Italian holding company, Milan
We hold a few businesses, and we hold them for a long time
DaVinci Capitals S.r.l. is the Italian holding company of the WPI group. It holds and funds long-term equity stakes in Italian companies and manages a portfolio of listed European securities. It is wholly owned by WPI LTD, the Maltese holding company of the group, and it takes its name from Leonardo da Vinci, whose habit of testing an idea before believing it is a decent standard for an investor.
Our main asset is a 35.55% stake in Cognitive AI S.r.l., the Italian advertising technology company the group founded in 2019 and whose majority was sold to the private equity firm PM & Partners in 2024. We reinvested at the closing of that transaction and remain its largest minority shareholder.
What We Hold
Our largest holding is a 35.55% stake in Cognitive AI S.r.l., an Italian company that plans and runs digital advertising on its own cookieless identification technology. The group founded it in 2019 and sold the majority to the private equity firm PM & Partners in 2024. We reinvested at that closing instead of cashing out, and we kept a seat on the board.
We invest part of our own capital in listed European companies, in businesses we can read from their accounts rather than from a story. The portfolio is held as a long-term financial investment and is managed directly, with no fund and no third-party money involved. We work on it with our own tools: we contributed to the development of StockPickers.app, the project started by Filippo De Pretto that combines artificial intelligence with quantitative models to analyse thousands of listed companies, and we run a version of it customised for DaVinci Capitals, called Tino.
We invest alongside other investors in club deals and private equity transactions in European companies, among them Twinset, the Italian fashion brand. We take minority positions on the same terms as everyone else at the table, in businesses we can understand from the inside and next to partners we already know.
How we work
Our own capital, and no one to answer to
DaVinci Capitals invests the money of its own shareholder. There is no fund behind it, no outside investors to report to and no timetable that forces a sale on a date decided years earlier. That changes what the company can do: it can wait for a business to compound, and it can say no to what it does not understand.
It also sets the standard we hold ourselves to. We put our own capital at risk in every position on this page, on the same terms and at the same time as the people we invest alongside.
