Domyn, Europe's largest AI round, is mostly debt: $1.1B raised, roughly 90% of it borrowed against 6,000 Nvidia chips in southern Italy, leaving an equity cheque of about $110M. That structure is the episode. A deal that began as a substantial Series A in 2024–25 became infrastructure financing, and Niccolò Sanarico's read is blunt: this is not pure-play venture capital, it is another beast. From there we split AI sovereignty into its real layers — where data sits, who controls the model, who operates the system, and who supplies replacement hardware — with Domyn as the hybrid case, training locally on a supply chain it does not own. We test the commercial question underneath: is there a market for companies that want their own model, fully localised, trained on proprietary data, and what does that cost you when a competitor runs on a frontier model instead. The OpenAI mathematics episode gets at why the demand exists anyway, because the doubt about data safety is enough. We also cover Tensive, an Italian biotech in biomaterials, which took €20M from the European Investment Bank as a convertible loan in two tranches on a 20-year maturity, roughly double the venture-debt horizon. And Foorban, the Milan food startup that reached operational break-even with more than 500 customers and 800 smart fridges, raising €7.2M from IMPACT Partners in a round that also bought out some existing shareholders.Niccolò's newsletter: http://dealflowit.niccolosanarico.com/Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@giacomomolloListen to all episodes on audio:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3fVynsQGoogle Podcast: https://bit.ly/3thf9RCApple Podcast: https://apple.co/3ElhykqAmazon Music: https://shorturl.at/9Dtd9Get in touch:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giacxxxTwitter: https://twitter.com/giacomomolloEmail: [email protected]#venturecapital #italy #startup

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related