Berlusconi-linked Ithaca joins €3.7m JustSolve pre-seed led by Base10
The Milan startup builds AI for credit management and out-of-court debt recovery; three of the round's five institutional backers trace to family holdings.
Ithaca Investments has no public portfolio and no accessible website, so its activity becomes legible only when a company lists it among backers. The latest such disclosure comes from JustSolve, the Milan company building agentic AI for credit management and out-of-court debt recovery, which has raised €3.7 million in a pre-seed led by Base10 Partners.
Family Office Hub, citing BeBeez, places Ithaca — the vehicle connected to the Berlusconi family — in the round alongside Entourage, 2100 Ventures and Vento, with angels Marco Ogliengo of JetHR and Silvia Wang and Daniele Francescon of Serenis completing the list. The round splits into €3 million of equity and €700,000 of grants and takes the team from six people to twenty.
Francesco Manicardi and Alberta Trombetta spun the company out of Reef, the venture builder Vento operates, and aimed it at an unglamorous corner on purpose: credit management and out-of-court debt recovery in Italy still runs largely on call centres and paper, the report says. Software sold into that back office resembles the other Italian bet Ithaca has surfaced in this month — early-stage, Milanese, and pointed at a domestic professional market rather than global expansion from day one.
What Ithaca's portfolio shows when a startup names it
Two of those appearances came on the same day in September 2026: the JustSolve round and the pre-seed of Iusful, a legaltech company. Both are Milan businesses selling AI-based software into professional services, a coherent if narrow pattern, and the report counts JustSolve as Ithaca's second investment of September.
The cap table points to the same family holdings: 2100 Ventures is half owned by Edizione, the Benetton family holding, and Vento is the Exor programme, so two of the round's five institutional investors trace back to family holdings and Ithaca, the third, sits there directly. Italy's family offices arrived in venture capital later than their French and German counterparts, and vehicles like Ithaca now stand alongside the country's small group of institutional early-stage funds, often in the same rounds.
The American lead remains the outlier in that company: at pre-seed in Italy, an American firm leading is still the exception rather than the rule, per the report. What Ithaca backs next will be legible the same way this round is, from a founder's disclosure rather than from the office itself; whether September's two Milanese AI rounds read as a cadence or a coincidence depends on a third appearance, and on who announces it.
Save this analysis and keep the funds you follow together in My Desk.
Sign in to save articles or follow funds.