How many investors are in Italy and where they are based
The AngelMatch database lists 900+ investors tagged to Italy. That's a smaller pool than France, Germany or Spain, and it's worth knowing that going in. You're not going to build a 300-name target list of relevant Italian investors the way you might in London or Paris. You're going to build a tight list of 40 to 80 and work it hard.
The bigger surprise is how concentrated the pool is. More than half of all Italian investors in the database sit in Milan, which is the finance capital and home to most of the country's venture funds and family offices. Rome is a distant second with 70+ investors, and Turin follows with 30+, many of them tied to the city's engineering and automotive roots. After that the list thins out fast across Florence, Bologna, Verona and Genoa, usually a handful of angels in each.
The practical takeaway is simple: if you're raising in Italy, you're mostly raising in Milan. Plan your in-person time there first, even if your company is based in the south or the northeast. Investors in Lombardy expect to meet founders in the city, and a lot of the smaller regional angel money still routes through Milan-based networks and funds.
Who the Italian investors are
Roughly two-thirds of the Italian investors in AngelMatch are tagged as angel investors. Most of them are operators and founders who exited, plus a meaningful group of executives from Italy's family-owned industrial companies. That last group is a distinctive feature of the Italian market. A lot of angel money in Italy comes from second and third generation owners of manufacturing, fashion and food businesses who want exposure to tech but invest as individuals rather than through a fund.
The venture capital and private equity tags each cover a few hundred investors, with heavy overlap between them. Many Italian records carry both labels because the same people sit on multi-stage funds that do both growth equity and early-stage deals. Don't read the tags as strict categories. Read the individual profile, look at what they've backed in the last two years and figure out whether they're writing seed checks or growth checks right now.
There's also a small group of investment banks, hedge funds and micro VCs in the Italian data, usually fewer than a few dozen of each. The micro VC group is small but active at pre-seed and seed, so it's worth filtering for them specifically if you're raising your first institutional round.
Which stages Italian investors back
Seed and early stage venture are the two biggest stage tags in the Italian data, with 250+ investors each. Together they cover the bulk of the investors who list a stage preference at all. Pre-seed is a much smaller group at 60+, and Series A is smaller still at 40+. Late stage venture and Series B each come in well under 20.
That shape matches what the market data shows. According to the Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance report for the first half of 2026, pre-seed and seed rounds made up 59% of all Italian rounds in the period but a small share of the money, while Series A and Series B and later rounds together took 68% of the capital while representing only 21% of transactions. In plain terms, Italy has plenty of investors willing to write your first check and far fewer willing to write your third one.
What that means for you depends on your stage. If you're at pre-seed or seed, the Italian angel base is deep enough that you should be able to fill a round locally, especially in Milan. If you're raising a Series A or later, plan from day one to include international investors in your list. The same reports note that every round above 20 million euros in 2025 had at least one international investor on the cap table, and 46% of all 2025 rounds involved an international participant, up from 24% in 2020. Italian funds increasingly co-invest with foreign leads at that stage rather than lead alone.
Which markets Italian investors favor
B2B is by far the most common market tag in the Italian data, with 500+ investors, followed by information technology and finance at 350+ each. Behind those, investment management, health care, consumer internet, renewable energy and manufacturing all sit in the 250+ range. That's a more industrial mix than you'll see in most European investor pools, and it reflects Italy's economy: lots of mid-sized manufacturers, a big energy transition story and a strong tradition of B2B software built for them.
Deal data lines up with the tags. In 2025, according to the Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance full-year report, software led Italian venture investment with 494 million euros raised, followed by life sciences at 417 million euros and deep tech at 269 million euros. Smart city was the most active category by number of rounds. Deep tech in particular has grown quickly, rising from around 5% of Italian VC investment in 2021 to over 11% in 2025 by the same source.
Use this to position your pitch. If you're building B2B software, health tech, energy or anything with a hardware or manufacturing angle, you're speaking to the core of the Italian investor base and you should say so early in your email. If you're building a pure consumer app, you'll find fewer natural fits in Italy and may want to widen your list to France and Spain from the start.
What's happening in Italian venture capital in 2025 and 2026
Italian venture had a strong 2025. The Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance report counted 1.735 billion euros invested across 436 rounds, making it the second-best year on record behind 2022 and the best ever if you strip out mega rounds. Almost all of that strength came in the fourth quarter, which saw 901 million euros invested and the return of ten rounds above 25 million euros after none in the first half of the year. Active investors hit a record 354 for the year.
Two caveats matter for a founder raising now. First, new fund formation slowed sharply: Italian VC funds raised 545 million euros across nine new funds in 2025, down from 1.447 billion euros in 2024, according to the same report. Funds raised in 2024 still have plenty to deploy, but the pace of new money coming into the system has cooled. Second, exits are still the weak point. The report counted 31 exits in 2025, almost all of them acquisitions, with the IPO market largely closed. Investors know this, and it shows up as a preference for capital-efficient companies that can be sold to a strategic buyer.
The first half of 2026 confirmed the pattern. Italian startups raised 813 million euros across 145 rounds, with fewer deals but bigger average round sizes, and the report tied the drop in early-stage deal count partly to the suspension of Italy's startup investment tax incentives. If you're raising a seed round in Italy this year, expect a more selective angel base than in 2024, and expect angels to ask more pointed questions about your path to a Series A.
How to approach investors in Italy
Start with Milan and work outward. More than half of your target list will be there, and Italian investors still lean heavily on in-person meetings and warm introductions. A cold email can open a door, but a cold email that mentions a shared connection or a specific portfolio company opens it much faster. Look at each investor's recent deals in their profile and reference one by name in your first two lines.
Respect the calendar. Italy effectively closes for most of August, and many investors are unreachable from the first week of August until after Ferragosto on the 15th, often until September. The last two weeks of December and the week around Easter are also slow. Time your outreach for late September through early December and from mid-January through June, and don't read silence in August as a no.
Write in English but expect to switch. Nearly all Italian VCs and most active angels operate comfortably in English, and your deck should be in English if you want international co-investors later. Meetings, though, often drift into Italian, and having at least one Italian speaker on your founding team is a real advantage with the angel and family-office segment.
Lead with the numbers Italian investors care about. Because exits are hard and IPOs are rare, Italian investors focus on capital efficiency and clear acquirer logic. Put your burn, your runway and your revenue trajectory in the first paragraph of your email, not the last. If you haven't worked those out yet, a runway calculator will give you the two or three figures you'll be asked for in every first meeting.
Run a real pipeline. With a target list of 40 to 80 investors and a market where the average deal takes several months, you'll lose track of follow-ups unless you log every conversation. Note who introduced you, what they asked for and when you promised to send it. A fundraising CRM is the simplest way to keep that straight across a raise that will likely span an Italian summer.
Next steps for founders raising in Italy
The Italian investor pool is small, concentrated in Milan and tilted toward B2B, industrial and health businesses at seed and early stage. Build a focused list from the 900+ investors above, filter by the stage and market that fit you, and prioritize the Milan-based names for your first round of outreach. When you're ready to send, use email outreach to track who opened and replied, then follow up with the international co-investors you'll need once you get past seed.
Milan investors
