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Cato
AI-native platform for finding, analysing and winning public tenders
Last verified September 10, 2026 · Updated daily
What Cato is building
Cato is software for the supplier side of public procurement, rebuilt around agents rather than bolted onto an existing tender-notice database. It monitors more than 27,000 sources in real time, filters and ranks tenders against a company's actual profile, extracts requirements and evaluation criteria out of dense legal documents, flags contradictions between documents before they can trigger a formal exclusion, and pre-fills the administrative, technical and financial envelopes using the company's own past submissions. The design decision that matters is traceability. Every generated claim traces back to its source, and the final submission stays in the customer's hands. In a workflow where a single inconsistency between two documents disqualifies a bid outright, a system that produces confident unsourced prose is worse than no system. Cato's product is closer to a compliance checker with drafting attached than to a writing assistant. The target user is the ufficio gara — the bid office — at companies whose largest customer is the state: medical devices, construction, IT, services. Those teams currently spend most of their working hours on document management rather than on writing a compelling offer, screening hundreds of notices a day across dozens of fragmented portals. Cato collapses search, analysis, drafting, task assignment and archiving into one workspace, and the recommendations sharpen with every tender run through it. They started in Italy deliberately. It is the hardest country in Europe to bid in, which is exactly why the pain is acute enough to pay for. The company now says it is extending into additional sectors and, on demand from existing multinational customers, beyond Italy's borders.
Why this matters
Public procurement is one of the last enormous unautomated workflows in the European economy. The company puts government contracts at roughly 14% of EU GDP, about €2.5 trillion a year across more than 250,000 contracting authorities. In Italy alone, Cato cites ANAC data putting public tenders at €309 billion in 2025, up 13.9% year on year. Against that, the supplier side has essentially had no software, let alone AI — Keen's Briehan Burke says exactly that, and it is the reason the round exists. The traction is unusually legible for a company this young. Incorporated 26 September 2025, first paying customer in October, €1.6M pre-seed closed by December, client base tripled from 11 to over 35 by the end of Q1 2026, 100+ companies in six months, thousands of tenders processed, most customers opening the platform daily. Citing ChartMogul's 2025 subscription benchmark, the company says it is growing faster than 95% of B2B SaaS worldwide. What makes the timing real rather than rhetorical is that this work was genuinely not automatable until recently. Too document-heavy, too legally specific, too Italian. The model capability arrived and a market with trillions of euros flowing through it had no incumbent software vendor standing in the way.
Open roles at Cato
10 positions we're tracking. Roles are re-checked daily and removed when filled.
Product Engineer (Milan)
First seen 2 days ago
AI Researcher (Milan)
First seen 2 days ago
Data Engineer (Milan)
First seen 2 days ago
Platform DevOps (Milan)
First seen 2 days ago
GTM Engineer
First seen 2 days ago
Customer Success
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SDR 🇮🇹 (Outbound)
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SDR 🇪🇸 (Outbound)
First seen 2 days ago
SDR Intern 🇮🇹 / 🇪🇸 (hybrid Milan or fully remote from Spain)
First seen 2 days ago
Junior Account Executive, SMEs 🇪🇸
First seen 2 days ago
Know when Cato is hiring before anyone else
A role stays uncontested for about four days. Here's the window — and where we put you in it.
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Watching Cato
0 applicantsRole spotted & verified
1You get the alert
1You've applied
~8Hits the job boards
250+Hiring outlook
Cato published a dedicated careers page titled 'Join Cato — We just raised €6M' listing ten-plus open roles across tech and business, in Italian and Spanish markets. The round's stated use of funds names growing the team, and they are simultaneously importing senior leadership: Luisa Gamba is joining from Amazon Business, where she led public-sector partnerships in Italy.
Working at Cato
Cato is a AI company based in Milan, Italy. For a AI company this size, the reality is opportunity to shape your role based on the company stage.
Most Cato jobs are based in Milan, Italy.
How to actually get hired at Cato
Why applying the normal way doesn't work
Cato uses an ATS, but referrals still come first. Cold applications aren't ignored — they're just behind referrals, sourced candidates, and recruiter picks.
Who to contact at Cato
What to show them
Go to an Italian public procurement portal, pull one real tender bundle — the disciplinare, the capitolato, the administrative forms — and build a contradiction detector. Not a summariser: a system that finds where two documents in the same bundle disagree about a deadline, a certification requirement, or a scoring weight, and cites both sources. Report precision and recall honestly on ten bundles, and write up the three categories of contradiction that broke it. That is Cato's core product claim, tested on their actual corpus, by you.
