This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Felix Lopez’s “Engineering Manager Academy”:

La Engineering Manager Academy es una academia cuyo principal objetivo es formar a líderes en ingeniería, tanto managers como tech leads. Es una academia diferente basada en experiencias reales, dónde aprenderás todo aquello que no te enseña la teoría.

Fundada por Félix López, un destacado líder en ingeniería con más de 23 años de experiencia en la industria tecnológica. Su carrera abarca una amplia gama de industrias, aplicaciones de cambio de divisas, videojuegos, sistemas de alto rendimiento o el sistema operativo Android. Durante estos años ha trabajado en startups, scale-ups o empresas como Google, donde ha desempeñado puestos como Tech leader, Engineering Manager, Manager de Managers, Director de ingeniería y VP de Ingeniería. Es precisamente esta experiencia lo que le lleva a crear la Academía para Engineering Managers, por la que han pasado cientos de managers y empresas en los últimos 4 años. 

Actualmente cuenta con dos cursos:

• Tech Lead / Principal

• Engineering Manager 

Startup funding news 💸

Barcelona-based fintech SeQura has secured €410M through a combination of debt and equity financing from Citi, M&G, Chenavari, and Svea Bank.

Barcelona-based orthodontic technology company Impress has raised €110M in a funding round backed by investors including Trinity Capital Inc., CareCapital, LBO France, and TA Ventures. The funds will support the opening of over 20 flagship clinics by 2025 and strengthen its position in the European market

Vigo-based fintech Marosa has secured €12M from Aquiline Capital Partners to accelerate its growth and expand its VAT compliance and e-invoicing offerings. Founded in 2017, Marosa serves over 1,200 clients across Europe with its cloud-based software, VATify

Mallorca-based biopharmaceutical company Laminar Pharma has raised €5.9M, led by Alicante-based family offices and OK Venture. The funds will support the development of Lam561, an oral drug targeting glioblastoma, a highly aggressive brain tumor

Barcelona-based biotech company Biorce has raised €3.5M to advance the development of its AI model, Jarvis, which aims to streamline data accessibility in clinical trials. The funding round was led by YZR Capital and Mustard Seed Maze

Recruitment technology startup Viterbit is preparing a funding round of €6-8M in early 2025 to accelerate its international growth

M&A transasctions 🎉

Spanish renewable energy group Maspv Energy plans to go public on the Nasdaq, aiming to raise up to $250M (€230M) through the sale of 10-20% of its Chinese subsidiary. This move supports Maspv’s growth in China, now its key market, where it operates as an independent power producer (IPP)

Spanish fintech group Orbyn, owner of Fellow Funders, has acquired Dozen Investments, a Barcelona-based investment platform previously known as The Crowd Angel, following approval from Spain's CNMV

Italian group Maggioli has acquired a 51% stake in Spanish tech startup Wardem, a digital growth agency specializing in advanced analytics, AI, and marketing. The remaining 49% remains with its founders. More info here

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

Portuguese VC firm Bynd has launched its third fund, valued at €40M, to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage tech startups in Spain and Portugal. Investors include Fond-ICO and others

The European Investment Fund (EIF) has invested €28M in deeptech fund Bullnet Capital IV. With this investment, the fund now exceeds €80M and plans to invest in 17-18 innovative tech companies, including spin-offs from Spanish universities and research centers

Five Spanish, early-stage deep tech companies have made it into the SynergistEIC project, funded by the EU: Cedrion, Greendur, Microfy Systems, Planetai Space and Sens Solutions

Spanish investors active abroad:

• Cardumen participated in the $13.3M round raised by Alison.ai, an Israeli startup specializing in AI-driven video advertising
  

Startup news 💡

Startup and product launches:

• Qu-an is a new startup building an “AI clinical assistant built by clinicians for clinicians”

• Invofox introduced Custom Documents on Product Hunt, a tool that transforms various file types into structured, verified data within seconds

• Freepik introduced Tunes, an AI voice generator and royalty-free music, curated by real people

