Workday’s Former CTO Backs Pack’s Bologna Skills Bet

Pack closed a €5.8 million Series A on 2 December 2025, and Workday’s former chief technology officer took a board seat. Rialto VC had already led a €3.5 million slice in September. Acadian Ventures, a US future-of-work fund, joined the December close, its first cheque in Italy.

The money was a wager that Italy, Spain and France still run talent on admin software, and that a Bologna coaching platform could sit in that gap. Nine months later the public trail is a bought conversational-AI engine and a Paris office, not a finished march through Germany and the UK.

The Workday CTO on Pack’s Board

David Clarke, former chief technology officer at Workday and a partner at Acadian Ventures, is joining Pack’s board. He said the company lets organisations switch on personalised growth at scale from skills maps and assessments, and that the more inventive European firms are already changing how they grow people.

Jason Corsello, Acadian’s founder and a former senior vice president at Cornerstone, wrote that global HCM suites such as SAP and Workday have struggled in Italy, Spain and France because of labour rules, local buying habits and the need for a sales force on the ground. Thomas Otter, another Acadian partner with SAP and Gartner behind him, said strong HR software can come from the Po Valley, not only from Silicon Valley.

That is the bet. The people who built the last generation of talent systems are funding a layer those systems never quite shipped for Southern Europe.

WHO PUT MONEY IN

Rialto’s partners add an Italian establishment overlay. Brunozzi is a former VMware chief technology officer and an Amazon Web Services evangelist. Profumo formerly ran UniCredit and Leonardo. Bonelli Erede advised Pack on the deal. TechWolf sits in skills intelligence, so Van Hautte’s advisor seat puts an adjacent product founder inside the tent.

Italy, Spain, and France have long relied on established local HR systems built for administration, not talent. Global HCM suites, such as SAP and Workday, have struggled to penetrate these markets because of complex labour regulations, localized nuances, and the need for strong, on-the-ground sales.

Jason Corsello, founder and general partner, Acadian Ventures investment note

Pack Sells Skill Maps, Then the Coaching

Pietro Maria Picogna and Giacomo Gentili founded Pack in Bologna in 2022. Picogna is chief executive, a 2024 Forbes Under 30 name, and has lived on four continents with three business degrees and five languages. Gentili is chief product officer. They also published a FrancoAngeli book on mentoring and coaching for companies.

The product is not another learning catalogue. Pack’s site says it uses AI and science to map, assess, and develop human skills inside large organisations, then ties those paths to business results. Modules cover skill mapping for the next five years, assessments against those maps, live training with a network of more than 1,000 certified trainers, analytics that plug into existing HRIS and LMS suites, and a Return on Development Investment report that prices costs, benefits and timelines.

Named customers at the raise included Leroy Merlin, Amadori, Edenred and Allianz Trade. The company now publishes Amadori, Allianz Trade and SACE write-ups, with people leads Selena Santacaterina, Maria Grazia Nannetti and Valerio Forconi attached. A network of more than 300 experts sits around the software. Pack says the stack was developed in Milan with servers in the EU and EEA, and that processes meet ISO 9001. An Emilia-Romagna PR FESR 2021-2027 grant also funded platform work, CUP E37H24002210007.

PACK’S OWN OUTCOME FIGURES

• Upskilling rate: Pack lists a 31 percent improvement of existing skills.
• Reskilling rate: It lists a 64 percent rate for skills needed in a different role.
• Satisfaction rate: It lists 96 percent, framed as involvement in the company.
• Resignation cost: It puts the average cost of a resignation in Southern Europe at €15,000.

Those are vendor figures, not a third-party audit. They are still the numbers Pack puts in front of HR directors who already own Workday or SAP and are being asked to buy a coaching layer on top.

