Technical Due Diligence at Denovo | Terni, Central Italy

Denovo Srl runs Technical Due Diligence assignments across the same four R&D verticals we develop in-house every day: Artificial Intelligence, Mechatronics, Blockchain and Cybersecurity. We work from Terni (Central Italy) for investment funds, M&A advisors, family offices, industrial holding companies and Italian and European SMEs that need to assess the technological strength of a target before an acquisition, merger, equity investment, financing round or restructuring.

What a Technical Due Diligence is

Technical Due Diligence (TDD) is an independent review of a company’s technological assets. Its purpose is to measure the real value, the risks and the technical debt embedded in products, code, hardware, infrastructure and development processes. A solid TDD is not a compliance audit: it is an engineering reading of the business, cross-checking architecture, people, roadmap and market context to tell the client how much the technology being acquired, financed or sold is actually worth.

In our practice a TDD answers three questions:

• does the target’s technology really do what its commercial documentation claims?
• which risks (technical, dependency, team, compliance, intellectual property) will impact value over the next 12–36 months?
• which interventions are required after closing to align the technology with the buyer’s industrial plan?

The four areas we cover

Our TDD covers the same domains as our internal R&D streams, because the people who sign the report are the same engineers who design and build technology “de novo” every day. We do not resell third-party reports and we do not delegate technical assessment to generalists.

Artificial Intelligence

We assess models, datasets, training and inference pipelines, edge AI, GPU/NPU running cost, MLOps quality, data governance, exposure to bias, hallucination and regulatory risk (EU AI Act). We give a clear judgement on real maturity — from proof of concept to production-grade system — and on the gap between the marketed product and the one that is actually defensible on the market. Our public reference is the ABC (AI Book Cataloguer) project.

Mechatronics

We analyse electronic schematics, BOMs, component selection, firmware, test benches, quality processes, hardware revision management, critical supply chain and certifications (CE, EMC, functional safety). We identify single points of failure on both engineering and production side and we quantify the cost of industrialising a prototype. More on our mechatronics approach.

Blockchain, smart contracts and Web3

We review smart contracts, libraries, prior audits, token economics, custody design, integration with decentralised identity, supply-chain traceability, dependencies on public or permissioned chains. We assess code-level risks (reentrancy, overflow, access control), private-key risk and exposure to evolutions of the underlying protocol. Detail on Denovo’s blockchain stream.

Cybersecurity and post-quantum cryptography

We map attack surface, defensive posture, key management, segmentation, telemetry and incident-response processes. For targets exposed to sensitive data or long-tail contracts we assess readiness for the post-quantum migration: cryptographic inventory, the harvest now, decrypt later threat model, an adoption plan for quantum-resistant (PQC) algorithms aligned with NIST and ACN guidance. Our hands-on work on the Confundus device lets us read a target’s post-quantum roadmap with a level of detail that is unusual in the Italian market. Full picture on the cybersecurity R&D page.

Who runs the due diligence

The TDD is signed by the same team you can find on the Team page:

• Massimiliano Brasile (CTO) – electronics engineer, ten years in industrial plants and manufacturing, then software, blockchain and AI. Co-founder and Secretary of the Rome Electronics and Microelectronics Commission. Lead for the AI, blockchain and cybersecurity workstreams.
• Gianluca Ottaviani (CPO) – mechanical engineer with a decade in the foundry / metalworking industry (production, quality, maintenance) and a design-prototyping track record going back to construction materials. Lead for mechatronics and industrial-process assessment.
• Agnieszka Goclowska (CDIO) – graphic designer, illustrator and web designer, fifteen years of international freelance work and digital-project coordination. Owns the digital-product, accessibility, UX and document-management side of the TDD deliverables.

How we work

A typical Denovo TDD runs over roughly four weeks:

• kick-off with the client and protected access to repositories, technical documents and telemetry;
• focused interviews with the target’s team (CTO, lead engineers, quality and security leads);
• independent technical analysis using both automated tooling and manual review of code and schematics;
• final report in two cuts — a synthetic version for the investment committee and an extended version for the technical team — with risk scoring per area and a quantified remediation plan.

Deliverables match the standards expected by major European investment funds and can be attached to SPA (Sale and Purchase Agreement) contracts as technical-risk schedules.

Who hires us

• private equity and venture capital funds assessing positions in deep-tech Italian and European startups;
• M&A advisors and investment banks that need an independent technical second opinion;
• industrial holding companies acquiring tech-driven SMEs, component suppliers or software houses;
• banks and lenders evaluating credit exposure on technology assets;
• companies preparing a funding round who want a preventive vendor TDD.

Operating base in Terni, in the heart of Umbria. As an Italian innovative startup and benefit corporation, we serve clients across Central Italy, the European single market and Switzerland. For your case, please use the contact page.