The European Investment Bank (EIB) and Angelini Ventures have signed an agreement to provide a total of €150m in financing for European biotechnology, medtech and digital health startups.
Angelini Ventures is Angelini Industries’ corporate venture capital fund.
This is the first agreement the EIB has signed with a corporate venture capital in the healthcare sector and states that Angelini Ventures and the EIB will each invest €75m in the next six years.
Under the agreement, the EIB and Angelini aim to co-invest in seven to ten European startups developing innovative solutions particularly suited for market launch, in areas such as biotechnology, medical technology and digital health.
“Initiatives such as this strengthen Europe’s ability to lead technological innovation and generate tangible benefits for people, patients and businesses,” said EIB Vice-President Gelsomina Vigliotti.
“Investing in biotechnology, medtech and digital health is vital, as it accelerates research, improves the quality of care and supports the growth of companies able to bring cutting-edge solutions to market.”
Presented at the Angelini Ventures head office in Rome today, the initiative is aligned with TechEU, the EIB Group’s investment programme to strengthen the growth of innovation and technological leadership in Europe.
Via TechEU, the EIB Group aims to invest €70bn in equity, quasi-equity, loans and guarantees during the three years from 2025 to 2027, to mobilise €250bn of investment in the real economy.
The agreement also strengthens Angelini Ventures’ position in the sector.
Founded in 2022 with €300m from Angelini Industries (an Italian multinational in the health, industrial technology and consumer goods sectors), the company has already invested €125m in 22 startups.
“This important agreement with the EIB enables us to bring our group’s commitment to innovation through venture capital to a European strategic context,” said Angelini Industries CEO Sergio Marullo di Condojanni.
“Being chosen by the EIB for an ambitious project aiming to consolidate Europe’s role in innovation and health is an opportunity to work towards the common goal of turning researchers’ excellent ideas into products and services with a positive impact on people’s lives and the economic development of European countries.”
“The agreement with the EIB is a key step in strengthening our international presence and global vision,” explained Angelini Ventures CEO Paolo Di Giorgio.
“This development path is essential to accelerating market access for talent and for innovative projects, facilitating strategic partnerships in health and offering scaling opportunities for investments and partners."
"These elements are fundamental to speeding up growth and creating value in the healthcare and biotechnology sector, promoting European innovation, competitiveness and social impact on an international level.”
As a first step in the new partnership, Angelini Ventures and the EIB intend to co-invest in the second financing round of Adcytherix, a French biopharmaceutical company that develops innovative ADCs (Antibody-Drug Conjugates), with the investment agreement currently being finalised.
These targeted therapies combine antibodies with next-gen cytotoxic payloads to enhance precision, reduce toxicity and address resistance to current treatments.
The first round, which closed in October of this year, was led by Bpifrance through its Large Venture and InnoBio investment strategies and co-led by Kurma Partners, Andera Partners and Angelini Ventures.
Startups in Europe and Italy
The European Commission Startup and Scale Up Strategy aims to more effectively overcome the two main obstacles that startups face as they grow: the transition from research to development to the market and the leap from startup to established company.
In this domain, the work of the European Investment Bank Group (EIB Group) with corporate venture capital companies helps to facilitate the identification and financing of innovative businesses, with the potential to accelerate the growth, scalability and competitiveness of European startups via greater availability of capital.
Another goal is to stimulate a potential European initial public offering (IPO) market, which would help increase the business relevance of European stock exchanges and help to keep value generated within Europe, in Europe.
This could be a particularly useful tool, given that, as the European Commission states in The EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy Choose Europe to start and scale, almost 30% of European unicorn companies moved outside the European Union between 2008 and 2021 and only eight per cent of global scale-ups are based in Europe.