Milan and Rome-based Eureka! Venture today announces the launch of Eureka! Fund II – Deep Tech Lazio, a €20 million early-stage fund investing from PoC and pre-Seed through Seed and other early-stage rounds.
The fund is managed by Eureka! Venture, with Lazio Innova participating as an anchor investor with a commitment of €16 million under European funds PR Fesr 2021-2027.
“With our first fund, we demonstrated that Italy possesses proprietary technologies capable of meeting the needs of industry and the market, even at an international level. With Eureka! Fund II, we remain committed to this vision and, thanks to our partnership with Lazio Innova, we aim to attract new investors to DeepTech – a strategic asset class that is still under-represented in Italian investors’ portfolios.
“The new fund, in fact, features an innovative and unique mechanism for the asymmetric allocation of profits and losses to the benefit of private investors, which represents an important tool for reducing barriers to entry and, over time, helping to build a broader base of private capital dedicated to innovation,” says Stefano Peroncini, Chief Executive of Eureka! Venture SGR.
Eureka! Fund II enters a European DeepTech market that has seen continued investment activity in 2026, including several financings in Italy.
EU-Startups has reported €3.6 million for Puglia-based Physical AI startup Mirai Robotics, €5 million for Pisa-based Wearable Robotics, €14 million for Milan-based seismic technology company ISAAC, €11.8 million for critical-materials specialist Circular Materials and €5 million for Turin-based wireless-power startup ORiS.
In Lazio itself, Rome-based Physical AI cybersecurity company Exein announced a substantially later-stage €234 million financing in September.
Elsewhere in Europe, Barcelona-based industrial robotics company THEKER raised €73 million, Finland’s Hyperion Robotics secured €6.4 million for Physical AI infrastructure technology, Germany’s alqem raised €8 million for AI-enabled materials discovery and Zürich-based ZuriQ secured €22.4 million for quantum processors.
Together, these 2026 startup financings amount to approximately €383 million.
On the fund side, EU-Startups has also seen 360 Capital’s €85 million first closing of Poli360 2, an Italy-focused DeepTech technology-transfer fund, and Elaia’s €134 million DeepTech Seed fund.
Eureka! Venture itself has previously appeared in EU-Startups coverage through investments by Eureka! Fund I in companies such as Astradyne’s €2 million raise in 2025, giving the new €20 million Lazio vehicle continuity with its earlier technology-transfer activity.
“Through our investment in Eureka! Venture, we are consolidating a investment model in Lazio that is specifically geared towards maximising the value of research and proprietary technologies, involving one of the leading national operators to be active in this field. The incorporation into the regional venture capital platform of specialist expertise in DeepTech and technology transfer processes not only expands the tools available to the regional ecosystem but also helps to create an increasingly effective link between research, business and the market,” adds Andrea Ciampalini, Director-General of Lazio Innova.
Founded in 2019, Eureka! Venture is an independent asset management company, supervised by the Bank of Italy and Consob, specialising in venture capital and private equity investments.
To date, the company has raised over €190 million through:
- Eureka! Fund I – Technology Transfer, dedicated to technology transfer in the advanced materials sector in collaboration with universities and scientific research centres
- BlackSheep Fund, focused on software technologies for the marketing and advertising industry
- Eureka! Fund II – Deep Tech Lazio, dedicated to DeepTech
- Z_One Fund, focused on AI and UrbanTech
- ETA Fund, dedicated to SMEs through the search fund model
Eureka! Fund II – Deep Tech Lazio operates as the successor fund to Eureka! Fund I – Technology Transfer, launched in 2020. The new Fund builds on the experience gained by Eureka! Venture in investing in proprietary technologies with a high scientific and technological content, broadening its scope of investment.
The Fund will invest in the early and development stages of spin-offs, startups and innovative SMEs, with a particular focus on industrial validation, industrialisation and growth.
The strategy prioritises proprietary technologies, intellectual property, scientific know-how and solutions – both hardware and software – characterised by high technological barriers to entry, with the aim of supporting companies capable of developing innovative products and processes, expanding into international markets and contributing to European technological competitiveness.
The Fund will invest in strategic and priority areas such as climate change and the energy transition, sustainability and the circular economy, industry and advanced manufacturing, mobility, infrastructure and logistics, security and defence, the silver age and longevity.
The investment policy also encompasses STEP Technologies, in line with the European objective of strengthening competitiveness, resilience and strategic autonomy in technologies deemed critical, with a particular focus, amongst others, on advanced manufacturing and robotics, AI & Physical AI, quantum technologies and materials science.
“With Eureka! Fund II, we are taking a further step towards consolidating our investment focus on DeepTech and technology transfer, building on the experience gained with our first fund and broadening its scope to include strategic, high-potential technologies such as Physical AI.
“Lazio offers a particularly favourable environment, thanks to the quality of its scientific research, the presence of world-class technological expertise and a well-developed industrial base,” says Anna Amati, Partner at Eureka! Venture SGR.
The Fund will also carry out scouting activities at a national level, focusing its investments on companies that have, or intend to develop, an active presence in Lazio, with the aim of contributing to the growth of the regional ecosystem and, at the same time, attracting technology, expertise, businesses and capital to the region.