Panakes Partners

Investment decisions are led by Managing Partner and Founder Diana Saraceni alongside Managing Partner Fabrizio Landi. Saraceni built her career in medical-technology operating roles before launching the firm and chairs the investment committee. The investment team is composed of professionals with clinical, engineering, and venture-capital backgrounds.

Panakes sources opportunities through its network of European research hospitals, university technology-transfer offices, and the clinical advisory board it maintains. The firm's ability to evaluate medical technologies in-house — before a formal financing process — gives it early visibility on spin-outs from Italian, German, and Israeli clinical centres that are often overlooked by larger Anglo-American life-science funds.

Panakes is a pan-European investor despite its single-office structure in Milan. While a disproportionate share of its portfolio originates in Italy and Germany, the firm has backed companies in Israel and actively syndicates with co-investors based in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Its limited-partner base includes the European Investment Fund, signalling a mandate that is institutionally European, not solely domestic.

Panakes deploys exclusively through direct equity investments into operating companies. There is no fund-of-funds allocation or LP commitment programme. The firm occasionally uses Special Purpose Vehicles to aggregate co-investors around a single portfolio company, particularly on larger growth-stage rounds that exceed its reserve strategy.

The firm targets Series A and Series B rounds, typically investing in companies that have already secured CE marking or are in late-stage clinical trials. Panakes does not write pre-seed or seed-stage cheques into concept-stage research. Its initial commitment usually falls between €1 million and €5 million, with reserves held for follow-on participation through to commercialisation.

Panakes avoids biopharma, small-molecule drug discovery, and pure-play healthcare services without a proprietary technology component. The firm is explicit that it invests in medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health — domains where the regulatory pathway and reimbursement logic are distinct from pharmaceutical development and where the firm's internal clinical-regulatory team can add direct value.

Yes. Panakes employs a dedicated clinical and regulatory affairs team that works alongside portfolio company management on CE marking, FDA submissions, and post-market surveillance. This is a structural differentiator: very few European venture firms of Panakes' size maintain an embedded regulatory function, and the team is presented to founders as a core part of the value proposition, not an external advisory panel.