09-09-2026

Introducing Almawave Labs, the Almaviva Group’s NewCo R&D dedicated to the development of sovereign artificial intelligence solutions, established through the carve-out of Almawave’s technological assets and expertise. The Italian company is made up of approximately 100 AI experts, including more than 30 PhDs, supported by professors, permanent academic advisors, and joint labs with leading universities. Adherent to the European GPAI code of practice, it has a strong compliance framework backed by 11 certifications, including ISO 42001 for AI development and ACN QC1 and QC2. Almawave Labs' technology, products, and expertise are mentioned in over 90 reports by leading international market analysts.

Almawave Labs develops its own generative AI models of the Velvet family – velvet 25B, 14B, 2B, and velvet 2B speech – which will continue to evolve, becoming increasingly effective and "enterprise-ready" while remaining lightweight and easily customizable for vertical domains and tasks such as PA, industry, mobility, healthcare and the environment, as well as horizontal applications like security and CRM. The company's own asset is the AIwave platform, which enables multi-agent and multi-model, low code/no code governance, suitable for a wide range of contexts, both cloud-based and on-premise.

Valeria Sandei, Chief Global AI Officer for the Almaviva Group, has become the Chair of the Board of Directors of Almawave Labs, while also serving as CEO. Raniero Romagnoli has taken on the role of CTO.

Following the recent establishment of the Global AI Division, created to guide the strategic positioning and evolution of the group’s artificial intelligence solutions in an integrated manner, the Almaviva Group is taking another step toward strengthening its industrial, organizational, operational, and go-to-market model in Italy and abroad.

Almawave is being incorporated into the parent company Almaviva through a merger that will further expand AI development and delivery capabilities, consolidating technological and industry expertise to provide increasingly specialized and effective solutions. This approach will allow the group to operate in a similar way across all of its international companies, such as Iteris in the US and Tivit in Brazil and Latin America, creating AI-driven solutions efficiently and under a single governance model.

"The launch of Almawave Labs is the latest strategic step in an evolutionary journey that, over the last 15 years, has seen us become one of the first companies in Italy, and one of the first in Europe, to bring our sovereign AI to the global market, serving complex companies and organizations from the US to Brazil to our domestic market,” - said Valeria Sandei, Chief Global AI Officer for the Almaviva Group.

"The group’s sustained global growth will enable us to consolidate our leadership in digital and AI-driven solutions within the mission-critical sectors in which we operate," added Sandei. "At Almawave Labs, the focus on our numerous AI IPs - ranging from the development of generative AI models like those in the Velvet family, to targeted platforms and products in the areas of voice and vision, such as AIwave - is a strong choice from both a technical and strategic perspective."

"We believe that AI can be truly transformative for business and for this reason we want to accelerate its adoption globally as much as possible, with a single, clear governance vision that delivers effective, fast, and measurable results for our customers,” concluded Sandei.

Almaviva is thus optimizing its end-to-end solutions across all its legal entities, covering the entire value chain, from strategic consulting to the development of innovative and vertical technological platforms and solutions, while investing in the organization and governance of AI as a value lever. At the heart of this approach is a sovereign vision of artificial intelligence, as a growth engine for an Italian Group that generated €1.8 billion in revenue in 2025, with a stable presence in 65 countries and whose foreign revenue now exceeds 50% of its total.