Filippo Surace: The Visionary Behind Italy’s Healthcare Venture Revolution

From surgeon to life sciences entrepreneur, Filippo Surace is charting a new course for healthcare innovation—one that connects academic brilliance with real-world impact.

Filippo Surace is not your typical healthcare executive. A trained physiatrist, surgeon, and inventor, his path into entrepreneurship was paved by a deep awareness of the systemic gaps between research and real-world application. Today, as Co-Founder and CEO of Cube Labs S.p.A., Surace is leading one of Europe’s most innovative responses to this challenge—a venture builder that bridges the “lab-to-market” divide in healthcare.

Surace’s vision for Cube Labs was sparked during his time as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Temple University’s College of Bioscience and Technology in Philadelphia. Immersed in a dynamic American ecosystem where academic discoveries regularly translated into market-ready solutions, he recognised the limitations back home in Italy: world-class research hampered by fragmented infrastructure, limited funding, and regulatory red tape.

Where others saw a structural deadlock, Surace saw opportunity. He returned to Italy with a mission: to design a new kind of platform—one capable of turning Italian ingenuity into global health solutions. Alongside partners Renato Del Grosso and Massimo Fiocchi, he founded Cube Labs as Italy’s first dedicated healthcare venture builder, with a fully integrated innovation model.

Surace’s leadership is rooted in executional excellence. He introduced a platformised model that goes beyond early-stage funding to offer IP strategy, regulatory planning, clinical navigation, and business development—all under one coordinated structure. The company originates ventures in-house and remains actively involved in their evolution, allowing researchers to focus on discovery while Cube Labs handles commercialisation.

Under Surace’s tenure, Cube Labs has achieved standout milestones. It launched 17 companies, brought two products to market, and secured its IPO on the Milan Stock Exchange—where its stock has risen over 15% and attracted optimistic projections from analysts. The company’s equity portfolio is now valued at €53.7mn, reflecting a disciplined but ambitious growth trajectory.

But Surace is not driven by financial metrics alone. His ethos is centred on accessibility and impact. “Innovation,” he says, “only has value when it reaches the people who need it most.” That principle guides Cube Labs’ focus on rare diseases, neglected conditions, and circular economy principles. It also underpins its expansion into emerging markets like India, through a landmark partnership with Modi Global Enterprises.

His commitment to ethical innovation is matched by global recognition. Surace has led Cube Labs to numerous awards, including CFI.co’s 2025 accolade and the Innovation Award from Milano Finanza. A respected thought leader, he continues to advocate for a venture-building approach that not only accelerates science but also ensures equity in healthcare access.

Surace’s own journey is a lesson in transformation—from academic and clinician to entrepreneur and system-builder. In a country known more for tradition than disruption, he has created an engine for health innovation with the potential to scale globally. Through Cube Labs, Filippo Surace is proving that with the right model, the next generation of life-changing therapies doesn’t have to stay in the lab—they can start there, but they end in the hands of patients, where they belong.