Dealflow.es #506: Lace Litography raised €40M. Securitize Nasdaq plans. Founder secondaries.
A weekly summary of everything that happened in the Spanish startup and tech investing ecosystem.
Welcome to another edition of Dealflow. If you’ve been forwarded this email but you’re not a subscriber, please subscribe. And if you’re interested in sponsorship opportunities, send me an email at jaime@dealflow.es and I’ll share more details
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Crescenta:
Steve Jobs decía que la calidad es la cantidad de veces que dices que «no». En el mundo de la inversión, decir sí a todo es la forma más rápida de perder dinero.
En Crescenta, no solo damos acceso al Private Equity, damos selección.
Nuestro equipo analiza cientos de fondos de capital privado al año, pero le dicen que no al 97%.
Solo nos quedamos con el top 3% y construimos una cartera diversificada a la que puedes acceder con una sola inversión.
Desde 10.000 euros hasta millones, desde minoristas hasta inversores profesionales.
Startup funding news 💸
€10M+ rounds:
Barcelona and Norway-based Lace Litography raised €40M led by Atomico to further develop a technology that could enable significant advances in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Spanish investment fund SETT also participated in the round. The company expects a pilot by 2029. More from its co-founder and CTO Adrià Salvador here
Valencia-based Arkadia Space secured €14.5M from the European Innovation Council Accelerator for its green propulsion technology. The funding includes €2.5M grant, €6M equity from EIC Fund, and €6M private investment. Arkadia Space develops hydrogen peroxide-based propulsion systems to replace toxic hydrazine fuels
€2M to €10M rounds:
Elche-based PLD Space complemented its recent €180M round with an additional €10M in from private investors through equity crowdfunding platform Sego Venture
Certuma is Martin Varsavsky’s new startup. It launched out of stealth with $10M round led by 8VC to build the first FDA-approved AI doctor. It has employees in the US, Spain and Argentina
Barcelona-based Galtea raised $3.2M in seed funding led by 42CAP, with participation from Mozilla Ventures and existing investors. Galtea is an AI evaluation infrastructure provider that addresses testing bottlenecks to deploy agents in the enterprise
€1M to €2M rounds:
Madrid-based TuringDream, developers of a world model ecosystem, secured €2M from SETT
Madrid-based Airflows raised €2M in a round led by Adara Ventures with participation from Armilar Venture Partners. Airflows converts AI into deterministic, auditable software systems for the enterprise environments
IONLY, a Valencia-based lithium battery startup, closed a €1.2M funding round led by Angels
Other rounds of funding:
Cocopool, the Barcelona-based platform for hourly private pool rentals, raised €435k in funding
Valladolid-based 53Biologics closed a round led by European PE firm Ren Life Sciences, with participation from existing investors including Spanish fund Inveready. 54Biologics specializes in developing and manufacturing biological drugs
M&A news 🚀
Floating on the Nasdaq is still the plan. Securitize, the asset tokenization startup founded by former Telefónica executive Carlos Domingo, plans to go public on Nasdaq between April and May through a SPAC merger valuing the company at $1.25B. Also last week, the company teamed up with the NYSE to develop a tokenized securities platform, marking a significant step toward blockchain-based trading infrastructure. Carlos Domingo wrote about it here
Amazing story, which was first disclosed last week. Indian gaming giant Nazara acquired 50% of Barcelona-based BlueTile Games for $100M, with an option for the remaining 50% by 2028. The bootstrapped studio, founded by Raymond Albaladejo and Marc Schüetze, generated $153M in revenue and $27.7M EBITDA in 2024 without VC backing. With potential earn-outs, the total deal could reach $300M, making it one of Spain’s largest gaming exits alongside Social Point
British job search platform Adzuna acquired the jobs divisions of Trovit and Mitula from Lifull Connect. The deal strengthens Adzuna’s presence in over 50 countries, including key markets like Spain and Italy. Lifull Connect was formed in 2019 as the unification of Trovit (then owned by Next Co., later LIFULL Co. LTD) and Mitula Group, in a deal valued at €118M. With this acquisition, Adzuna cherry-picks the jobs verticals while the fate of the remaining classifieds brands remains unclear
Profile of Visma, the Norwegian private equity-backed company that acquired Holded in 2021, has become a key buyer of Spanish software companies with five acquisitions in four years (Holded, Declarando, Woffu, Quaderno, TuGesto). The publications says that sources indicate a new operation is in preparation
German tech investor Maguar Capital acquired a significant stake in GlobalSuite Solutions, marking its first investment in Spain. GlobalSuite spcealices in GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) software solutions. More info here
Kaze Technologies, a Madrid-based tech consultancy firm, said that it will like to go public by late 2028. It expects to have €150M+ in sales by then, through organic growth and strategic M&A
