Cato raises €6M led by Keen Venture Partners to bring AI to Italy’s tender market

Cato has picked up €6 million in seed funding, with Keen Venture Partners leading the round. That brings total funding to €7.6 million for the Milan startup, which is building AI software for companies trying to win public contracts in Italy.

The timing matters because founder Andrea Zorzetto is back at it after openly shutting down his previous startup, Peoplerank. He and Matteo Bossolini got Cato moving in June 2025, built an early version in a week, incorporated the company in September, landed a first paying customer in October, and closed a €1.6 million pre-seed by December.

Cato’s pitch is straightforward, even if the market isn’t. Italy’s tender market was worth €309.7 billion in 2025, according to ANAC, and the company says its software helps users find relevant notices, understand the requirements, and prepare bids with less manual work. The product tracks notices in real time, pulls out requirements and evaluation criteria, and pre-fills sections of bids using the client’s own materials. Each claim links back to the source, and the finished submission stays with the client.

This round also says something bigger about where European procurement software is headed. Cato is not alone. Stotles in the UK has raised $13 million and counts more than 1,000 public-sector sales teams among its users, while Altura in the Netherlands raised €8 million. But neither is built specifically for Italy’s fragmented, paperwork-heavy system, and that is the gap Cato wants to own. The investors seem to agree: besides Keen, the cap table includes Italian Founders Fund, Vento, Heartfelt, Moonstone, BHeroes, Alecla7, Nova Venture, and more than 20 private investors, plus angel backers from Lexroom, Sibill, and Pillar.

The company plans to use the new money to improve the product, hire, and expand beyond Italy, including work with multinational clients on tenders outside the country.