targets €150M for watertech Fund II with Invest-NL anchor commitment

News on the market

• X introduces smart cashtags for real time crypto and stock price tracking
• Checkout.com secures Georgia bank charter to accelerate U.S. expansion
• BitGo launches IPO with up to $17 per share target price
• Discord files confidentially for IPO, eyes $25B valuation in Q1 2026
• Razorpay prepares $500M IPO as Indian fintech market reopens
• Polygon Labs acquires Coinme and Sequence for $250M to build end-to-end stablecoin payments stack
• Klarna CEO supports Trump’s 10% credit card rate cap
• Apple selects Google Gemini to power next generation Siri AI
• BVNK powers Visa Direct stablecoin pilots across global payments network
• Klarna launches P2P payments across 13 European markets
• Ingenico and WalletConnect bring stablecoin checkout to physical retail
• Bankinter takes minority stake in Bit2Me as banks deepen crypto partnerships
• Revolut prepares standalone launch for GlobalHire employer of record platform

Italian market

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And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• FIBE | Berlin - 15th-16th April 2026 (Link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

New funds

I recently spoke with Marco Scotti from Raspberry Ventures. Thanks to their Y Combinator Alumni network, they unlock access to the top 10% of YC companies for Angel investors. Co-investing up to $3M across 15 - 25 companies in each YC batch, 4 batches a year, before Demo Day; and before the Silicon Valley VCs come in and take allocations in the best companies.

Their next batch YC W26m is closing February 1st, 2026. You can take a look here if you are interested!

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #114.