TLDR: Italian startup Plino has raised €650,000 in a funding round to enhance financial planning and analysis for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) using generative AI.
Turin-based startup Plino has successfully closed a €650,000 funding round aimed at transforming financial planning and analysis for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) through the power of generative AI. The company, founded in 2023 by Pietro Galimberti, Viola Bonesu, and Enrico Castelli, leverages their combined expertise in philosophy, engineering, finance, and artificial intelligence to bring innovative solutions to the market.
The investment round saw significant participation from prominent backers, including Exor Ventures, Berkeley SkyDeck Europe (an accelerator linked with UC Berkeley, Cariplo Factory, and Lendlease), Techaround.vc, Zooga.vc, and a consortium of business angels, including experienced CFOs and accountants. This capital injection is earmarked to accelerate product development and market expansion.
Plino’s platform directly addresses critical pain points faced by Italian SMEs, such as fragmented financial workflows, the laborious manual analysis of data spread across numerous spreadsheets, and delays that often force managers to make decisions based on instinct rather than concrete evidence. The startup offers a unified platform that provides real-time tracking of sales, costs, revenues, and cash flow, alongside robust liquidity forecasting and the automatic generation of clear, easy-to-understand financial reports.
Currently, Plino supports over 100 SMEs across diverse Italian sectors, including manufacturing, services, food, hospitality, and construction. The core objective is to equip these businesses with a fast and accurate system for making strategic, data-driven decisions.
The new funding will specifically fuel the development of advanced AI features, such as enhanced cash-flow forecasting, natural-language report generation, and granular profitability analysis at both product and project levels. Concurrently, Plino plans to expand its product, technology, and sales teams, and forge deeper partnerships with professional firms and trade associations to embed AI-driven innovation within the accounting profession.
Plino’s success is indicative of a broader positive trend in the Italian venture capital landscape. Data from Politecnico di Torino reveals that Italian startups collectively raised €353.4 million in the first half of 2025, marking a 39% increase year-over-year, with Artificial Intelligence and Medtech sectors leading this growth. Plino itself was incubated at I3P, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino, since 2024, providing a fertile ground for technological refinement.
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While the potential of AI is widely acknowledged, critics caution against over-reliance on AI for critical financial decisions, citing potential biases in generative models. Plino is proactively addressing these concerns through rigorous testing protocols and maintaining human oversight in its operations. The company envisions future integrations with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, aiming to be a pivotal contributor to a projected €115 billion increase in productivity in Italy through AI adoption by 2025. The Italian government is also actively fostering AI startups, with initiatives such as a €150 million fund announced in 2023 to bolster domestic innovation.
