Proxima Fusion, nuclear fusion, stellarator technology, Italian founders and CDP Venture Capital anchor this episode on Europe's largest fusion round ever: €411M at a €2.4 billion valuation. The Max Planck Institute spin-out is headquartered in Munich, will likely build its first plant in Bavaria, and counts Google, RWE, KfW Capital, SPRIND and quant-finance investors among ~21 backers — with Italy's CDP re-upping as a returning investor. A €2.4B valuation for a company with zero revenue and a demonstrator by 2030 means fusion has been re-priced from science risk to execution risk. Italy is hedging the race across competing technologies: CDP backs Proxima's stellarator while Eni has been one of the largest investors in Commonwealth Fusion Systems' tokamak since 2018. Then Young Platform, the Italian crypto exchange, raises €22.5M in a growth round from Azimut — a bet on regulation rather than hype, with MiCAR authorization covering 8 of 10 crypto services, first in Italy by breadth, in a market that has clearly cooled off. Finally, Primo Capital launches Primo Space Fund 2 with a €120M target for space technology and dual-use applications, €70M+ in expressions of interest before first close and Roberto Battiston advising. The through-line: Italy didn't miss the fusion race — it paid to be on the sidelines.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

Italian startup funding, venture capital, D-Orbit, Satispay, WeRoad, CDP and the dealflowit H1 2026 data anchor this episode on why Italy's ~€730M half-year is concentration, not depth. The top three rounds account for roughly 40% of the total and the top five for about 60%, so stripping out the breakouts leaves an ordinary half. The most active investor isn't a private VC — it's CDP, the state, with 91 investments — while business angels stay busy at pre-seed and the biggest checks at the top come increasingly from foreign players like Airbnb, which led WeRoad. We put €730M in context: it's roughly half Italy's ~€1.5–1.6B annual ceiling, and 2025 leaned on an exceptional ~€800M fourth quarter, so the back half of 2026 has a steep bar. We also note that only one top name, Lexroom, is AI-native, and that rising average round sizes (Series C near €46M) signal a maturing but still-shallow market. Then MDOTM: a $27M growth round from Expedition Growth Capital, with its Sphere platform already touching $100B+ in assets across 60+ institutions including Morgan Stanley, Amundi and Zurich Bank. Finally Alia Mentis, a 2012 advanced-composites maker, debuts on Euronext Growth Milan up 35% on day one, oversubscribed, on about €15M revenue and €8.5M EBITDA — a 58% margin — with a founder who kept 67% after a mostly bootstrapped path. The through-line: Italy didn't have a record half-year — three companies did.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup

Anthropic's Founder's Playbook argues startups will fail MORE as AI shrinks idea-to-product from months to a weekend, removing the forced question every founder used to answer: does anyone want this? The 42% of startups that die building what nobody wants is set to climb, so the real test moves from "can you build it?" to "should you build it?" We get into AI-driven confirmation bias — how it constructs a fundable-looking case for a bad idea — and why a prototype is now just a prop for real user conversations. Diligence shifts from artifact quality to evidence of demand: retention, repeat usage, actual usage. We cover why the moat moves to workflow lock-in and proprietary data, why the next elite founder is an AI architect rather than the best coder, and whether the seed round is quietly losing its old rationale. Then two Italian deep-tech seed rounds: X-nano's €3.7M for synthetic graphite for lithium-ion batteries, and Rainbow Crops' €9.7M for AI-powered crop engineering. Closing on Niccolò's newsletter hitting its 300th issue.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: giacomo@in3.ventures#venturecapital #italy #startup