Cato Raises €6M Seed Led by Keen Venture Partners to Automate Italy's Public Tender Market

Milan-based AI startup Cato has raised €6 million in seed funding led by Keen Venture Partners to help businesses find, understand and win public-sector tenders in Italy.

The latest round brings Cato's total funding to €7.6 million. Investors include Keen Venture Partners, Italian Founders Fund, Vento, Heartfelt, Moonstone, BHeroes, Alecla7 and Nova Venture, alongside more than 20 private investors. New angel investors include founders of Lexroom, Sibill and Pillar.

Bringing AI to Italy's Tender Market

Founded in 2025 by Andrea Zorzetto and Matteo Bossolini, Cato is building AI software designed to simplify the complex process of responding to public tenders.

Public procurement remains a highly paperwork-intensive process. Businesses often need to work through hundreds of pages of tender documents, verify eligibility requirements and manually prepare extensive bid submissions.

The opportunity is particularly significant in Italy, where public tenders were worth €309.7 billion in 2025, according to Italy's anti-corruption authority ANAC.

Cato's platform tracks public tender notices in real time, extracts requirements and evaluation criteria, and helps companies prepare bids using their own business materials.

Each claim generated by the platform can be linked back to its original source, while the completed submission remains under the client's control.

From Startup Failure to a New AI Venture

Cato also represents a comeback for co-founder and CEO Andrea Zorzetto.

Before Cato, Zorzetto founded Peoplerank, a LinkedIn reputation startup that he eventually shut down. After meeting Matteo Bossolini in June 2025, the pair built the first version of Cato in just one week.

The company was incorporated in September 2025 and secured its first client shortly afterwards. In December, Cato raised a €1.6 million pre-seed round led by Italian Founders Fund.

The company is now using its momentum to build a larger AI platform around public procurement.

Targeting a Fragmented Market

Cato is entering a market where other startups are also attempting to automate government-contract bidding.

UK-based Stotles and Netherlands-based Altura have both raised significant funding to develop AI-powered bid management platforms. Cato's strategy is to focus specifically on the complexity of Italy's fragmented and paperwork-heavy tender environment.

Keen Venture Partners General Partner Briehan Burke described public procurement as one of Europe's major remaining unautomated workflows, with trillions of euros flowing through government purchasing every year.

Expansion Beyond Italy

The new funding will be used to improve Cato's technology, accelerate business growth and expand the team.

The startup also plans to move into additional industry sectors and eventually support multinational companies bidding for public contracts outside Italy.

Cato's bet is straightforward: if AI can turn one of Europe's most complicated tender processes into a manageable workflow, the same technology could eventually become a broader infrastructure layer for companies seeking government contracts across Europe.