We are proud to announce that Francesca Failoni, CFO and Co-Founder of ALPS, has been awarded the prestigious Premio GammaDonna 2025 - Italy's most recognised prize for innovative female entrepreneurship - in a ceremony held at the historic Palazzo Madama in Rome.
Now in its twentieth edition, the GammaDonna award celebrates Italian women who have built companies that are not only commercially successful, but that introduce new paradigms, create social value, and raise the bar for entrepreneurship at an international level. This year's jury singled out Francesca as the winner for demonstrating, through ALPS, that technology and sustainability can be two sides of the same coin.
Starting from an intuition formed in Trento at age 19 - that the surplus energy of underutilised Italian hydroelectric plants could be converted into computing power - Francesca co-founded ALPS alongside Francesco Buffa in 2018. What began as a pioneering experiment in the Alps has grown into one of the top ten Bitcoin mining companies in the world by volume, and the second most efficient globally. Today ALPS operates across Italy, Paraguay, Ecuador, Oman, and the United States, with over 250 MW of installed capacity and capital raised from institutional investors like Azimut.
"Female talent, when given the right conditions, is not an exception to be celebrated - it is a strategic resource for the growth of the economy and of society," said GammaDonna President Valentina Parenti at the ceremony. Francesca's recognition reflects exactly that: a founder who built real infrastructure in a field dominated by large incumbents, faced early scepticism, and responded with results.
For Francesca, the award is a milestone - but the journey continues. ALPS is entering 2026 with ambitions in growing compute demand, site expansions across all geographies, and a continued commitment to turning stranded energy into productive infrastructure for the world.
Congratulations, Francesca.