€5.8 Million Landed in Two Tranches

The headline round is a total, not a single new cheque. Rialto led €3.5 million on 16 September 2025. Acadian’s entry in December took the Series A to €5.8 million, about $6.7 million in Corsello’s note, with a further €2.3 million in that second close. Pack had already raised €500,000 in a pre-seed in October 2023 and gone through Techstars in 2023. PitchBook also logs an Endeavor Italy accelerator in January 2026.

On 16 September 2025, Techstars said Pack had gone from nothing to €2 million of annual recurring revenue, from three people to 30, and past 80 multinational clients. By 2 December, Corsello put over $4.4 million in contracted ARR and net revenue retention of 129 percent. Those two revenue lines are different dates and different definitions, so they are not a growth rate. They do show a small company already collecting cash before the US fund arrived. Corsello also wrote that Pack had just been ranked 13 in Sifted’s Future 50. The company’s own site now says 100+ global companies trust it.

THE MONEY AND THE MOVES

1. 2022: Picogna and Gentili found Pack in Bologna.
2. 2023: Techstars class; €500,000 pre-seed in October.
3. 16 September 2025: Rialto leads a €3.5 million tranche; team at 30 people and €2 million ARR per Techstars.
4. 2 December 2025: Series A total reaches €5.8 million as Acadian joins; Corsello cites $4.4 million contracted ARR and 129 percent retention.
5. 1 January 2026: Endeavor Italy accelerator, per PitchBook.
6. 1 March 2026: Pack buys Aria AI, a Bologna conversational coaching engine.
7. April 2026: Pack wins the Paris heat of The Pitch and opens a Paris office; headcount cited at 45.

Techstars, which had Pack in its 2023 class, posted the December close on 8 December 2025.

Pack (Techstars 2023), an Italy-based, AI-native HR-tech startup, has raised €5.8M Series A. 💼

Founded in 2022 by Pietro Maria Picogna and Giacomo Gentili, Pack is a people-development platform that helps companies map skills, assess potential and support personalised… pic.twitter.com/yVf7FYeTAz

— Techstars (@Techstars) December 8, 2025

WHERE THE SERIES A WAS MEANT TO GO

• Hiring: Product, AI and customer success seats, with a plan to go from 30 people to 50 within six months of December 2025, which would have been 2 June 2026.
• Markets: France, Germany and the United Kingdom, billed as the path from an Italian startup to a European one.
• Product: A faster AI roadmap, later made concrete by the Aria AI purchase.

Picogna called the round the step from an Italian startup to a European player, after two years of large international clients. Gentili, on the Techstars post, said companies need a partner that can read people data and turn it into decisions, and that the mission is to make organisations more aware, agile and future-ready. A 30-person team across two countries was the starting line. The June 2026 headcount target of 50 was not later confirmed in public filings; an April 2026 figure of 45 sat just short of it.

What the Aria AI Purchase Added

On 1 March 2026, PitchBook logged Pack’s acquisition of Aria AI, a Bologna educational-software firm. Aria built a conversational engine for real-time voice and video, with digital coaching avatars and psychometric tools. Deal size was not disclosed.

Picogna wrote on 26 March 2026 that Aria is a real-time conversational AI engine, with voice, video and interactions that get closer to human ones, built for coaching, assessment and simulations. He named Luca Pizzola and Damiano Mastrangioli on the Aria side. With Gentili he said the purchase takes coaching and assessments to a new level by adding a live voice-and-video layer that can simulate hard settings, watch behaviour and produce insight HR teams can use at once.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The date: PitchBook records the Aria AI deal on 1 March 2026.
• The product: Voice and video coaching, avatars and psychometric assessment, built in Bologna.
• The intent: Pack said it wanted live interaction data, not static forms, inside coaching and assessment.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The price: No figure has been published for the Aria AI deal.
• The integration: How far voice-video sessions now sit inside live customer programmes is not in a public product note.
• The payroll: Whether Aria’s team joined Pack in full has not been stated.

This is where the Series A shows up in the product. A skills map tells a company what is missing. A coaching avatar that talks, listens and scores behaviour is a way to gather that evidence without waiting for the annual review. It is also a smaller, nearer spend than opening three national offices at once.

