Milan, November 25, 2025 – Gruppo Excellence has acquired a majority stake in KVA – Kakashi Venture Accelerator srl, a company founded in Turin by Federico Bottino and Alberto Trivero, the first AI-native venture studio in Italy that combines strategic consulting and deep tech venture construction through an integrated vision of Artificial Intelligence as a transformative business lever.
With this transaction, the Group, founded in 2007 by Maurizio Primanni and Renato Ferri Pacini, which has always been active in the finance, banking, insurance, and asset management sectors, consolidates its leadership in technological innovation and artificial intelligence. The acquisition follows a strategic growth path that has seen Excellence establish new specialized companies such as Excellence Education and Excellence Innovation and acquire high-potential companies such as Dataskills and Red Public.
KVA is unique in the Italian landscape: not just a consulting firm, but a true venture studio that builds proprietary AI products, invests in seed and pre-seed startups, and rethinks partners’ business architecture around AI models. Among the AI-focused products developed by KVA are Madara (an AI suite for private equity and venture capital investors), IronDev (an AI Dev Stack to accelerate and optimize software development costs), Shikamaru (an AI compliance suite), and LAMMS (an AI-native marketing agency with small, specialized language models).
The company already operates in Italy, the USA (Florida, New York, Los Angeles), the UK, Spain, and the Middle East, with corporate clients in the banking, insurance, wealth management, real estate, traveltech, and FMGC sectors. It has also made strategic investments in PeloMatto (a Mamazen startup) and is supporting the growth of Outplayed Gaming.
This acquisition positions the Excellence Group as the only Italian player capable of offering its clients a comprehensive service, from strategic consulting to the development of proprietary AI solutions, all the way to direct investment in innovative startups.
“We are thrilled,” says Federico Bottino, Founder of KVA, “to join the Excellence Group. This acquisition allows us to increase our financial capacity and institutional credibility, becoming a leading high-tech hub for funds, banks, and investors looking to allocate high-return capital to AI startups and technologies in Italy and abroad. By becoming the first AI Native venture studio with financial legitimacy and institutional vision, we aim to be the perfect bridge between the corporate world and the next generation of AI-native entrepreneurs. Through Excellence, we will be able to accelerate the development of our proprietary products and significantly expand our market impact, serving historic brands that operate as leaders in our primary target markets: finance and insurance.”
“We are delighted,” says Maurizio Primanni, CEO of the Excellence Group, “to welcome KVA into our organization. Since we first met, they have demonstrated a unique and concrete approach to innovation. Federico Bottino and his team have built a model that doesn’t simply adapt AI to business needs, but rethinks the entire business model around Artificial Intelligence. Their ability to combine technological research, venture building, and strategic consulting represents exactly the direction in which Excellence aims to drive innovation for its clients in the banking, insurance, and corporate sectors.”
