Vento Research
Investment Thesis
Vento is the Italian venture-building and early-stage investment arm of Exor Ventures, the venture platform of Exor N.V. (the Agnelli family's Dutch holding company, whose other holdings include Stellantis, Ferrari, and Juventus). Vento's core thesis is that Italy's technical and entrepreneurial talent is structurally underserved by domestic risk capital: as CEO Diyala D'Aveni has put it, "there's no lack of capital, it's a lack of companies" with the ambition and track record to attract it. Vento's answer is to write small, standardized, fast checks to founders with at least one Italian co-founder — whether they build in Turin, Milan, London, Berlin, Paris, or New York — and pair capital with a structured venture-building program to manufacture additional deal flow from scratch. The firm is explicitly sector-agnostic: it will fund almost any technology vertical as long as the founding team and market opportunity are strong.
Sector Focus
Vento does not restrict itself to a narrow thesis vertical. Across its portfolio, publicly reported sector weightings are: software/SaaS/marketplaces (~35%), health tech and biotech (~20%), fintech (~10%), deeptech (~10%), and spacetech/proptech (~5% each). Other sectors cited as active areas of interest include AI, consumer, climate, edtech, and mobility/food-agtech. In practice this reads as a generalist early-stage fund with a soft lean toward enterprise software and healthcare.
Stage Focus
Vento invests almost exclusively at pre-seed, seed, and "seed-plus." It positions itself as a founder's first or near-first institutional check, with a standardized initial ticket rather than a negotiated range.
Check Size
The signature product is a standardized €150,000 initial investment, with the ability to follow on for up to €1,000,000 into the strongest portfolio companies as they progress. This standardization is deliberate — it lets Vento commit capital in an average of five days from first conversation, which the firm treats as a competitive advantage versus slower-moving funds.
Lead Tendency
Public reporting does not clearly establish whether Vento typically leads priced rounds; given the modest, standardized ticket size, it more often appears to participate alongside other pre-seed/seed investors rather than anchor larger rounds. Treated as unknown pending clearer evidence.
Recent Activity
Vento's first fund (launched 2022) backed roughly 60 startups in its first two years, reviewing 2,400+ applications along the way. In March 2025, Vento announced a hard-capped €75 million Fund II, whose sole LP is Exor. Fund II is explicitly built to make 375 investments in Italian founders over five years. Around the same announcement, John Elkann — chairman of Stellantis and of Exor — was named chairman of Vento. Early Fund II deals reported in the press include Aquila, Excellence, Lexroom, and Wayd, though specific investment dates, round sizes, and roles were not independently confirmed. Portfolio company Jet HR raised a €12 million seed round in September 2024 to expand its Italian payroll-automation product.
Portfolio Highlights
Vento has backed 100+ startups since 2022. Named portfolio companies include Jet HR (Milan-based payroll and HR-automation platform, jethr.com), Bee, Qomodo, Aquila, Excellence, Lexroom, and Wayd. Roughly 30% of founders across the portfolio are women, a figure the firm and press repeatedly note as well above industry norms.
Team
- John Elkann — Chairman of Vento; also chairman of Exor and Stellantis.
- Diyala D'Aveni — CEO / Head of Investments & Venture Building at Vento.
- Diego Piacentini — Investment Committee member; formerly a senior Amazon executive.
- Mike Volpi — Investment Committee member; formerly of Index Ventures.
- Jean de La Rochebrochard — Investment Committee member.
- Martina Vinci — Venture Originator, Turin.
Third-party data providers describe Vento's broader team as roughly 13 people (partners, venture partners, and principals) spread across Italy, the UK, and other locations, though most individual names beyond the above were not independently confirmed.
Decision Process
Vento operates with a named Investment Committee (Piacentini, Volpi, de La Rochebrochard) alongside D'Aveni and Elkann, consistent with an investment-committee-style decision process rather than a solo-GP model. Reported decision speed is fast — an average of five days from first meeting to a funding decision.
Founder Preferences
The one hard filter is founder nationality/origin: at least one Italian co-founder is required, regardless of where the company is headquartered or incorporated. Beyond that, Vento says it looks for "exceptional founders with disruptive ventures" rather than a specific pedigree or sector background.
Geographic Focus
Vento is headquartered in Turin, Italy, and is closely tied to Italian Tech Week (Turin) and the OGR Torino innovation campus. Its investment mandate is geography-independent for the company itself — it explicitly targets Italian founders building anywhere in the world — but the firm maintains active networks and sourcing relationships in New York, London, Berlin, and Paris to reach the Italian diaspora founder community.
Venture Building
Beyond direct investing, Vento runs a five-month venture-building program (publicly branded "Reef" in its most recent edition) that recruits cohorts of "talent" (aspiring founders without a company yet), several dozen per cohort, and helps them form and launch new startups, several of which go on to receive Vento's standard pre-seed check. The program is run in partnership with Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and hosted at OGR Torino. Vento is also associated with Wave, a large European tech event tied to the Italian Tech Week ecosystem.