Aidia in Silicon Valley: the balance after Toscana Tech on the Road

Luca Angioloni’s talk at the Demo Day

AVA’s presentation in San Francisco, on 1 October 2026, in front of the Toscana Tech on the Road audience.

“The market we work in keeps changing. You have to go and see in person what is happening in other markets, to stay ahead of competitors and always find new growth ideas.”

So Riccardo Celli, CEO of Aidia, explains the meaning of the week spent in Silicon Valley together with Luca Angioloni, CTO, and Francesco Lombardi, COO. From 28 September to 2 October 2026, the Aidia board took part in Toscana Tech on the Road 2026, the Tuscany Region program hosted by INNOVIT in San Francisco. In five days we presented AVA, our enterprise AI platform for regulated sectors, in front of 150 people, we engaged with managers and entrepreneurs who know the American market from the inside, and we visited Google’s headquarters.

We started with a precise thesis: companies must use AI, but regulated data must not leave their perimeter. The thesis held. Even in the United States, where companies do not have rules as strict as ours, control over data remains a priority.

Why did Aidia take part in Toscana Tech on the Road 2026?

Aidia took part in Toscana Tech on the Road to experience the US market firsthand and measure itself against American companies. Toscana Tech on the Road is the initiative through which the Tuscany Region, via Fondazione Sistema Toscana, supports the internationalisation of technology companies from the region. Aidia is one of the 15 companies selected for the 2026 edition, hosted in Silicon Valley by INNOVIT, the Italian Innovation and Culture Hub in San Francisco promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Over five days the program included institutional meetings, discussions with American market experts, a Demo Day and visits to companies like Google.

We had described the selection and our expectations in the July article. In San Francisco we presented ourselves with the work we do in Italy, starting from AVA: our enterprise AI platform, already in production with client companies in regulated sectors such as pharmaceuticals and connected to the business systems they use every day.

How did the week at INNOVIT go?

The week began and ended with institutions. On Monday 28 September, the greetings from Alberto Acito, Managing Director of INNOVIT, and Massimo Carnelos, Consul General of Italy in San Francisco; on Friday 2 October, the farewell at the Consulate General, before the visit to Google’s headquarters. In between, the work on the market: the session by ITA - Italian Trade Agency on entering the United States, one-to-one discussions with professionals who know that market from the inside, the meeting with the big names in AI and the presentation of AVA at the Demo Day. “San Francisco brings together a set of elements to analyse and an impressive contamination of visions,” says Riccardo Celli.

Discussions with those who know the market from the inside

On Tuesday 29 September we spoke, one to one, with four professionals who work every day on the American market. Edoardo Mainella co-founded Google Italy and today follows the strategy of IDA, an AI platform for the export of Italian SMEs. Elisabetta Ghisini, CMO and co-founder of AlgoVerde, deals with positioning and communication across different cultures. Robb Miller leads strategy and go-to-market at IndyKite, after more than 25 years in enterprise software sales. Simone Macario founded Sharly, an AI-based research tool used by over two million researchers.

Riccardo Celli called them “four different perspectives on the sector’s logic, all matured in the field.” The work of the coming months starts from there: “putting into practice the advice from mentors and advisors with whom we engaged.”

The meeting with OpenAI and Meta

“The meeting that struck us most was the one with OpenAI and Meta representatives,” says Riccardo Celli. “We perceived that the world of AI and the big players has inside it many things in development, which they cannot even tell us about. They are trying to reach AGI, we know from the news that circulates, but it is impossible to understand how much is missing, and on this they do not expose themselves.”

For those who bring AI into companies, the consequence is practical. The models will change again, and quickly. That is why AVA is model-independent: it connects to any language model and allows it to be replaced without redoing the integrations with the client’s systems.

AVA at the Demo Day

On Thursday 1 October Luca Angioloni, CTO of Aidia, presented AVA at the Demo Day in front of an international audience of 150 people. The message was the same we bring to Italian clients: an AI platform that works inside the company perimeter, on the client’s servers, connected to the systems it already uses (SAP, Oracle, SQL databases, internal services) and without vendor lock-in. The full talk is available at the top of the article.

“What struck us most were the compliments for having put a solution to work in contexts that are hard to understand,” says Riccardo Celli. That is where AI adoption in companies is decided: where processes are complex and data is sensitive.

At the end of the day, the Tuscany Region’s economic development councillor, Leonardo Marras, interviewed Riccardo Celli and Francesco Lombardi. AVA, Celli underlined, “aims to meet […] the compliance and data ownership constraints in enterprise worlds and in regulated companies.”

Does the Silicon Valley model work for Italian companies?

From what we saw in San Francisco, part of the Silicon Valley model fits Italian companies well too. During the visit to Google’s headquarters, three themes emerged: the weight of the ecosystem in which a company operates, the labour market in Silicon Valley and Google’s evolution over the years. The first is directly relevant to anyone developing technology for businesses. “From the American model we can take the underlying philosophy: building a set of products and solutions designed to work together,” explains Riccardo Celli. “The integration between solutions is perhaps the most important thing when developing a product: creating something that is forced to remain standalone is a serious mistake.”

Our work as a system integrator is based on this principle, and on it we built AVA: a platform that connects to the systems already in use in the company and puts them in dialogue with each other. In Italian manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies, AI works alongside plants that have been in operation for decades and consolidated ERP and MES systems, and makes existing investments more productive.

Something else, however, remains American. “What you cannot take is the amount of investment they direct into the development and research of their services and products,” notes Riccardo Celli. Those are budgets out of scale for any company in the Italian and European market.

For Italian companies, the game is played on different ground: making AI work inside specific processes, with models specialised on a domain or a company, and with data that remains within the client’s perimeter. This year’s INNOVIT program thesis points in the same direction and summarises it in a formula that we at Aidia recognised immediately: getting in touch with Silicon Valley without becoming Silicon Valley.

Does data control matter in the American market too?

The discussion with American interlocutors confirmed that data control is a priority in the United States too. In San Francisco we opened the AVA presentation with two sentences: “Companies must use AI. Regulated data must not go to the cloud.” Companies must use AI; regulated data must stay within the company perimeter.

In Europe, data control comes from rules: GDPR and the AI Act establish how a company can process data and govern AI systems. In the United States it comes from the interests of the companies themselves. “Our approach was received incredibly well. Even without strict regulations like the European ones, for American companies maintaining control over data management is decisive,” says Riccardo Celli. “Some must protect intellectual property of great value, others must keep their activities confidential, as happens in defence and healthcare.”

AVA responds with its architecture. It works entirely behind the company firewall, on private hardware, with open-source models installed on-premise or in private cloud. Native connectors read ERP, SQL databases and internal repositories, leaving the data where it is. Roles and permissions are defined for each user, function and document.

European rules have accustomed us to designing security from day one, with a method that Aidia has formalised in the ISO 27001 certification for information security and ISO 9001 for quality management. In San Francisco we verified that this discipline, outside Europe, is read as a guarantee.

What changes after San Francisco?

After San Francisco, what changes first of all is the way we look at the market. “Many things change, but above all it is the mindset that changes,” says Riccardo Celli. The direct comparison with companies from other sectors, with the big names in AI and with those who know the American market from the inside has put perspectives on the table that now enter our choices.

The first decisions concern AVA. “The first step will be to improve the product and push even harder on the accelerator,” explains Celli. The insights that emerged during the week guide the work of the coming months, on the product and its development.

Our thanks to the professionals with whom we engaged and to INNOVIT, Tuscany Region, Fondazione Sistema Toscana and the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, who organised the week and made these meetings possible.