Neva SGR, an Intesa Sanpaolo Group company, controlled 100% by Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, has finalised, through its Neva First Fund, two investments in Cyberint and Coro, highly innovative Israeli companies, both operating in the crucial sector of cybersecurity.
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Cyberint develops Digital Risk Protection, Threat Intelligence and Attack Surface Monitoring solutions that protect companies from cyber threats thanks to a broad spectrum control of exposure to external risks.
Coro has developed an all-in-one platform based on its own artificial intelligence engine, which detects the main cyber attacks, such as malware, ransomware, phishing and bots, providing automatic mitigation to the threats with zero human interaction.
Since January 2022, Neva SGR has invested more than €20 million in Israel, in five start-ups in heterogeneous sectors: in addition to cybersecurity with Cyberint and Coro, IT with vFunction (which has created the first and only solution by which to automatically and rapidly transform monolithic applications into micro services on a large scale); Quantum Computing with Classiq (which through its own algorithm is able to facilitate writing and optimise even highly complex quantum circuits, regardless of the type of hardware used); Agri-Foodtech with Seed-X (which has developed technology based on artificial intelligence, which combines computer vision and deep learning in order to improve the food value chain in terms of safety and sustainability, analysing the properties of seeds and grains and introducing innovative quality control methods).
Intesa Sanpaolo has for many years kept its focus on the ecosystem of Israeli innovation and with the Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center and Neva SGR constantly participates in the main initiatives dedicated to new technologies, pursued in the country. The relations established allow the Bank to make the most of the opportunities as they arise to strengthen customer services and, at the same time, to be a point of reference for Italian companies wanting to come into contact with some of the world’s most innovative start-ups.
Israel is central to the development of the investment strategy of Neva SGR, which collaborates with the main venture capital funds to invest in Israeli-origin start-ups that can have a positive impact on the Italian economy and generate major returns on investment for investors in the funds managed.
“Neva SGR combines the strength, reputation and stability of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group with the best practices of international venture capital companies and aims to be the market maker of the venture capital asset class in Italy” – Luca Remmert, Chairman of Neva SGR, explains. “We boost the Italian economy through the introduction of new technological solutions and foster business development of both foreign start-ups and the companies in our country, in particular in the areas encouraged by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Since 2020, Neva SGR has allocated capital of approximately €110 million through its Neva First Fund, which has an endowment of €250 million. After the recent investments in Israel, we now look to conclude new operations with important Italian and foreign operators in real estate intermediation, agri-tech and life science”.
