Italian biotech startup Diamante closes €595K seed round to accelerate growth

Diamante, a female-led Italian biotechnology company focused on the use of plants for producing high value-added molecules, closes €595K as a second seed round led by Arieli Capital. Offering value for global markets, Diamante is creating a groundbreaking health technology with the power to improve the health of millions of people around the world.

Believing in the project, developed since 2020 by Roberta Zampieri, Valentina Garonzi and Linda Avesani, is also Elena Paola Lanati and associations Angels4Women and Angels4Impact as Business Angels, following the recent equity round of €350K closed in July 2022.

Diamante and its quotaholder were assisted in negotiating legal matters and contractual terms of both equity rounds by the law firm Legance – Avvocati Associati, with a team consisting of partner Giacomo Gitti and associate Diego Valenti, as well as by Studio Marchiori for financial and tax issues, and by the Notary Lorenzo Salvatore.

Valentina Garonzi, CEO and Co-founder, Diamante: "We are still growing at the right pace. Since our goal is to build a healthy and agile corporate environment, including in our team, Arieli Capital will open doors for us like never before. Starting from our experience with Arieli at the Italy-Israel accelerator program and the Connecticut wellness program, Well4Tech, we believe in the importance it carries for Italian startups and for the Italian tech ecosystem as new global markets and investment opportunities are presented to us."

Diamante was founded in 2016 with the development of new tools in autoimmune disease diagnosis and is now expanding into therapeutics applications. Diamante's value proposition is the creation of a novel therapeutic approach for autoimmune diseases based on the restoration of self-tolerance, using plant viruses displaying immunodominant peptides. Diamante will use proceeds to scale into the US and begin an FDA approval process.

The company is a recent graduate of two business acceleration programs led by Arieli Capital: Well4Tech, a Connecticut based scale up program focused on health and wellness technologies in partnership with The Bridge Healing Arts Center; and the Italy-Israel Accelerator in partnership with the Italian Embassy in Israel, the Italian Chamber of Commerce, the Italian Trade Ministry and Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's largest bank.

Or Haviv, Partner and Head of Innovation, Arieli Capital: "Arieli's investment in Diamante demonstrates our holistic ability to add value to startups at different growth stages; from capital investment, business acceleration programs, and scale up programs for international market expansion. We are happy to welcome Diamante to Arieli's family of portfolio companies as it promotes our core values of advancing impact technologies, women led entrepreneurship and the great partnership with our Italian partners."

Elena Paola Lanati, entrepreneur in lifescience, business angel, member of Angel4women and member of Diamante BoD: Being deal Champion of Angel4women and angel4impact, Italian business angel association, we decided to further increase our support to Diamante, to reach 12% of the company, as we saw the impressive progress done by the team. The technology is highly innovative and has a huge potential well behind the first indication. As part of the Diamante board of directors, with my experience in pharma business, I'll support the startup in reinforcing their ability and speed to deliver preclinical results and start Quickly phase 1 trial.

www.diamante.tech