Marco Romagnoli
Italian co-founder of CamGraPhIC; the physicist who took a Cambridge graphene spinout to a €211m Italian state-aid award.
Last refreshed: 22 April 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why did CamGraPhIC's Italian co-founder secure €211m of state aid in Italy rather than in Cambridge?
Timeline for Marco Romagnoli
Co-founded CamGraPhIC with Andrea Ferrari
UK Startups and Innovation: EC clears €211m Italian aid for Cambridge spinout- Who is Marco Romagnoli and what is CamGraPhIC?
- Marco Romagnoli is the Italian co-founder of CamGraPhIC, a University of Cambridge graphene photonics spinout. He came to the co-founding from CNIT, the Italian national telecommunications research consortium.Source: University of Cambridge
- Why is CamGraPhIC building its factories in Italy rather than the UK?
- CamGraPhIC's manufacturing facilities are being built in Pisa and Bergamo because the Italian industrial location made the company eligible for €211m of Italian state aid approved by the European Commission in April 2026. The IP remains at Cambridge.Source: University of Cambridge
- What does CamGraPhIC actually make?
- CamGraPhIC makes graphene-based optical transceivers that consume 80% less energy than silicon equivalents at higher bandwidth and lower latency, targeted at AI data centres, high-performance computing, automotive, telecoms and aerospace.Source: University of Cambridge
- What is CNIT and why does it matter for deep-tech spinouts?
- CNIT is the Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni, Italy's national university consortium for telecommunications research. It has provided the institutional base from which researchers like Romagnoli have moved into commercial spinouts.
Background
Marco Romagnoli came into focus on 15 April 2026 when the European Commission approved €211m of Italian state aid for CamGraPhIC, the University of Cambridge graphene photonics spinout he co-founded alongside Professor Andrea Ferrari of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. That approval is, by Ferrari's own account, the largest single grant ever made to a University of Cambridge spinout. Pilot manufacturing facilities are scheduled to open in Pisa and Bergamo in 2028.
Romagnoli came to the co-founding from CNIT (Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni), the Italian national consortium for telecommunications research, where he worked in photonics and optical communications. His PATH is a textbook example of the CNIT research-to-spinout pipeline: deep-tech expertise accumulated inside an Italian national research network, then commercialised through a university spinout with a cross-border co-founding structure anchored in Cambridge.
The significance of the pairing is industrial and political rather than purely technical. Romagnoli's Italian institutional connections were central to the funding strategy: by locating the manufacturing build-out in Pisa and Bergamo rather than Cambridge, the co-founders made CamGraPhIC eligible for Italian state aid under EC industrial-policy frameworks. The result is that the UK retains the graphene IP and the Nobel-prize association while Italy secures the factory jobs and the €211m of industrial capital — an outcome that has become a reference point in the UK debate about lab-to-factory conversion.