Every company says it hires the best people. Nova has tried to put a number on it.
Its Talent Density Score ranks companies by the strength of the people who work there today, drawn from the more than 800 million professional profiles Nova ranks. Cardo AI scored 86.1 and enters Italy’s top ten scale-ups by talent density, alongside some of the best known names in the country’s tech scene.
What the score measures
The score is not about brand, funding or headcount. It is the average talent of every person currently working at a company.
Each individual score is built from four pillars: experience, education, international exposure and languages. These are weighted by career stage, so a junior analyst and a senior engineer are assessed on different terms.
The scale runs from 0 to 100, where 100 is the strongest company Nova ranks today. It moves with the market rather than with Nova.
What 86.1 actually means
Nova places every company in the segments it belongs to. Here is where Cardo AI sits in each:
- Among companies our size (1 to 200 employees): 672nd out of 34,140. Fewer than 700 small companies in the ranking score higher.
- In technology: 673rd out of 16,687 firms. The average technology company scores 67.8, so we sit 18.3 points above it.
- In financial services: 393rd out of 9,780 firms, against an average of 65.2.
Put simply, of every 100 companies of our size that Nova measured, 98 have a lower talent density than we do.
Italy’s top ten scale-ups by Talent Density Score
| Rank | Company |
|---|---|
| 1 | Circeus |
| 2 | Bending Spoons |
| 3 | AIKO |
| 4 | Axyon AI |
| 5 | Agile Lab |
| 6 | Domyn |
| 7 | Empatica |
| 8 | indigo.ai |
| 9 | Cardo AI |
| 10 | Cubbit |
Source: Nova Talent Density, data updated August 2026.
Why it matters to us
Private credit and asset-based finance are complex markets. Building infrastructure for them takes people who understand both the technology and the finance, and who can work across borders and languages with clients in different markets.
That is the team we have tried to build. It is good to see an independent, data-led measure reflect it.
A score is a snapshot, not a finish line. Talent density moves one hire at a time, and every person who joins shapes the next number.
If you want to work alongside this team, take a look at our open roles. Join us.