SAN MARINO – A San Marino startup at the global semi-finals of the Startup World Cup, a presence in the international jury of AI for Future and new contacts with venture capital funds and investors. It is the balance sheet of San Marino Innovation’s mission in San Francisco, in the heart of Silicon Valley, with the aim of strengthening the Republic’s connections with the global innovation ecosystem.
The San Marino delegation was made up of Nicolas Rossini, Head of Innovation, and Anastasia Merli, head of International Relations. During the mission, meetings were organized with international startups, representatives of investment funds and operators in the technology sector.
The initiative represents the follow-up to the Memorandum of Understanding signed with Pegasus Tech Ventures, an international venture capital fund and organizer of the Startup World Cup, to bring the competition to San Marino and connect the territory to the main international innovation circuits.
The first result was the Startup World Cup – San Marino Regional 2026, organized on 15 October at the Kursaal Congress Center, in the presence of the Most Excellent Captains Regent Gerardo Giovagnoli and William Casali and the Secretary of State for Technological Innovation Alessandro Bevitori. Ten startups, selected from 50 applications from San Marino, Emilia-Romagna and Marche, presented their projects in front of a jury of entrepreneurs and experts.
The winner was Nuhpro, founded by San Marino Claudia Guidi and Chiara Guidi, which develops functional foods according to the Food as Medicine approach. The victory allowed the startup to access the world semi-finals on November 4th in San Francisco, where over 200 winners of the regional selections competed to win one of the ten places available in the final on November 6th and compete for a million dollar investment.
Among the protagonists of the event were Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla, Sachin Kansal, Chief Product Officer of Uber, and Jihong Kim, Managing Director of Samsung Ventures.
Another moment of the mission took place on 5 November, with the participation of San Marino Innovation as a partner of AI for Future, an international event dedicated to artificial intelligence promoted by WMF – We Make Future. Nicolas Rossini took part in the jury of the startup competition together with industry experts, professionals from HP Tech Ventures and LG NOVA, an innovation initiative of LG Electronics, and the director of digital experience of Meta. Nuhpro, with Claudia Guidi, also presented its project in front of experts and investors.
The program also included a meeting at the European Startup Embassy in San Francisco, an organization that promotes connections between European entrepreneurship and the US market, with a discussion with European founders committed to developing their presence in the United States.
Nicolas Rossini spoke on the importance of the mission: “Today, innovation is increasingly decentralized and talent can arise anywhere. However, there are ecosystems, such as that of Silicon Valley, which have developed an extraordinary ability to transform ideas and technologies into successful businesses. For San Marino it is essential to build relationships with these environments, not only to observe what is happening in the world, but to create the conditions so that investments, skills and opportunities can concretely reach our territory”.
The mission is part of an international opening strategy that aims to increase the visibility of San Marino, attract capital and innovative businesses and enhance the characteristics of the San Marino system. The objective indicated by San Marino Innovation is to transform the contacts made in San Francisco into collaborations, skills and concrete investments for the territory.