Investor & accelerator news 🚀
Spanish investors active abroad:
At Kfund we co-led a €9.5M Series A round in Brazilian healthtech Bliss. The startup automates health insurance sales for SMEs. We wrote about the investment here
BrainGrid raised €1M in pre-seed funding led by Menlo Ventures, with the participation from Spanish investor Next Tier Ventures
Ysios Capital launched InceptionBio, a €100M fund targeting early-stage biotech company creation in Spain
SeedRocket announced its 17th Campus for Business Angels program, scheduled for April 20-22 and 24 in hybrid format
Startup news 💡
Startup financials
Kai Brandt, CEO and co-founder of Enginy (Genesy), disclosed that the startup reached €3M in ARR last year and that it hit an MRR record in February. He explains how they’re aiming to get to €10M in ARR this year. Kfund is an investor in Enginy
Indexa Capital tripled its net profit to €2.37M in 2025, with consolidated revenues growing 43% to €9.44M. The BME Growth-listed robo-advisor increased assets under management 45% to €4.41B, receiving over €1B in net contributions
Fintech startup Gibobs boosted revenue 120% last year, managing over €1.8B in mortgage transactions—nine times more than two years ago. Since launch, Gibobs has raised nearly €7M from investors including Global PayTech Ventures and IDC Ventures
British fintech Revolut posted record €1.5B net profit in 2025, up 65%, as revenues climbed 46% to €5.3B. Spain became its third-largest market with 6.3M users (+45%), where it plans to hire 800 employees by 2030
New startups and product launches
Flanks launched its AI Financial Advisor, a tool that enables wealth managers to analyze portfolios using natural language queries
Omnia has evolved from an AI visibility monitoring tool into an agent framework that automates the entire marketing process. Co-founder Daniel Espejo shared insights on product evolution. Kfund is an investor in Omnia
Renaiss AI launched RenLayer, a governance platform enabling large enterprises to deploy autonomous AI agents with full control over identity, cost, security and compliance
Other news
Glovo recognized €100M in extra costs from transitioning to employed riders in Spain. Payments to the Seguridad Social and fines now exceed €520M, with a worst-case estimate of €860M. At the same time and as explained last week, Glovo’s parent company Delivery Hero remains under pressure from its second-largest shareholder to accelerate divestitures, now flags Italy as an at-risk market after judicial intervention. More about the struggles of delivery platform to turn profitable in this article
Bloom, a startup from YC’s Summer ‘25 batch co-founded by Spaniard David Oort, published a series of tweets and videos about Apple’s fight against vibe coded apps. They say “Apple is blocking apps that let you build software from your phone. We’re one of them” and that “Apple is banning vibecoding apps”
French fintech Qonto appointed Lorenzo Pireddu as general manager for Southern Europe, overseeing operations in Spain, Italy and Portugal
Sifted put together a list of 11 Spanish AI startups to watch, according to investors from Adara, Kibo and Kfund (represented by yours truly)
Big company & policy news 🏦
Bizum established Madrid as headquarters for the new European payments conglomerate, uniting national payment systems across 12 EU countries plus Norway. The initiative connects Spain’s Bizum (31M users), Italy’s Bancomat Pay, Portugal’s SIBS, and Nordic platforms to create a unified infrastructure reducing dependence on Visa and Mastercard, with P2P payments launching first
Airbnb faces a €64M fine after Madrid’s Superior Court of Justice denied its request to suspend the penalty imposed by Spain’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs. The fine stems from 65,122 listings that violated regulations by advertising unlicensed properties and misleading practices. The platform must now pay the full amount or provide bank guarantees while appealing the decision.
The Generalitat confirmed Sirt and Huawei as winners of a €130M contract to deploy fiber optic infrastructure across Catalonia’s public network
Merlin raised €767M through a capital increase to finance phase III of Merlin’s data center expansion plan, requiring €4.47B over six years and 412MW capacity, as part of a total €7.84B investment across all phases
Interesting reads 🤓
Alejandro Artacho, co-founder and former CEO of Spotahome, published a post on the importance of founder secondaries to be able to think long term: “In 2018, my co-founders took life changing secondaries. I didn’t. Big mistake.”
Javier Garcia (Sintetia, El Confidencial) published an analysis of Wallbox’s roller coaster trajectory: “Wallbox: de prometer 1.500 millones a negociar con sus acreedores”
Neil de la Fuente (ETH Zurich) published “Losing Tickets in Neural Representations”
Guillermo Flor published “How money flows”
David Bonilla (Petalo) wrote “Utilizando la IA en diferentes contextos”
Simon Muñoz (Voicemod) published “El software es el peor sector de 2026”
Great roundup as always @jaime
La bonilista was not from David this weekend, I was the invited author.
Don’t worry, no harm.