Progress Tech Transfer
Progress Tech Transfer is Italy's first venture capital fund built entirely around sustainability technology. It is a tech-transfer fund, meaning it turns patents from Italian universities and public research labs into companies, backing them from proof-of-concept to seed. As of 2026 it has backed 2 water companies across 3 deals.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Progress Tech Transfer was the first fund in Italy to bet its whole mandate on sustainability, and it did it from the hardest place to start: the lab. It launched in 2019 with 42 million euros and the backing of two public-minded anchor investors, the backers who commit the founding capital, namely the European Investment Fund and Italy's state lender CDP. Its job is tech transfer, the unglamorous work of turning a patent owned by a university or a national research lab into a company that can actually sell something.
Progress Tech Transfer is a generalist sustainability fund, so water is one thread in a wider deep-tech weave rather than the whole cloth. Where water does show up, the pattern is the same lab-to-market story: it backed WembraneX, a spin-off of Italy's National Research Council whose patented membranes fight the biofouling that clogs and slows water-treatment plants, and Finapp, which builds cosmic-ray sensors that measure how much water sits in soil and snow without ever putting a probe in the ground. The common thread is hard science with a patent behind it, not a software skin on an old problem.
Progress Tech Transfer is run by MITO Technology, a Milan advisory firm co-founded by Francesco De Michelis that has spent more than a decade learning how to price and package early research. That advisory DNA is the point: a tech-transfer fund lives or dies on whether it can read a patent, judge the science and still build a business, and Progress writes its earliest cheques alongside Italian institutional money such as CDP and Crédit Agricole. For a newcomer, the read is that this is patient, public-flavoured capital, closer to the research bench than to a fast-moving consumer round.
Progress Tech Transfer now operates under the name MITO Tech Transfer, and as of 2026 its success had seeded a sequel: in 2024 MITO Technology launched MITO Tech Ventures, a larger early-stage climate fund. The throughline across both is a conviction that Italy's labs are underpriced, full of patents that never reach a customer, and that water, with its slow timelines and patient buyers, is exactly the kind of deep-tech problem that rewards an investor willing to start at the bench.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 2 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Progress Tech Transfer invest in?
- Progress Tech Transfer invests in sustainability and deep technology spun out of Italian universities and public research labs, a model known as tech transfer. Water is one strand: the fund has backed two water companies across three deals, including the membrane spin-off WembraneX and cosmic-ray soil-moisture sensor maker Finapp.
- What stage does Progress Tech Transfer invest at?
- Progress Tech Transfer backs companies at the very earliest stages, from proof-of-concept through pre-seed and seed into a first Series A round. As a tech-transfer fund it often writes the first institutional cheque a university spin-off ever receives, then supports the company as it proves the science works outside the lab.
- Who runs Progress Tech Transfer?
- Progress Tech Transfer is managed by MITO Technology, a Milan advisory firm co-founded by Francesco De Michelis, who serves as chief executive. Leonardo Massa leads deals as Investment Director, alongside co-founder Massimiliano Granieri and partner Michele Costabile. The fund was anchored by the European Investment Fund and Italy's state lender CDP.
- Where is Progress Tech Transfer based?
- Progress Tech Transfer is based in Milan, Italy, and run from the offices of its advisor MITO Technology. The fund concentrates on Italian companies, the spin-offs of the country's universities and national research bodies, while keeping room to back selected opportunities elsewhere in Europe.
- Is Progress Tech Transfer the same as MITO Tech Transfer?
- Progress Tech Transfer now operates under the name MITO Tech Transfer, so the two refer to the same fund. Both are managed by MITO Technology, which in 2024 launched a separate, larger climate-tech fund called MITO Tech Ventures. The original sustainability fund and the newer climate fund are distinct vehicles.