Promote innovation in artificial intelligence and the development of startups to support the competitiveness of the Italian industrial system. This is the objective of the three-year collaboration agreement signed between AI4I, the Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industry, and Zest SpA, the main early-stage operator in Italy, with over 250 startups in its portfolio.
The heart of the strategic partnership consists in the creation of a collaborative ecosystem that fosters the growth of emerging startups in strategic sectors related to artificial intelligence. To achieve this objective, several actions will be implemented. Firstly, the synergies between the acceleration programs will allow startups accelerated by Magic Mind, the Zest program dedicated to AI, to exploit the technological know-how and resources made available by AI4I. Furthermore, close collaboration on concrete projects is expected, which will lead to the development of customized solutions capable of responding to the specific needs of SMEs and industrial partners. Finally, a network of opportunities will be created to facilitate networking, with meetings between investors, researchers and companies, both at a national and local level, to encourage visibility and new collaborations.
The collaboration will be strengthened by the upcoming launch of AI4I’s System User Knowledge (SUK), a platform designed to provide tailored expertise and services across the entire lifecycle of AI solutions.
“This partnership – states Fabio Pammolli, president of AI4I – represents an important piece of the strategy of our Institute, which aims on the one hand to develop solutions based on AI and on computational models to be inserted into the Italian production system, on the other to facilitate the creation and consolidation of an ecosystem, in which supply and demand for these technologies can meet synergistically. These results will also be possible thanks to the supercomputing infrastructure we are building and the skills of the research and development units that will be set up in the coming months.”
“We are proud – comments Marco Gay, Zest executive president – to be among the first partners of the AI4Industry National Foundation to sign a multi-year strategic agreement for the growth of the ecosystem of startups operating in the world of Artificial Intelligence in our country. We are convinced that this partnership can accelerate the synergy between companies and startups and the industrial experimentation of AI-based innovations. Already today, 25% of our portfolio of over 250 startups is represented by high-potential technology companies operating on the frontier of artificial intelligence and in 2024 alone, over 1,100 new AI startups entered our proprietary dealflow.
Our ambition – concludes Gay – is to be the main enabler of this industrial revolution for talents and for our production system, also through our acceleration, open innovation and corporate venturing programmes, which can generate further value thanks to partnerships with AI4Industry”.