The European Investment Bank (EIB) Group has made its first direct co-investment through the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), backing Italian cybersecurity company Exein alongside Headline Growth, an ETCI-backed manager based in Germany.
The investment was made via the European Investment Fund (EIF), which is part of the EIB Group, the EIF announced on Tuesday.
The funding round totalled about €234 million and valued Exein at around €1.45 billion, making it Europe’s newest tech “unicorn” — a privately held start-up valued at more than $1 billion.
Exein is headquartered in Rome and operates across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the United States.
The company develops AI-powered cybersecurity designed to protect connected devices used in areas including industrial automation, automotive, energy, healthcare, semiconductors, aerospace and robotics.
What ETCI is funding
The deal was led by Headline Growth and is the first time ETCI has directly co-invested into a company, the EIB Group said.
The initiative was launched in 2023 and has committed around €3.5 billion to 15 “mega-funds”, which have invested in 48 EU-based technology scale-ups so far.
EIB Vice-President Gelsomina Vigliotti said Exein was “exactly the kind of European success story that ETCI was designed to support.”
Exein founder and chief executive Gianni Cuozzo said the co-investment “reinforces our confidence in where we’re headed”, adding that “Physical AI security is one of the defining challenges of our time.”
EIF chief executive Marjut Falkstedt stated that the transaction combined backing for a growth fund with a direct co-investment, and described ETCI as focused on building a stronger European scale-up ecosystem.
The EIB Group said “ETCI 2.0” was announced in July 2026 and is expected to mobilise up to €80 billion of investment for more than 1,500 European technology scale-ups.
