New Elite Lounge for 25 highly innovative Italian start-ups

A new Intesa Sanpaolo ELITE Lounge dedicated to start-ups kicks off. The training and financial acceleration course will involve 25 young innovative companies, with the aim of supporting their growth through:

• ensuring an understanding of finance instruments
• acquiring strategic and operational skills
• giving the opportunity to measure themselves against the market.

Intesa Sanpaolo believes in the strategic value of start-ups to accelerate the technological, digital and sustainable transition of companies and the country, and the Lounge represents a unique tool to enhance their development opportunities and impact on the production system.

Innovation and sustainability will be the focus of the training programme, which includes four modules dedicated in particular to:

• good governance
• corporate culture
• sourcing financial resources
• strategic innovation and globalisation.

The 25 selected start-ups come from various strategic industrial sectors for the development of the country's economy such as Green Tech, Water Tech, Renewable Energy, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Infrastructure and Mobility. Many of them were selected through the Up2Stars programme.

More than 300 companies have been included in Intesa Sanpaolo's ELITE Lounges over the last five years and, since 2020, start-ups have also been added: more than 100 new young companies have had the opportunity to benefit from the advice and support of partners of excellence, gaining access to a network of professionals and institutional investors able to facilitate their access to the capital market.

The initiative is part of the broader partnership between Intesa Sanpaolo and ELITE, the Euronext ecosystem that helps small- and medium-sized enterprises to grow and access private and public capital markets.