Trentino-based Smartness tech travel startup has just raised €47 million Series B, in a round including primary and secondary equity and debt, being the largest round completed for an Italian vertical SaaS company.
Smartness is a tech company that offers business-to-business (B2B) Software as a Service (SaaS), offering several products to hospitality businesses, to facilitate the digitalization and improve operational tasks.
For instance, Smartness software supports automation in several workflows within the industry, such as customer service, bureaucracy, day-to-day operations, online and offline, marketing campaign and management, accounting, among others.
The funding round was led by United Ventures and CDP Venture Capital, with collaboration from Partech, a previous investor partner in 2023, with €13 million Series A.
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This latest injection brings Smartness’s total funding to over €60 million. CEO and co-founder Luca Rodella told EU-Startups that while the company has already hit the €10 million revenue milestone, they have the ‘ingredients in place’ to scale toward €100 million and eventually become a €1 billion category leader.
The company was founded in 2020, and despite starting as a dynamic pricing software company, they expanded to CRM, property management system, and operational AI solution, reaching more than 5,000 customers across 41 countries.
The company reported a 10% organic growth each month, excluding contributions for acquisitions, and said they have grown more than 6x.
Within the hospitality competitive landscape, several European startups are securing funding rounds to support the adoption of specialized software and AI technologies in the industry, which added up to €343 million.
For instance, Amsterdam-based hospitality tech platform Mews, raised €255 million in Series D funding to further invest in AI, automation, and agent-driven workflows across hotel workflows, German-based Nesto raised €11 million to scale its AI workforce management platform for restaurant groups, while happyhotel raised €6.5 million in Series A funding to develop AI agents for hotel revenue management, among others.
Smartness has completed several M&A deals and its long-term goal is to build the world’s first Agentic System for hotels and vacations rentals. With this round, Smartness plans to further strengthen its competitive advantage in the hospitality industry taking advantage of the current demand for AI-powered operational systems.