• Latitude open sourced the prompt template language they use at the company: promptl

• Kloutit introduced an AI-driven tool to combat chargebacks in e-commerce

Digital marketing holding Viko forecasts €22M in revenue and €3.4M EBITDA for 2024. To reach those objectives, the company plans to do more acquisitions in 2025 after purchasing IDE360, a pharma-focused marketing firm

Interview with the founders of travel tech company Mogu, Héctor García and Alberto Asuero. The company offers a SaaS platform for organizing and selling group trips and currently has €631k in ARR

Belvo, a leading open finance platform in Latin America, said that it has processed over 2 million direct debit payments in Mexico since launching this service in January 2024

Nextail, a retail technology company, has appointed Carlos Miragall as its new CEO

Tequila Works, the Madrid-based developer known for games like Rime, has filed for insolvency due to prolonged market challenges. In 2022, it secured investment from Tencent, and though it laid off a number of staff last month, the cuts were seemingly not enough to keep the studio afloat

La Informacion published an article about Spanish bootstrapped companies that have exited, highlighting Besoccer, Milanuncios, Freepik, Magnific and others

Startup and entrepreneur profiles:

• Yago Arbeloa and MioGroup: the company did €73M in sales in 2023 and he’s also an active investor through Viriditas

• 011h: the construction startup co-founded by Lucas Carné (Privalia), focuses on digitalizing the building industry

• Kaleidos: the article focuses on Kaleidos’ culture. The operates under a fully employee-owned, democratic model where staff members control all decisions, from internal management to office design. The article also highlights how the design of their new office (done by 2BOLD, sponsors of Dealflow 2 weeks ago) contributes to this

• Brick, a Spanish app developer spun off from Leadtech, has achieved over 40M monthly downloads across its 10 applications, including hits like Video Up! and ScanShot

Two lists:

• El Referente put together a list of 25 Spanish female entrepreneurs to watch in 2025. The report notes that only 17% of Spanish startups are founded by women

• Also, they published a list of 15 Spanish traveltech startups to keep an eye on in 2024

¡Premios EmprendeXXI, 18 años impulsando el potencial infinito!

Iniciativa impulsada por CaixaBank y ENISA en España, que en esta edición lo celebramos por todo lo alto, repartiendo 8000.000€ en premios, acompañamiento y visibilidad, para aquellos que, paso a paso, están cambiando el mundo

Big company & policy news 🤓

Barcelona-based Openchip, a joint venture between GTD and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, aims to produce its first microprocessor prototype by 2026 as part of efforts to boost Europe’s digital sovereignty. Backed by €111M from Next Generation EU funds and a €96M bank guarantee, the company is expanding its team to 200 employees by 2025. The chips, targeting fields like AI, genomics, and energy, will be manufactured in Europe or Taiwan

ACS plans to establish a new division dedicated to data centers, aiming to become a global leader in the sector

VisionLab has launched AI-driven Kümer lenses, personalized using data from over 70,000 customers to optimize vision based on individual habits and needs

Mango has launched Mango StartUp Studio, an accelerator to help startups scale and innovate in the fashion industry

Telefónica's Venezuelan subsidiary will pay an $85M fine in the US for bribing Venezuelan officials to secure favorable currency exchange rates in 2014. The scheme involved inflated equipment purchases, enabling access to over $110M in US dollars

Interesting reads 🤓

EsTech, the platform launched by Adigital, and Deloitte published a report called “El Ecosistema scaleup en España 2024” (available here). Spanish scaleups have generated €9.77B in economic impact and employ 65,000 professionals. The report emphasizes the strategic importance of these companies for Spain’s economic transformation

IE Business School and Esade have ranked 4th and 7th globally in the 2025 Poets & Quants list of top business schools for entrepreneurs

Ignacio Arriaga published “Incentivos: cuando los bonus los carga el diablo“

Jose del Barrio and Carmen Sanchez (Samaipata) published “AI is shaking up the software market, for the better“