A cold email that works at Cato
What Cato screens for
Keen Venture Partners is an Amsterdam- and London-based firm leading a Milan seed, which means they are underwriting European expansion, not an Italian SaaS company. Burke's stated logic is that Italy is worth starting in precisely because it is the hardest place to bid — tens of thousands of SMBs whose biggest customer is the state, and no AI-native software helping them win. Every existing pre-seed investor came back in, and the angel list is Italian founders who have already built in adjacent regulated verticals: Lexroom, Sibill, Pillar. For a candidate, the window is the gap between a ten-person-ish team and the headcount this round buys, and the fastest-moving surface is the tech side, where they were reorganising the engineering plan at 1:50 a.m. on the day they decided they needed to.
Don't send a generic CV to Cato. Mirror the job posting's language to get past automated screening.
Don't make these mistakes
Do not pitch Andrea generic govtech enthusiasm or 'AI will transform the public sector.' He has a public policy degree, worked inside ministries in the UK and France, lived across London, Paris, Berlin, Washington and Hong Kong, and brought Plug and Play to Italy at 24 — he understands the institutional side better than almost anyone you will email. He also founded a startup in 2023 and publicly announced its failure in April 2025, so treating him as a first-time founder riding a hype wave will land badly. And do not treat this as a document-summarisation problem. Their whole product claim is traceability and contradiction-detection, because an inconsistency between two files disqualifies a bid outright. Bring something specific about verification, not about generation.
Mistakes that kill Cato applications
At people, a copy-paste CV is immediately obvious. It's an instant no.
Lead with their problem, not your ambition. Cato is focused on Public procurement is one of the last enormous unautomated workflows in the European economy — show you understand that.
Don't apply and wait. The median AI application gets no response ever. One follow-up at day five roughly doubles reply rates.
Applying to Cato? Get the contact, not the form.
The Cato interview process
4 stages · 14 days typical · take-home: yes · modelled from similar companies
We don't yet have verified candidate reports for Cato. What follows is the typical process for a -person AI company — treat it as a model, not confirmed detail.
Interview stages
Recruiter Screen
Phone or video · 30 min
Basic qualification and logistics
Recruiter or HR
Hiring Manager Interview
Video call · 45 min
Role fit and experience deep-dive
Hiring manager
Technical/Functional Round
Video call · 60 min
Skills assessment and problem-solving
Team members
Final Round
In-person or video · 60 min
Culture fit and cross-functional alignment
Senior leadership
Cato take-home assignment
Cato includes a take-home exercise in their interview process. For AI roles, this typically involves a practical problem that takes 2-4 hours. Focus on clean, working code over premature optimization. They're evaluating how you think and communicate, not just the solution.
Cato interview timeline
At days, Cato's process is about average than typical for AI (14 days at this size).
Interviewed at Cato?
Tell us how it went — stages, questions, timeline. Takes 90 seconds and it's how this page stays accurate for the next person.
Submit your Cato interview experience →Cato jobs, frequently asked questions
How many jobs does Cato have open?
Cato currently has 10 open roles, last verified September 2026.
Does Cato hire remotely?
Currently, Cato only has in-office roles in Milan, Italy.
What roles is Cato hiring for?
Cato is hiring across Engineering, Data, Customer, Sales. The most recent opening is Product Engineer (Milan).
How do I apply for a job at Cato?
Apply directly through the links above, or read our guide on how to actually get hired at Cato.
Does Cato respond to cold emails?
We're still collecting cold email data for Cato.
Who is the hiring manager at Cato?
At this size, hiring is usually run by the hiring manager.
How competitive is it to get hired at Cato?
Expect 100-250 applicants in the first two weeks for AI roles at this size. Apply within 72 hours for best odds.
How many rounds is the Cato interview?
4 stages: Recruiter Screen, Hiring Manager Interview, Technical/Functional Round, Final Round.
Is the Cato interview hard?
It concentrates on technical depth and system design rather than abstract puzzles. The stage candidates find hardest is Technical Interview.
Does Cato give a take-home task?
Yes, Cato includes a take-home assignment.
How long does Cato take to get back to you?
Around 14 days across the full process.
What should I prepare for the Cato interview?
Study technical depth and system design. At this size (), they care about self-sufficiency over textbook knowledge.
Where is Cato based?
Cato is headquartered in Milan, Italy.
Get Cato roles before they're posted
A role stays uncontested for about four days. Here's the window — and where we put you in it.
From $9/month, cancel any time.
Watching Cato
0 applicantsRole spotted & verified
1You get the alert
1You've applied
~8Hits the job boards
250+