Smartness, a Trentino-based TravelTech startup, has closed a €47 million Series B round, making it the largest funding round ever completed in Italy for a vertical SaaS company. The round combines primary and secondary equity with a debt component, and brings the company’s total capital raised to over EUR 60 million.
For hotel and vacation rental operators, this is a meaningful development. Smartness is building the infrastructure that lets properties run more of their operations through software, not headcount.
The Round and Investors:
The round was led by United Ventures and CDP Venture Capital, with participation from existing investor Partech, which also led Smartness’ 2023 EUR 13 million Series A round.
Partech’s continued involvement is notable. When a lead investor from your Series A comes back at Series B, it usually signals the growth numbers held up. In Smartness’ case, the company says it has grown more than 6x since its Series A round.
From Pricing Tool to Full Stack:
Smartness didn’t start as a multi-product company. Founded originally as a single-product company focused on dynamic pricing, it has since expanded into CRM, payments, a property management system, guest communication, and operational AI solutions.
This expansion matters because it changes how the company is positioned. It’s no longer just a pricing optimization tool. It’s increasingly the operating system that hotel and rental property managers use to run their businesses day to day. The company now serves more than 5,000 customers across 40 countries.
What Agentic AI Means Here:
The term “agentic AI” gets used loosely, but Smartness has a specific interpretation. Their long-term vision is to build the world’s first agentic system for hotels and holiday homes, a category of technology where software doesn’t just provide tools but directly carries out operational tasks on behalf of the client, from dynamic pricing to automated guest interaction.
That’s a meaningful shift from how most hospitality software works today. Most tools surface information and let a human act on it. An agentic system takes actions directly. For a busy hotel operator managing dozens of bookings, that distinction has real operational value.
Growth Numbers That Back the Raise:
The numbers Smartness is reporting are specific enough to take seriously. The TravelTech startup delivers around 10% month-over-month organic growth, excluding any contribution from acquisitions. That’s the kind of compounding that makes investors move fast.
CEO and co-founder Luca Rodella put it plainly: “Among the leading global SaaS players in lodging, we have been among the fastest, if not the fastest ever, to reach and then clearly surpass EUR 10 million in revenue.”
For 2026, the company’s stated goal is to triple revenue through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions across Europe. Smartness has already completed several M&A transactions and intends to accelerate that pace.
European Hospitality SaaS Opportunity:
Smartness is entering a crowded but active market. European hospitality software is attracting significant capital right now. Amsterdam-based Mews raised EUR 255 million in Series D earlier in 2026 to invest in AI, automation, and payments. Germany’s happyhotel raised EUR 6.5 million for AI-driven hotel revenue management. Oslo-based Altek AI raised funding to expand autonomous guest communication across the Nordics.
The broader pattern across these rounds is consistent. Investors are betting that the hospitality sector, historically slow to adopt software, is now at an inflection point where AI-powered operations can deliver measurable results, not just dashboards.
Smartness sits at the intersection of this shift, with a product suite that covers most of what a property operator needs in one place.
The Bigger Picture:
Fabio Pirovano, Partner at United Ventures, noted that in a market evolving from pure software to technologies capable of executing tasks on behalf of the customer, Smartness has the elements needed to emerge as a European category leader.
Smartness started in 2020 with a focused product and a clear hypothesis: that taking direct responsibility for customer performance, rather than just providing tools, was the right approach. The company’s CEO says the numbers are now validating that decision.
With €47 million behind it, a 6x growth rate since Series A, and an active M&A strategy, Smartness is moving from regional contender to a company with serious European ambitions.