It’s a real-time conversational AI engine: voice, video, interactions that get closer and closer to human ones.

Pietro Maria Picogna, chief executive, Pack, 26 March 2026

Paris Came First, Then a Skills Roadshow

The December plan named France, Germany and the United Kingdom together. The city that has shown up in public is Paris. In April 2026 Pack won the Paris heat of The Pitch, a contest co-run by Deel and J.P. Morgan, and opened a Paris office. Picogna said the win let Pack measure itself against a firm that had already redrawn HR software worldwide. Headcount in that account was 45, up 15 from the 30 people listed at the raise.

Pack’s LinkedIn page now lists Barcelona as a principal location alongside Bologna, at Via Marconi 45, 40122. Corsello had already placed the founders between Milan’s tech scene and Barcelona’s engineering bench. In May 2026 Picogna told an interviewer that Barcelona combines quality of life, international talent and a working startup scene, a line later shared by Barcelona Global. In September 2026 the company posted about a Future Skills Roadshow in Paris. In April he also sat for a SAATKORN episode on skills as the true currency of work.

WHERE PACK NOW SHOWS UP

• Bologna: Legal home, Via Marconi 45, and the Aria AI shop it bought.
• Milan: Where Pack says the platform was developed, with EU and EEA servers.
• Barcelona: Engineering depth on the cap-table story, and a location on the company page.
• Paris: Office opened in April 2026, plus a skills roadshow in September 2026.

Germany and the United Kingdom remain on the December shopping list. They have not yet produced a matching office announcement in the same public record.

CoachHub and BetterUp Already Occupy the Aisle

PitchBook names BetterUp and CoachHub as Pack competitors. Both sell coaching at a scale this round cannot copy. Pack’s counter is local labour knowledge, EU data residency, and a skills map that is supposed to feed the coach rather than sit in a separate LMS. Van Hautte’s TechWolf, which sells skills intelligence, is on the advisor list rather than the rival slide, which keeps that fight inside the family for now.

Corsello’s note is blunt about the gap. Southern Europe, in his telling, is a blank canvas for talent tools because payroll and admin systems won the last cycle and development software did not. That is why a €5.8 million Series A can look large in Bologna and small against US coaching independents. It is also why a Workday alumnus on the board is the signal buyers will read first. If Clarke is willing to sit there, the product is being sold as a complement to the suites he used to ship, not a rip-and-replace.

Buyers still have to live with two systems. Pack says it plugs into HRIS and LMS stacks. That integration is the whole commercial motion: keep Workday or SAP for core HR, buy Pack for skills, coaching and a development return figure. If the plug is messy, the Po Valley story does not travel.

The Po Valley Wager Still Has to Travel North

The cap table did what a Series A cap table is for. It put product people from Workday, Cornerstone, SAP, Gartner and TechWolf around a 2022 Bologna company that already had tens of enterprise logos and contracted revenue in the low millions. Picogna’s line after the close was that international names beside him would matter as much as the cash.

The cash then went into a coaching-AI engine in the same city and a French beachhead. That is a coherent product bet. It is a narrower geographic bet than the press line about France, Germany and the UK. Retention of 129 percent and a planned jump from 30 to 45 people by April 2026 suggest customers stayed. They do not yet show that a German works council or a UK shared-services centre has signed the same deal.

Otter’s Po Valley line still hangs over the file. The next proof is not another Italian logo. It is whether the same skills map, and the voice engine Pack just bought, can be sold in the two markets named in December that have so far stayed quiet.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a private company’s funding, product and hiring, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell securities, or a recommendation to use Pack or any rival platform. Readers who are considering an investment, a vendor contract or a career move should speak with a qualified financial adviser, procurement lead or employment lawyer before acting. Headcount, revenue, client counts and product claims reflect company, investor and registry sources as dated in the piece and can change.