• Primo Climate is a venture capital fund dedicated exclusively to climate tech.
• It invests in technologies that deliver a climate benefit and prove advantageous in industrial terms.
• Beyond allocating capital, it builds an ecosystem of specialist partners: LifeGate is one of them.

To tackle the climate crisis we need to innovate the way we produce goods, construct buildings, move around and recycle waste – and the list could go on for a long time. This is the domain of the so-called climate tech sector, but it needs to accelerate: estimates suggest that 30–35 per cent of the technologies required to hit net-zero emissions targets are still missing. Private finance must step in, because innovation demands experimentation, patents and the building of facilities – all activities that require substantial capital. Italy lacked a venture capital fund focused exclusively on climate tech. Primo Climate, managed by Primo Capital Sgr, is here to fill that gap. And it is a project in which LifeGate also plays a role.

The strategy of the Primo Climate fund

Primo Climate is technically a venture capital fund. That means it finances startups and innovative companies with high growth potential – with the attendant margin of risk – and in return acquires stakes in those companies (equity). It was launched in the summer of 2024 by asset management firm Primo Capital, with an initial endowment of more than 40 million euros, subscribed by CDP Venture Capital on behalf of the Fondo di Fondi VenturItaly and the Green Transition Fund, itself financed by the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (Pnrr). At the end of March, Fon.TE. also joined as an investor. Total fundraising therefore stands at 45.5 million euros, with a target of reaching 60.

"Every fund needs a strategy. Primo Climate is a venture capital fund dedicated exclusively to climate tech and specialised in the growth segment – that is, companies in a phase of strong expansion. It can therefore invest in very varied technologies applicable to different sectors, provided that a life-cycle analysis shows they perform better than the current standard in terms of CO2 avoided or saved," explains Simone Molteni, scientific director of LifeGate. Molteni is one of the fund's three general partners, alongside Giusy Cannone and Ezio Ravaccia; completing the team is Susanna Potenza, investment associate. The technologies that fall within the fund's scope of interest are already mature – to the point that some may have already entered the market – but need an extra push to become economically solid as well. The first company selected is a genuine alternative to plastic: the biomaterials produced by Krill Design, made from peels, seeds and shells.

Italy has enormous potential in climate tech

For a company, engaging with a vertical fund rather than a generalist fund is not the same thing. "First of all, a specialist fund understands the specific needs of these companies. Unlike the digital world, where growth can be achieved with small incremental investments, these are companies that produce technologies and therefore have to build facilities. That requires significant sums. Compared with other funds, moreover, we can count on a network of external partners, of which LifeGate is a part. The idea is to create synergies, consolidating an ecosystem in which it becomes far easier to find contacts, customers and partners," says Molteni.

There is another requirement that companies must meet to enter Primo Climate's field of observation: they must be Italian, or foreign but with development plans in Italy. "Because Italy has historically suffered from a shortage of fossil sources and raw materials and therefore faces a very high energy cost. Our entrepreneurial system has consequently had to deploy creativity and ingenuity to use those resources in a particularly efficient way," Molteni continues. Among the logical consequences is Italy's consistently stable first place in the annual report of the Circular Economy Network, and the 49 per cent of electricity generated from renewable sources in 2024 (Eurostat data).

Why now is the right moment for a climate tech fund

"When we talk about the environment we usually focus on the problems, which generates a great deal of anxiety. Much less is said about solutions. In these first seven months, examining eight hundred startups, we have seen at first hand that the solutions do exist. With Primo Climate we want to help them grow," emphasises Simone Molteni. And it is work that can bear fruit, because from above there are regulations that are increasingly stringent in environmental terms, and from below there is a public that is now fully aware: according to LifeGate's Observatory on Sustainable Lifestyles, three out of four Italians are engaged with sustainability issues.

Faced with this evidence, the business world can no longer wait. Finding in climate tech technologies valuable allies from a purely economic and productive standpoint too, not just an environmental one. "We are in a moment of great geopolitical instability, in which it can no longer be taken for granted that we can rely on secure, low-cost foreign supply chains – as we have seen with the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, or with the energy crisis caused by the interruption of Russian gas supplies," Molteni concludes. "Climate tech technologies close supply chains, making them far more resilient and freeing companies from the need to purchase energy or raw materials from abroad." Concrete advantages, therefore, that add to the environmental benefits.