Top 10 Automotive Angel Investors in Italy in January 2026

Last updated: Jan 2026 A list of 10 angel investors that invest in Automotive startups based in Italy. We rank investors based on the number of investments they made in Automotive companies from Italy. We update this investor list every month.

Top 10 Automotive Angel Investors in Italy in January 2026

Investor	Automotive Italy investments
Francesco Starace	2
Marco Valta	2
Cristiano Esclapon	1
Marco De Nicola	1
Stefano Mezzadri	1
Teodoro D'Ambrosio	1
Michel Taride	1
Fabio Cannavale	1
Bhavik Bajaj	1
Alessandro Errico	1

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Graduated in Nuclear Engineering at Politecnico di Milano University in 1980, he hold several managerial positions during the Eighties: he was Safety Analyst at the nuclear power plants of NIRA Ansaldo (1981-1982), he worked as a manager at SAE SADELMI (company belonging to the General Electric network), in Italy and in foreign countries suchasUS, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (1982-1987).In 1987 he moved to ABB and in 1993 he was Operations Manager at SOIMI. He later was appointed CEO at ABB Combustion Engineering Italy in 1997, while between 1998 and 2000 he worked as senior vice president of global sales and turnkey plants in the gas turbine division.In 2000 Francesco Starace joined Enel, appointed Energy Management of Enel Produzione, becoming Head of Business Power Division for the three-year period between 2002 and 2005. In that same year, he became Enel Italian Market Division Director.He later was in charge of the Renewable Energy Division of Enel and CEO of Enel Green Power (2008-2014).From 2014 to 2023, Francesco Starace worked as General Manger as well as CEO of Enel and the year after became part of the United Nations Global Compact.Honoured with several prizes, he received in 2010 Agici and Accenture’s the "Manager Utilities Prize 2010", in 2011 the "Chess and business strategies" prize, in 2013 Fondazione Energia’s "Sustainable Energy Prize 2013" and finally in 2016 he received Staffetta Quotidiana’s “Man of The Year” award.

Investment focus

Automotive, Smart Home, Cloud Computing
Seed, Angel
Italy

Portfolio highlights

Atooma — Resonance AI is a key enabler to new generations of smart devices designed to:Listen to people's behavior across apps and devicesAct accordingly with the desired action in the right moment for a magic experienceAnalyze the patterns and get the most out of themIt provides a framework for cross-device interactions to brands and devicemanufacturers that needs their products to make the best of the Internet of Things layer potential. Most of the existing solutions for the Internet of Things provide strictly verticalized use cases, building ecosystems basically blind to any horizontal cross-device interaction. On the other hand, Atooma team is developing different SDKs for each of the main fragmented sectors of the IoT market, such as: automotive, home automation, wearables, and mobile devices. Also, as last step of integration within the platform, Atooma has developed a “suggestion engine” that makes use of the big data coming from user’s behavior monitoring, pro-actively suggesting them coherent and contextual use cases fitting their lifestyle, based on how they used the context-aware device.“Context awareness is not just a buzz word, we are building the fast track for the full participation in the contextual era for the internet of things players.” - Fabrizio Cialdea, CEO of Atooma

Marco Valta is an Entrepreneur and Investor with over 15 years experience in the tech/web industry. As an internet investor, Marco has a portfolio of more than 150 companies including Appnexus, Soldo, Revolut, Prima, Bolt, Flexport, Deliveroo, Space X, Brex, Fabfitfun, Cloudkitchens, Raya, Playco, Public, Coinbase, Pacaso.

Investment focus

E-Commerce, Internet, Marketplace
Seed, Series A, Secondary Market
United States, Germany, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Bolt — Bolt makes Ecommerce better with One-Click Checkout and CheckoutOS. See how Bolt checkout boosts your sales today.
Coinbase — Coinbase is an online platform for digital currency transactions, enabling merchants, consumers, and traders to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies. The company provides Bitcoin wallet services, allowing users to manage digital assets and conduct transactions. Coinbase offers merchant payment processing tools, supporting businesses in integratingcryptocurrency payments. It facilitates secure digital currency exchanges, assisting users in navigating blockchain-based financial transactions.
Salty. — Salty Dot, Inc. is the Embedded Insurance® technology company. Salty removes existing consumer impediments to buying the right policy and having the proper coverage. The company’s platform is a proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that enables carriers and distribution partners to offer a customized policy to insure a product orservice in real-time during the purchase process. Salty uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze unique data sources about the buyer and the purchase. It then sorts through multiple carriers to seamlessly offer the right insurance. Salty is licensed in all 50 states. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.wearesalty.com.

