LIFTT, an Italian venture capital company specialising in deeptech investments, kicks off a strategic transition that will lead it to operate as a multi-vertical player, focusing resources and expertise on four investment areas identified in the fields: Infrastructure for data revolution, Human health & aging, Critical resource and Energy security & industrial automation.
This is a leap in vision that opens up new perspectives for the company and comes five years after it became fully operational. Becoming a multi-vertical venture capital company means, in fact, not only making full use of the technical skills that each business analyst on the LIFTT team has developed in a specific sector, but also offering its start-ups a scientific-entrepreneurial ecosystem capable of supporting them from the cradle to the market, accelerating their growth.
The multi-vertical reenginering, which rationalises the previous sixteen areas of focus, aims to create a critical mass of skills, resources and investments and to bring about greater proactivity in portfolio management.
Aiming to better interpret the overwhelming technological, economic, geopolitical, social and environmental transformations that are reshaping the global context, each macro-area is divided into specific sub-areas of intervention, which identify priority thematic focuses and exclude others.
Infrastructure for data revolution refers to an immanent driver of change that has a direct impact on entire industries, productivity, innovation stimulus and people’s daily lives. In this context, increasingly interrelated, sophisticated, scalable, resilient and energy-efficient solutions are emerging, including: quantum technologieswhich can offer unimaginable computing power, secure communications and ultra-sensitive sensors, and which find immediate application in finance, healthcare, logistics and security; photonic opticsto raise the transmission speed, literally, to that of light, reducing energy consumption and supporting the growing need for real-time data analysis; semiconductor manufacturingwhich is essential for all AI and IoT applications, is not only a technological but also a geopolitical factor around which global progress revolves; new generation data centrewhich are essential for managing and processing a quantity of data that is multiplying at a constantly exponential rate and which require energy efficiency, cooling capacity and connectivity; advanced sensorsincreasingly precise, thanks to artificial intelligence and miniaturisation, they are an indispensable enabler for sectors such as healthcare, automotive and urban infrastructure.
The digitisation of the economy is extremely energy-intensive: energy consumption in data centres, for example, is expected to quadruple by 2030. In parallel, the value of quantum computing will exceed USD 1 trillion and the costs for chip production will increase significantly, driving the search for innovative solutions.
Human health & ageing is a rapidly expanding field that addresses one of the most pressing economic and social challenges of our time: by 2050, more than two billion people will be over 60 years old.
The consequences of an ageing population are obvious: problems such as neurological diseases, organ deficiencies, chronic disorders or mental frailty will increasingly require new solutions. The answers to this problem range from personalised medicine to artificial intelligence for diagnosis and pharmaceutical development, from tissue regeneration to robots for assistance, to gene and cell therapies, DNA editing, artificial intelligence for drug discovery, and assistive robotics.
The experimental field is increasingly moving into practical implementation: in particular, promising innovations are emerging in key areas such as: neurotechnology, with the use of predictive biomarkers; CAR-T and RNA therapies, effective against rare diseases and cancer; radioprecision; tissue and organ engineering, bioprinting and cryopreservation; and robotics for health, from surgery to cure.
Critical resources are key raw materials for technological innovation, economic growth and sustainability, such as lithium, cobalt, water, soil and human capital. In a global context marked by climate crisis, energy transition and geopolitical instability, ensuring their safe and sustainable access has become strategic.
The critical minerals market is expected to grow beyond $550 billion by 2030, driven by demand for both semiconductors and bio-based materials. For example, sustainable food solutions are attracting investment from major companies such as Nestlé, Microsoft and Google.
LIFTT sees investment opportunities in this sector due to a variety of factors: the scarcity of resources and emerging consumption patterns, favourable regulatory developments and the support of public incentives, the maturity achieved by technologies such as bioreactors and microbial platforms, and the virtuous collaboration that is taking place between start-ups and industry.
LIFTT sees critical resources as the invisible infrastructure of the sustainable economy. That is why it invests in deep tech start-ups that develop scalable solutions based on frontier technologies such as synthetic biology, sensor technology and materials engineering. Areas of interest include: new materials; regenerative crops and agriculture; new ingredients/new foods; biofabrication and synthetic biology; ocean water.
The area of Energy security & industrial automation refers to increasingly interconnected global challenges: securing energy supply, enhancing infrastructure security and transforming industry in a sustainable and resilient way. In a context marked by geopolitical crises, energy transition and skilled labour shortages, automation and industrial innovation are no longer options, but urgent needs to be addressed with an integrated approach that combines systemic vision and technological impact.
Key areas of investment include: cognitive platforms and human-machine symbiosis; automation; AI for security, with reliable architectures and solutions for critical infrastructures; space observation and connectivity, through LEO satellites and hyperspectral sensors for environmental and industrial monitoring; advanced nuclear energy, with new materials and technologies for waste management and micro-reactors; energy efficiency, through power electronics and systems; intelligent power grid management; predictive maintenance and optimisation of energy flows.
As announced at the last Board of Directors meeting, LIFTT has raised a total of EUR 110 million from 215 institutional and individual investors since its start-up in early 2020, for a total investment amount of EUR 78 million. As of today, the company can boast 56 start-ups in its portfolio, to which must be added the exit from Evergreen Theragnostics, a US scaleup that develops therapeutic solutions for cancer patients using radiopharmaceuticals, which took place in January 2025.
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