Dealflow #521: DH (Glovo) sold to Uber. Wenea & Kintai raised €10M. ACS and OpenChip.
A weekly summary of everything that happened in the Spanish startup and tech investing ecosystem.
The biggest news of the week was Uber’s takeover bid for Delivery Hero, owner of Glovo. As a result of the transaction and to avoid antitrust action, DH will sell the Spanish business of Glovo (as well as its divisions in Portugal, Poland, Romania and Moldova) to SSW Partners for €1.4B.
Uber made a cash offer of €13B for 100% of Delivery Hero, or €41.50 per share. The price is still well below the €98 exchange price at which Glovo was sold to DH in 2021. Closing is expected in H2 2027.
SSW Partners, which will be the new owner of Glovo, openly says it will hold the assets and then find them “the best homes.”
In essence, Glovo gets split in two: Uber keeps Italy, Eastern Europe and Africa; SSW gets Iberia and Eastern EU markets.
The impact of the deal on the Spanish tech ecosystem has different angles:
According to Ecotechers, Seaya, which backed Glovo very early on, still held ~412,000 DH shares and would cash out around €17M in this transaction, taking total Glovo proceeds above €40M, roughly a 2.6x multiple on its investment. I believe that the Seaya fund that backed Glovo was a €100M fund
Employees: Glovo has 1.8k full time employees in Spain and thousands of riders, who will now depend on SSW. Hopefully employees will be able to cash out in this transaction. SSW also inherits Glovo’s rider-reclassification liabilities, which amount to millions of euros
Founding team and key execs: I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an exodus of key employees (even the Glovo founders?) in the very near future. I’m sure many of those will go on to create new startups or join existing ones, which is good news for the overall ecosystem
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Startup funding news 💸
€10M+ rounds:
Wenea, the Madrid-based EV charging infra company, raised €10M from Impact Bridge and Fundeen. Wenea operates over 4k chargers in Spain and the UK
Kintai, a Barcelona-based fintech specializing in working-capital financing for SMEs, raised a €10M Series A led by Barlon Capital, with participation from Prosegur, TQ Eurocredit, ICF and other investors. Kintai has financed over €150M for around 1,000 companies and targets €10M+ revenue in 2026. More info here
€1M to €5M rounds:
Inventia Kinetics, a Madrid and Sevilla-based startup in the aerospace and defense sectors, raised €5M in venture debt from Inveready
Time is Brain, a Barcelona-based medtech, raised €3M. Their tech enables continuous neurological monitoring
Arq Quantum Technologies, a Barcelona-based quantum company, raised a $1.4M pre-seed round led by Ground State Ventures, with participation from Big Sur Ventures
Sensesbit, a Lugo-based SaaS to analyse industrial processes, raised €1M from Clave Capital, Eoniq Fund, WindOne Consultores, and Paraíso Natural Ventures (Central Lechera Asturiana). More info here
Other rounds of funding:
EZTEN, the €50M fund created by the Basque government, invested in Walter Pack, a Bizkaia-based manufacturer of decorative and functional plastic parts
M&A news 🎉
ACS is in advanced talks to become the lead shareholder of Openchip, the Catalan chip startup valued at ~€700M. ACS would take a 40–45% stake, joining Spain’s SETT (€115M, ~16%) and the Generalitat (5%)
Veridas (Spain) and Fourthline (Netherlands) merged to build a European giant fighting digital identity fraud. The deal was backed by Finch Capital and Rabo Investments. Veridas was born in 2017 as a joint venture participated by BBVA, which will retain its stake in the merged company
Profile of TeamSystem, an Italian company that sells software to SMEs and that has been quite active in Spain in the past few years. It has acquired nine Spanish companies since 2021, including Billin, Quipu, Acumbamail and Software Delsol
Barcelona-based Badi merged with Caterina to create a flexible-housing platform managing a portfolio of over €250M
Startup news 💡
Submer announced it will invest over €1B to develop a large-scale data center in Flix (Tarragona)
Cala launched Cala for Finance, a verified data layer built for banks, funds, fintechs and brokers deploying AI agents. More info here
Bit2Me expanded beyond crypto, adding nearly 3,000 traditional assets: stocks, funds and ETFs
The government just started pulling Holaluz’s license to sell electricity after months of unpaid market charges. Its ~300k customers could get handed over to the big guys, Iberdrola, Endesa & co
Civitatis expanded its alliance with Disney to sell tickets and activities at Walt Disney World Orlando. Vitruvian Partners has invested €150M in the company since 2022
Maisa opened a new office in Barcelona as part of an expansion plan spanning several Spanish and US cities
Substrate AI reported H1 revenue of €9.39M, down 14.9% YoY, though net turnover rose 5.2% to €8.5M. Substrate recently closed a €39.2M round, including €19.2M from the government via SETT
N26 appointed Nathalie Picquot as its new Chief Growth and Marketing Officer. She previously led Twitter in Iberia and spent 5 years at Santander
Indexa Capital reported its H1 2026 returns, with the average portfolio returning 12.2%
Profile of Wonderful and Gonzalo Torres, the country manager of the AI automation unicorn. The startup has raised €300M to date and plans to expand its Spain and Portugal team from around 20 people to 100 by the end of the year
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VC news 🚀
New funds:
Acurio Ventures closed its secondaries fund at €115M. Smart move from Acurio, since liquidity and DPI is a common need among European (and global) VC firms. More info here
Caixa Capital Risc rebranded as Criteria Capital Risc and plans to invest €300M through 2030 in tech and biotech startups, focusing on Spain and Portugal
Eoniq Venture Capital plans a new €50M vehicle targeting early-stage tech startups in robotics, AI, software, foodtech, and energy transition. Its first fund was €15.8M
Activity from public entities:
2025 accounts of ICO's Next Tech fund show a portfolio split in two. Its fund-of-funds positions hold value, but direct investments fared worse
CDTI Innovación, through Innvierte, closed 7 coinvestment deals in June totaling €20.8M
Spanish investors active abroad:
We (Kfund) participated in the €3.2M seed round of Pollen, a Lisbon-based startup building a universal battery-swapping network for electric mopeds and motorcycles
Telefónica sold part of its stake in AI startup Perplexity, booking a €3.5M gain
Carmen Alfonso-Rico, a Spanish investor based in London who founded VC firm Cocoa Ventures, announced she is joining portfolio company Fractile full time
Big company news 🏢
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AI impact:
Konecta, Spain’s biggest call center, is feeling the impact of AI: 11,000 layoffs, 10,000 more planned, €1B in debt. Hacienda, one of its customers, is insourcing its phone service after 25 years without absorbing the 1,000 Konecta workers running it, which is creating tension with the unions
How Inditex uses AI
Santander partnered with US startup Sierra to deploy AI across its operations
Uber Eats continues to operate with self-employed couriers six months after pledging to abandon the model. Spain’s Labour Ministry warned it could revive criminal action against executives
Spanish banking association Ceca, which groups banks including CaixaBank, Unicaja, Abanca, Ibercaja and Kutxabank, developed a shared diagnostic tool to counter Mythos, Anthropic’s AI model capable of detecting software vulnerabilities
Ubisoft launched a mass layoff at its Barcelona studio, cutting 51 workers who helped build Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced
Interesting reads 🤓
Analysis of the Valencian startup ecosystem
Latitude published “I made 5 frontier models run 410 coding tasks. Coding ability is not what separates them.”