Cristiano Esclapon - Founding Team @ Siamosoci

Investment focus

Finance, Automotive, Smart Home
Angel, Series A
Italy

Portfolio highlights

Atooma — Resonance AI is a key enabler to new generations of smart devices designed to:Listen to people's behavior across apps and devicesAct accordingly with the desired action in the right moment for a magic experienceAnalyze the patterns and get the most out of themIt provides a framework for cross-device interactions to brands and devicemanufacturers that needs their products to make the best of the Internet of Things layer potential. Most of the existing solutions for the Internet of Things provide strictly verticalized use cases, building ecosystems basically blind to any horizontal cross-device interaction. On the other hand, Atooma team is developing different SDKs for each of the main fragmented sectors of the IoT market, such as: automotive, home automation, wearables, and mobile devices. Also, as last step of integration within the platform, Atooma has developed a “suggestion engine” that makes use of the big data coming from user’s behavior monitoring, pro-actively suggesting them coherent and contextual use cases fitting their lifestyle, based on how they used the context-aware device.“Context awareness is not just a buzz word, we are building the fast track for the full participation in the contextual era for the internet of things players.” - Fabrizio Cialdea, CEO of Atooma
Siamosoci — Siamosoci is the directory for italian start ups. Siamosoci srl Italy provides transparency to the market of italian start ups. the new companies can list in the directory including videos and multimedia support. they can include capital request for their own financing needs.Siamosoci srl Italy facilitate the matching between local investors andthe start ups.

Marco De Nicola

Investment focus

Automotive, Smart Home, Cloud Computing
Angel
Italy

Portfolio highlights

Atooma — Resonance AI is a key enabler to new generations of smart devices designed to:Listen to people's behavior across apps and devicesAct accordingly with the desired action in the right moment for a magic experienceAnalyze the patterns and get the most out of themIt provides a framework for cross-device interactions to brands and devicemanufacturers that needs their products to make the best of the Internet of Things layer potential. Most of the existing solutions for the Internet of Things provide strictly verticalized use cases, building ecosystems basically blind to any horizontal cross-device interaction. On the other hand, Atooma team is developing different SDKs for each of the main fragmented sectors of the IoT market, such as: automotive, home automation, wearables, and mobile devices. Also, as last step of integration within the platform, Atooma has developed a “suggestion engine” that makes use of the big data coming from user’s behavior monitoring, pro-actively suggesting them coherent and contextual use cases fitting their lifestyle, based on how they used the context-aware device.“Context awareness is not just a buzz word, we are building the fast track for the full participation in the contextual era for the internet of things players.” - Fabrizio Cialdea, CEO of Atooma

Stefano Mezzadri

Investment focus

Events, Battery, CleanTech
Pre-Seed
Italy, Denmark

Portfolio highlights

Tame — ABOUT With Tame you can fully customise your virtual events, and make them fun, engaging & exciting to attend.- Apply your branding: Customise your virtual event completely - Personalised Welcome: Personal welcome message when attendees enter - Multiple stages: Broadcast content across multiple stages. - Live streaming: Stream live via anybroadcasting software - Pre-recorded videos: Broadcast pre-recorded videos as if it was live - Breakout sessions: Enable public or private breakout sessions. - Virtual Sponsor booths: Allow attendees to engage with sponsors live. - Customise Chat: Allow for 1:1 chat, group chat or session chat. - 1:1 Video Meetings: Empower social networking virtually.OUR COMPANY We are an experience-centric company, and we believe in the power of great experiences.   Our international group of dreamers, creators and rule-breakers passionate about merging design and technology together, enables us to transform that into one truly amazing event platform.OUR PEOPLE The team behind Tame has an aggregated decades long experience of creating events and building products that solve real problems for real people. So, what got us here? Our ambition to change a broken event industry through innovation, customer obsession and a relentless focus on the great experience.
Reefilla — Reefilla EV charging services: recharge your car anywhere, anytime

Teodoro D'Ambrosio is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Biocentis. He previously worked at Hotelscan as a Co-Founder and Chairman. Teodoro D'Ambrosio attended the University of Trieste.