Company
GrantSpider, a spinoff of the University of Turin incubated by 2i3t, and currently counting 9 people across founders, AI Engineers, sales associates, and administrative staff.
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It took its first steps in April 2025 with the ambition of democratizing access to grants, making the process simpler, faster, and more efficient. Its goal is to unlock the potential of researchers and innovators in academia, NGOs, and tech companies alike, regardless of their organization’s size and resources.
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GrantSpider was founded on this vision. Unlike generic AI assistants or fragmented solutions addressing only a partial scope, it is designed with a deep understanding of R&D funding dynamics, the complexities of collaborative projects, and the boldness to unify it all in one platform. GrantSpider’s strength lies in this unique combination of strategic vision, direct field experience, and technological skills, enabling it to deliver a genuinely innovative solution tailored to the specific needs of innovation professionals.
Key partners
Founders
Matteo and Aurelio have known each other since 2018. Despite spending their Bachelor’s years in the same city of Torino, they only met in the Netherlands when they joined the same MSc programme at Utrecht University. Since then, they have been steadily building a sincere and profound friendship, which continued even after Matteo moved back to Torino and Aurelio stayed in Utrecht. In this time, a recurring element of their conversation has been the possibility of launching an innovative enterprise together.
Waiting for the right opportunity, Matteo completed his PhD at the University of Turin, acquiring skills as an AI Engineer and growing his passion for innovation and entrepreneurship. In the same years, Aurelio became a successful innovation consultant and business developer, securing over €30mln in grants for clean-tech startups and participating in dozens of international R&D consortia.
For their professions, Matteo and Aurelio had experienced first-hand the daily frustrations of grant applications: navigating complexity, racing against tight deadlines, and juggling fragmented workflows. One winter day in 2025, while sharing their experiences, they realized just how common these struggles were. To make things worse, they agreed, much of this burden could be avoided if only adequate management software existed. That conversation sparked an idea. Over time, they started envisioning a new, intelligent and integrated tool, capable of supporting every stage of the grant lifecycle, from identifying grants opportunities to building and maintaining consortia, up to drafting the entire proposal. A tool that would simplify their own work, free up time for higher-value tasks, and improve the daily lives of countless peers. A tool that was theirs to build.
