For the eighth consecutive year, the prestigious magazine Forbes Italia has selected one hundred under-30s who are changing our country: some are artists, sportsmen or heirs to family traditions, while many others started from scratch to turn an idea into a business. Many of their stories reflect the major industry and economic trends of our time: from the artificial intelligence revolution to the new space race.
Again this year, as in 2021, in 2022, in 2023, and in 2024, the Italian Forbes Under 30s see a strong presence of the community of the Incubator of Politecnico di Torino, as many as twenty startuppers coming from I3P were included in the list, for a total - new record - of eleven innovative companies chosen among the 100 Number Ones, the young leaders of the future. Three of these start-ups are part of the ESA BIC Turin community and Alumni of the incubation program: they are Ecosmic, Evolunar and Mespac.
Ecosmic
With their innovative start-up Ecosmic, which recently completed its incubation in I3P and in the ESA BIC Turin incubation program, young entrepreneurs Benedetta Margrethe Cattani (27 years old), Imane Marouf (26) and Gaia Roncalli (28) want to solve the problem of space traffic. Around Earth there are about 100 million pieces of debris, and each one of them is a projectile threatening to hit valuable assets. Every year there are thousands of reports of possible collisions, but, as Benedetta explained to Forbes, “99 percent are false. The algorithms used were created more than a decade ago and are not accurate now that the number of debris has grown exponentially. Our goal is to provide a more accurate algorithm.”
The start-up was born in Delft, Netherlands, then moved to Turin, attracted by the services and benefits offered by ESA BIC Turin, run by I3P. Ecosmic has a team of 12 people, and in November, at the Space Tech Expo in Bremen, it launched SAFE (System to Avoid Fatal Events), a software solution for space safety, now being beta tested in large companies such as D-Orbit. The company has already closed a €1.1 million pre-seed round led by Primo Space.
Evolunar
Staying on the space topic, Giuseppe Bortolato (27) and Stefano Pescaglia (28) are the co-founders of Evolunar, a spin-off of Politecnico di Torino and an innovative start-up incubated in I3P, Alumni of ESA BIC Turin. The company is developing interplanetary exploration vehicles capable of flying over the lunar surface. The spacecraft, called LuNaDrone, can be considered the space equivalent of the drones used on Earth, and the innovative technologies developed by Evolunar find application in this area as well, providing ground-based drones with autonomous navigation capabilities even in areas where GPS is not available or is jammed.
Thanks to the LuNaDrone's extreme mobility capabilities, Evolunar can offer a wide range of post-landing services on the Moon. The vehicle can be deployed for scouting missions, exploring areas otherwise inaccessible to conventional rovers (such as lava tubes), can provide last-mile delivery solutions, transporting scientific instruments away from the lunar landing site, and be used as a survey platform, allowing rovers and other surface vehicles to be guided through the fastest and safest route. In late 2023, Evolunar successfully closed a pre-seed investment round and in April 2025 opened a seed investment round.
Mespac
The offshore wind energy sector is experiencing significant growth globally, and among the leading figures who are accelerating its evolution is Edoardo Pasta, 28 years old, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Mespac. The start-up, which successfully completed its incubation path at I3P and ESA BIC Turin, develops renewable energy technologies using artificial intelligence and satellite data for siting and monitoring offshore wind farms.
At the end of 2024 the company raised a 1.5 million euro seed round, while Edoardo distinguished himself as a finalist in ICE's Global Startup Program, making it to the finals during the StartupItalia Open Summit, then earning his doctorate at the MOREnergy Lab of Politecnico di Torino with research on data-driven methods for modeling and controlling offshore devices, which won several awards. He has been a Visiting Researcher at several foreign institutions, including San Diego State University and Maynooth University; today he is also a researcher at Politecnico di Torino and a lecturer at TTPU in Tashkent. With over 45 publications and 2 patents, Edoardo is dedicated to innovation in renewable energy by combining entrepreneurship and research.
