About This Fund
CDP Venture Capital – Large Ventures Fund is a growth-stage venture capital fund managed by CDP Venture Capital SGR, the venture capital arm of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), Italy's national promotional institution. Launched in November 2022 with an initial first close of €150 million — fully subscribed by CDP Equity as cornerstone investor — the fund targets a total size of €700 million, representing the largest institutional late-stage venture capital initiative in Italy's history. CDP Equity's anchor commitment demonstrated the Italian government's strategic commitment to closing the significant gap between Italy's early-stage startup ecosystem and the international capital available to mature, scaling technology companies.
Large Ventures is designed to invest in Italian technology companies that have already achieved meaningful scale and are preparing for international expansion. The fund deploys minimum tickets of €10 million in Series B and Series C financing rounds with total round sizes exceeding €20 million, co-investing alongside other institutional venture partners to fund the most capital-intensive phase of a startup's growth trajectory. Capital-intensive sectors including DeepTech and BioTech are prioritised for Series A entry, recognising that these categories require significant runway capital earlier in their development cycle. The fund positions itself as the final institutional venture capital stage before IPO or strategic acquisition.
The creation of Large Ventures addresses a structural market failure in Italy, where the absence of late-stage domestic VC has historically forced Italian technology companies to seek growth funding from non-Italian investors — often resulting in re-domiciling and international management team restructuring. CDP Venture Capital SGR's platform manages a suite of complementary vehicles including the Accelerators Fund, the National Innovation Fund, and the Rilancio Fund, creating an integrated public VC infrastructure spanning the entire Italian startup lifecycle. Large Ventures represents the capstone of this architecture, targeting companies at their most critical inflection point between scale-up and global market leadership.