Dealflow.es #438: Fever valued at €2.1B. Matteco raised €15M. Pétalo.

Welcome to the #438 edition of Dealflow.es: a weekly summary of everything that happened in the Spanish startup and tech investing ecosystem.

Oct 28, 2024

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Startup funding news 💸

Madrid-based Jobandtalent secured €250M in financing from Barclays and Fasanara Capital, potentially extendable to €350M, backed by pending invoices. This replaces a prior €226M credit line from Citi and Goldman Sachs, set to expire in early 2025. Additionally, Jobandtalent is seeking long-term alternatives to a €340M loan from BlackRock

Valencia-based cleantech startup Matteco, co-founded by Iker Marcaide, has raised €15M in a Series A round led by impact investors Grupo ASV, Napali, and Zubi. Funds will support a new factory in Valencia, aiming to produce up to 1 gigawatt of electrodes annually for global clients in the renewable hydrogen sector

Bilbao-based Legit Health, a startup that uses AI to optimize dermatological diagnoses, raised a round led by Mutua Madrileña. Wayra and Angels also participated

Thomas Meyer, founder of Desigual, invested in fashion startup Laagam

M&A transasctions 🎉

Part of the story of the Magnific acquisition, told by Javi Lopez. He initially offered the product for free to Midjourney's CEO. After seeing positive feedback, he nearly gave it away again. Upon launching, Magnific gained traction, even receiving acquisition offers from companies like Freepik and Adobe. While Adobe declined due to tech reasons, Freepik later acquired Magnific. Freepik’s first offer was €1M, which the team declined. The size of the final transactions has yet to be revealed

Diego Mariño and David Bonilla announced Pétalo: “la empresa de M&A que nos hubiera gustado encontrar cuando compraron nuestras compañías. El compañero perfecto para superar la siguiente etapa del viaje”

Spanish VR company Virtualware has acquired Swedish firm Simumatik for €1.37M to enhance its 3D and digital twin capabilities for industrial applications. The acquisition includes €450,000 in cash and 110,000 Virtualware shares

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

Atresmedia has sold a 2.7% stake in Fever, generating €59M in proceeds and a 7X return. This sale, valuing Fever at over €2B, follows a prior partial exit in 2023 when Fever was valued at €1.6B. Despite these sales, Atresmedia still has a 5% stake in Fever

Axon Partners Group is set to raise up to €250M for its new fund, Axon Innovation Growth II. Axon plans an initial close of €100-120M by year-end. The fund will make investments between €5M and €20M in companies across Spain, Italy, and other European markets

Buenavista Equity Partners, formerly GED Capital, has secured €100M in the first close of its BV Healthcare Growth Innvierte I fund, targeting a €150M cap. The fund will invest in growth-stage healthcare companies

Antai is preparing to launch its 2nd venture debt fund, of €75M. Scheduled for early 2025, the fund will offer tickets between €500k and €3M. This is Antai's second venture debt vehicle, following a €37M fund launched in 2021

Scipio Swanlaab SF SCR, a Spanish search fund targeting SME acquisitions, has completed its first close with €10M in capital. Formed through a partnership between Scipio Capital and Swanlaab Venture Factory, the fund has already made two strategic acquisitions in Italy and Australia

Spanish stock exchange operator BME has partnered with EsTech, a platform for high-growth tech companies like Cabify and Glovo, to improve financing access for scaleups—businesses with annual revenue growth over 20% in the past three years

Spanish investors active abroad:

Asabys participated in the €82M Series D of Belgian biotech company Agomab. The company has an R&D centre in Touro, Galicia
LifeX participated in a $6.5M round closed by Dash. The company aims to help drug companies make faster decisions
Telefónica Brasil, through Vivo Ventures, invested €1.4M in agritech fintech Agrolend, which finances small and medium producers in Brazil
BBVA Spark signed a financing agreement of up to €25M with Mexican fintech Bravo, specialized in financial advisory and debt management

Startup news 💡

Company financials:

Ramon Eixarch, CEO and co-founder of Barcelona-based Wiris, acquired the remaining 25% of the company from VC funds Inveready and Athos Capital. The funds, which joined Wiris in 2017 to support its acquisition of U.S.-based Design Science, exited with a reported 4X return. Wiris, known for its math content tools like MathType, recorded €8M in revenue in 2023
Profile of Emuca, a Spanish company specializing in hardware and accessories for the furniture industry. The company is 40 years old and has transformed its business through digitalization, launching B2B and B2C channels and building a presence on Amazon and 28 other marketplaces. The company operates in over 50 countries, manages 7,000 product references, and employs 200 people, achieving an annual revenue of €85M
Alicante-based digital identity company Facephi reported a 20% revenue increase to €11.7M for the first half of 2024, investing €2.3M to enhance production and product quality. The company’s EBITDA improved by 10%
A Coruña-based 60días, a company specializing in VAT recovery for B2B, achieved €8.5M in revenue in 2023 and aims to reach €12M by the end of 2024. The company processes 80,000 receipts daily to convert expenses like transport into tax-deductible invoices
Danny Saltaren shared that Modulor Ventures (the holding company that owns MendelSaltaren, Minimumrun and other entities) will do €7.5M in revenue this year, up from €6M last year. Also, the company made public its Design Handbook, a report that documents Modulo’s processes
A Coruña-based 60días, a company specializing in VAT recovery for B2B, achieved €8.5M in revenue in 2023 and aims to reach €12M by the end of 2024. The company processes 80,000 receipts daily to convert expenses like transport into tax-deductible invoices

Startup profiles:

Profile of Submer the deeptech startup specializing in energy-efficient solutions for data centers, which recently secured a €50M funding round led by M&G, raising its estimated valuation to €250M.
Profile of LuzIA, the AI-powered educational assistant for Spain and LatAm, that has attracted €30M in investment from international funds

Product/company launches:

Startup Vidiv developed a voice agent named Victoria that optimizes the work of sales teams, allowing for real-time qualification and personalized attention to clients
Vuala launched its API, enabling software integration for automatic invoice extraction

Odilo's founder and ex-CEO, Rodrigo Rodríguez, has been removed from his role as CEO following investor-driven allegations of accounting fraud and tax issues, now under investigation by the Spanish Fiscalía. Rodríguez, who denies the charges, claims conflicts arose over the growth strategy, with investors pressing for an acquisition-focused model. More info here. Business Insider talked to former employees of the company who critize the working environment. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, other employees launched a change.org campaign backing Rodrigo’s return to the company

Destinia, a major Spanish online travel agency, ended its partnership with Trivago due to a new fixed-cost model that would double their fees, affecting approximately 10% of Destinia's revenue. Destinie did €235M in sales last year. Trivago’s shift from variable to fixed commissions aims to offset Google's growing dominance in hotel bookings, impacting smaller agencies

The restructuring administrator for Jeff has identified an increased debt hole (€52M) following adjustments in the company's accounts. This assessment reveals a larger financial gap than previously estimated, impacting creditor recovery in the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings

10 deep tech stars from Spain selected to become European unicorns, as part of the EIC Scaling Club

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Big company & policy news 🤓

According to a survey, Revolut has surged ahead of traditional Spanish banks, capturing 19.8% of new client accounts, compared to BBVA (12.9%), Santander (12.5%), and CaixaBank (9.9%). With 3.5M users in Spain, Revolut has grown significantly from 0.1% of new accounts in 2020

BlaBlaCar integrated the sale of Renfe and Iryo tickets into its platform

BBVA Asset Management launched BBVA Mercados Privados VIII 2024, a €50M fund of funds focused on private equity, infrastructure, and private debt. The diversified vehicle allows investments starting at €50K, aiming to make illiquid assets more accessible

BBVA launched a pilot project within Spain’s financial sandbox to explore blockchain applications by tokenizing a short-term fixed-income fund

Banco Santander has partnered with US fund Forgepoint to launch Forgepoint Capital International, committing €300M to invest in cybersecurity and AI startups. Not sure if this is actual news, because Santander announced a partnership with Forgepoint years ago. Perhaps this is the second fund out of that partnership, but the articles out there don’t clarity this

Zara launched its second-hand clothing platform, 'Zara Pre-Owned', in the US

Interview with Jordi Ribas, Microsoft's VP leading Bing and AI efforts. He discusses the company's ongoing competition with Google

Interesting reads 🤓

Crescenta and EY estimate that the Spanish retail private equity market could reach €43 billion, with high interest in technology (64%) and energy (56%). Based on a survey of 590 investors, 67% of those familiar with private equity are open to investing. The report highlights the growing accessibility of PE to retail investors in Spain, driven by regulatory changes and technological advances

Jorge Galindo, founder of 47Degrees, wrote “Scaling Challenges: Key Points of Collapse“

Diego Recondo, GP at Acurio Ventures (formerly All Iron), published “Raising a VC fund successfully in the current tough market: lessons learned and insights (part 1: getting ready)“