We measure the reliability of information. We accelerate complex decisions.

The roots. At sixteen Enzo Troncone leaves Apulia for the Nunziatella Military School in Naples, founded in 1787. Then a degree in Management Engineering and work on large EPCI projects (engineering, procurement, construction and installation of plants) for world-leading energy companies, around the globe.

The question is born in the field. On a construction site every decision is worth millions, is taken with incomplete information and has consequences for people’s safety. That is where the question behind everything comes from: how far can you trust a piece of information, and how do you establish it with method. To find the answer, Troncone goes back to university.

The research. Butterfly is born as a research question before it is a company. Troncone tackles it in his PhD at the University of Naples Federico II, with courses at Universidade Santa Cecília in Brazil: how to establish how far to trust a piece of information when the sources disagree, and how to turn that judgement into a reasoned, verifiable decision. The answer is a mathematical method, described in his 2016 doctoral thesis, that is today the core of the platform.

Validated in the field before going to market. The method leaves the university and goes through a series of pilot tests. In medicine, with associations of clinicians applying it to real cases, starting with Gruppo Campano ORL, the ENT specialists of Campania, in a trial led by Dr Domenico Di Maria, head of department and today Butterfly’s Scientific Medical Advisor. In industry, with the prototype tested at Geopharma, a pharmaceutical company in Mola di Bari, which supports its development with R&D projects. These are the first expert consensus exercises, the process by which a group of specialists reaches a shared position on a clinical question, and they establish the result we still measure today: a consensus built on traced evidence reaches publication in under six months from kick-off, against the 10-16 of a traditional process, and every step stays visible and can be corrected along the way.

The first recognitions. In 2019 Troncone wins the Gaetano Marzotto Prize, one of Italy’s leading startup awards, in the Ticket to the Future section, and the Best Practices for Innovation Award from Confindustria Salerno. The project is incubated at Campania NewSteel, the incubator of the University Federico II and Città della Scienza, and goes to London for Italy RestartsUp, the showcase for Italian startups abroad run by SMAU, Italy’s innovation fair, with ITA, the public agency for the internationalisation of Italian businesses (formerly ICE). To give the idea the structure of a company, Troncone completes his training with an MBA at Warwick Business School, in England: in the Warwick Innovation District incubation programme he works on the business project and consolidates the business model.

2021: the idea becomes a company. Enzo Troncone gives up his international career and founds Butterfly Decisions with Michele Criscuolo, CTO, in charge of technology, with Domenico Di Maria and with Leonardo Lattaruli, founder and CEO of Geopharma. The first projects are advisory boards and Delphi panels for Big Pharma: the expert panels that large pharmaceutical companies convene to guide their clinical and research choices, and the method that brings those experts to consensus over several voting rounds. Butterfly makes them faster with its own algorithms and AI, speeding up a key process for the industry. In November it is selected by Web Summit in Lisbon, Europe’s largest tech conference, where it meets Startup Wise Guys. In 2022 the pre-seed, the first outside capital: CDP Venture Capital, the venture capital arm of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, with CyberXcelerator, the Startup Wise Guys accelerator in which Butterfly is one of the seven startups of the batch, and the first business angels, private investors putting in their own capital.

From 2023, industrial validation. It starts with Geopharma, the first client to bring the method into everyday work: with the Butterfly projects the company consolidates its market position and grows revenue by 35%, and that growth counts when, shortly after, its osteoarticular business unit is sold. An exit Butterfly contributed to, and a case that wins the SMAU Innovation Award 2023; in 2025 the award comes again, with Neuraxpharm, a European pharmaceutical company specialised in the central nervous system. In 2023 Butterfly is also among the eleven Italian startups selected for the pitch contest at Web Summit in Lisbon, the startup competition of Europe’s largest tech conference. In 2024 it is chosen by the Italian Trade Agency and by ERA, the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, for an Italy-funded programme at one of the best accelerators on the US East Coast, in New York. And in 2025 comes the most unexpected and most prestigious result: at the European Defence Innovation Days in Kraków, the annual event of the European Defence Agency, Butterfly is one of six projects selected across Europe out of hundreds of applications, and the only Italian startup.

And scientific validation. Five peer-reviewed publications, that is in scientific journals with independent review, in which Butterfly appears in the methods as the tool the consensus was built with. In medicine, what counts is evidence that is published and reviewed: it is what enters the guidelines and guides clinicians’ choices. Butterfly appearing in the methods of five published studies means the way that consensus was built has passed the scrutiny of the scientific community.

Meanwhile the team grows. In December 2023 Giacomo Matrone joins as Head of Data Science, in charge of the data-analysis models: with him, data management, data security and the use of artificial intelligence are strengthened. In 2026 Raffaele Marino arrives, a physicist, Chief Scientific Officer, who leads the deeptech unit. Around them and Michele Criscuolo the team gains high-calibre commercial and scientific profiles.

December 2025, the round. The seed round, the first real investment round: €1.2 million led by Vertis SGR, a venture capital firm, with CDP Venture Capital and a pool of business angels; among them Geopharma’s shareholders and managers, who used Butterfly as clients and now invest in it.

2026, the next chapter. With the round’s capital Butterfly changes pace. In pharma the commercial activity widens: new clients and the first international project, in the United Kingdom. The deeptech and quantum unit is born, working on frontier technologies, and FARO, the product for intelligence and critical infrastructure, leaves the lab. Meanwhile comes a scientific validation of the highest profile: the international i-EUS consensus study on EUS-guided gastroenterostomy, an endoscopic procedure, is run on Butterfly by 66 experts and published in Endoscopy, one of the world’s most authoritative journals in gastroenterology (impact factor 11.8). Two accelerators choose Butterfly: PwC Scale Defence & Resilience Tech, PwC’s pan-European programme for defence, and UniCredit Start Lab. And the team flies to the United States to start laying the groundwork for commercial expansion: in January in San Francisco with ITA, during the week of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the world’s most important meeting between investors and healthcare companies; in March again in San Francisco with INNOVIT, the Italian innovation hub in Silicon Valley, in the DefenceTech, Space, Dual Use, Cybersecurity and Quantum cohort and at its Demo Day; then at BIO, the world’s largest biotech convention. The next chapter is defence, with a precise ambition: to become the reference decision-intelligence platform for healthcare, defence and critical infrastructure. More transparent, more reliable, European and sovereign.