Italian Tech Week

Every year, there's a special week when I get to return to #Italy and step on a global stage with leading voices in technology, humanity, arts and science. In the months leading up to it, I am reminded that the steepest mountains are moved by small, mighty teams with unreasonable determination and maniacal focus - like the Vento team. This year, I have been thinking deeply about human intuition - our seemingly unexplainable ability to perceive truth before reason can name it. If our senses grasp the outer world, then intuition is the mind’s own sense that detects universal coherence and bridges perception and understanding. Yesterday, Jeff Bezos told John Elkann and a room full of entrepreneurs in #Turin to lean harder on their intuition and curiosity. He shared how much of Amazon’s success was built through wandering, which he called the most primitive expression of curiosity, powered by conviction and long-term thinking. Nowhere is that truer than in healthcare, where progress demands long horizons and the courage and conviction to imagine something better. At Italian Tech Week, I had the privilege of leading many conversations about that future - one defined by human-machine collaboration, deflationary forces, and expanding human capability. Intuitive and Jason Hart showed us how the future of surgery is not human or robot but collective intelligence. Filippo Filicori performed a live robotic cholecystectomy on stage, bridging future and reality. Chris Bischoff and Alexander A. Morgan, MD PhD reassured us that healthcare’s transformation is already underway - and that robotics and AI will be the levers to break the industry’s sublinear scaling dynamics, turning scarcity into abundance. Founders and builders like Andrei Georgescu, Ph.D., Joana Cartocci, Niklas Radner, Matilde Giglio and Danielle Belgrave reminded us that abundance is already being built. A few years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have Jeff Bezos, Kevin Scott, Douglas Leone, Mike Volpi, Sarah Guo, David Solomon and many more incredible speakers sharing a stage in Turin. But yesterday, Ursula von der Leyen vowed to make Europe “worthy of its talent”, and to spare no effort in making it an AI continent. Arthur Mensch, Thomas Wolf, Anton Osika, Marko Bjelonic and countless more entrepreneurs that joined us at ITW25 prove that she's not wrong. It turns out the right question to ask was simply “Why not”. Because, as Diyala D'Aveni said in her opening speech, "waves don’t come with instructions". They simply start with a strong intuition, curiosity, and the courage to follow it. Diego Piacentini Isabella Timossi Martina Vinci Marco Venturini Elena Calconi Mike Volpi Morgan Samet James Anderson Clemente Dadoo Lomeli Hansen Shi Deepak Mishra, Sc.D Serena Li Gemma Pretlove Enrico Vellano

Dear Europe, running OpenAI on German servers ≠ sovereign AI. We must aim higher and not give up on building foundational models. I believe that the global AI race is not yet decided. The odds are long, but the stakes are higher. ⁠⁠LLMs have scaled really well. Post training and reasoning are showing strong results in scaling models further. But LLMs are only a first paradigm. The next frontiers are world models and robotics. World models are internal computational representations that allow AI to simulate the dynamics of the real world, similar to how humans have mental models of their environment. They are essential for robotics and autonomous driving. We are at kilometre two of a marathon. Europe has the ingredients: leading image and video model talent, robotics talent, and industrial datasets. We can also mobilise European and global capital required for a step change in compute and re-accelerate our energy landscape, e.g. by reactivating Germany's nuclear capacity. Let's do what it takes to bring folks like Vincent Sitzmann back to Germany! We can lead if only we find the courage and determination. PS: Speaking on a rotating stage was a first ;). Thanks for having me, Italian Tech Week!

Huge congratulation to John Elkann the team at Vento Ventures including Diyala D'Aveni for an incredible Italian Tech Week in Turin. John and his team have pulled together what has become Europe’s best tech event open to the general public. Italy is lucky to have John in their corner! Jeff Bezos David Solomon Douglas Leone Luciana Lixandru Sonya Huang Niklas Zennström Brent Hoberman Mati Staniszewski Arthur Mensch Tom Mackenzie Augusto Marietti Mike Volpi Ophelia Brown Paul Murphy Sarah Guo Kevin Scott Alexandre Berriche Cameron McCord Christian Klein Diego Piacentini Iain Martin Laura Modiano Thomas Wolf Judith Dada Luca Bocchio Michael Lavner Nico Rosberg Roman Hölzl

Ieri a Torino, in concomitanza dell’#ItalianTechWeek, abbiamo organizzato con Lead Group, il Founders Lunch: un pranzo fatto di networking, incontri con investitori e tanta innovazione. Grazie a tutte le startup presenti e alla nostra Startup Program Manager, Ilaria Navoni, per aver reso questo momento così interessante!