Dealflow.es #509: BigBuy raised €4M. Modern Relay out of stealth with €3M round. Mercadona Tech vibe codes Algolia alternative.
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:
M&A y Private Equity: oportunidades y desafíos
Crescenta te invita a un evento en el que referentes destacados del sector se darán cita en una mesa redonda para compartir su visión sobre el momento actual de la industria.
- Miguel Echenique (AltamarCAM)
- Jorge Lucaya (Az Capital)
- Ramiro Iglesias (Crescenta)
El encuentro reunirá a un grupo selecto de profesionales de la industria financiera, family offices, socios de servicios profesionales y empresarios, en un entorno de alto nivel. A continuación, se ofrecerá un espacio de networking acompañado de cóctel.Aforo limitado y sujeto a confirmación por parte de la organización.
Startup funding news 💸
€1M+ rounds:
BigBuy, the Valencia-based B2B ecommerce technology platform, raised €4M from two independent Chinese industrial partners and Zamit Capital (GVC Gaesco Alternative Investments)
Modern Relay, a Barcelona and US-based startup, raised €3M from Point Nine, Emerge, Amino Collective, and angels to build the context graph for enterprise AI. Co-founder and CTO Aaron Goh wrote about the launch here and so did my beloved former colleague Jorge Campo
Traza, an AI startup automates procurement and supply chain operations, closed a €1.8M pre-seed round led by San Francisco-based Base10, with participation from us at Kfund and business angels
GuruSup, a Valencia-based SaaS platform that automates customer support, closed a €1.3M seed round led by 4Founders Capital. GuruSup is a Guruwalk spin-off
ScrapAd, an AI-powered marketplace for recyclable metals tradin, secured €1.1M from SETT
BlueWalker Capital, a Barcelona-based startup “hedge fund developing systematic and quantitative trading strategies native to prediction markets.”, raised $1M from Halo Capital and Wouter Gort of Hummingbird Ventures
Other rounds of funding:
Bel Community, an edtech startup for math tutoring, closed an €800k funding round led by Bcombinator
CarHub, a startup that operates an end-to-end marketplace for importing used cars from Germany, closed a €350k+ seed round led by Encomenda
M&A news 🎉
EY acquired supply chain consultancy Supply Nexus. The deal adds a 60-person firm with €5M annual revenue
Spanish AI-powered maintenance solutions startup Fracttal, which recently raised €30M, acquired Spanish maintenance management company TCMAN
Revenue Squared, a bootstrapped GTM community for Spanish-speaking tech sales professionals, was acquired by Nova
Startup news 💡
Swedish and publicly-traded investor Kinnevik slashed Perk’s valuation by 41% in Q1 2026. The markdown brings Perk’s implied valuation to €1.6B from €2.7B. This doesn’t mean that Perk’s valuation is actually down in the private markets. It’s worth noting that Kinnevik does this to align Perks’ valuation closer to that of Navan, its US competitor that has been struggling as stock since going public earlier this year
Fintech and payroll startup Payflow said that it has reached €9M in ARR, 30% EBITDA margin and cash flow positive
FP&A software startup Abacum launched Abacum Intelligence, a platform-wide AI layer for financial planning and analysis
Lookiero launched its men’s fashion subscription service across 12 countries. Earlier this year, the company raised €17M and expects to exceed €100M in revenue with positive EBITDA.
Theker deployed its AI-powered robots at Paack’s Madrid logistics center to automate package sorting and distribution
Revolut closed its last fiscal year with over 6M customers in Spain, including 27k businesses with estimated deposits of €40B, up 75% YoY
Trade Republic reached 2M clients in Spain within 10 months, doubling its customer base
Methinks Software launched Neuro-rescate, an AI-powered telemedicine project to accelerate neurological diagnosis in emergency services. The initiative secured €2.19M funding from Spain’s State Research Agency through a public-private partnership
Real estate crowdfunding platform Crowpire closed an €11.5M investment vehicle backed by family offices to t arget real estate opportunities with revaluation potential
Tech investor news 🚀
The Spanish government announced a $200M VC/PE fund to develop Spanish biotech companies in Boston’s ecosystem. The fund will receive €48.3M from the Spanish government as anchor investor
Spanish entrepreneur Kemel Kharbachi, owner of space tourism company Eos X Space, plans to launch an aerospace fund targeting €85.M by 2028. The fund is backed by Abu Dhabi sovereign funds and US investors, and will be based in Malaga
Interview with Edgar Vicente of Enzo Ventures. He talks about fund I (Orbio, Companion, Murphy) and their plans to launch fund II, which they’re currently fundraising for
Saeed Amidi, founder of Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play accelerator, announced plans to create Spain’s first AI excellence center in Valencia
Spanish investors active abroad:
IRIS Ventures invested in Boston-based Lucille, a science-based nutrition company for seniors founded by Jess Haghani
Mundi Ventures participated in the Series C of Convelio, a startup developing AI-powered fine art logistics and storage services
El 30% de las demos que haces es a leads que nunca iban a comprar. Ganima es un agente de IA que hace demos al instante: navega tu producto en tiempo real, cualifica y filtra a cada lead automáticamente. 24/7, en cualquier idioma.
Big company & policy news 🏦
Movistar Plus+ obtained court approval that will allow it to demand ISPs to block illegal domains and IPs within 30 minutes during live events
Javier Oliván, Meta's COO, earned $24.5M in 2025, mostly in stock awards ($18.3M)
Interesting read! Bloomberg published a deep dive on Aragón's €80B+ data center boom, where AWS, Microsoft and others are building ~25 facilities. The region's PIGA fast-track framework enables accelerated permitting and forced expropriation, but is triggering lawsuits from municipalities and residents over land grabs, water use and tax exemptions
Interesting reads 🤓
A real world example of Claude Code use in the enterprise. Mercadona Tech‘s CPO/CTO shared their experience using the tool to replace Algolia for their online store’s 4.4M weekly searches. Claude Code did a lot of the work but 29 critical decisions required experienced humans. Result: +85% ranking improvement, zero-result searches from 4% to 0%, cost from $9-15K/mo to <$900
Jose Luis Calvo wrote “La nueva paradoja del software”
Luigi Mallardo (former VP of Sales of Woffu, among others) wrote "Scaling Complex B2B Tech: When GTM Instinct Ends and Architecture Begins”
Podcasts of the week 🎧
Itnig interviewed Amir Salihefendić, founder of Doist
SeedRocket interviewed Carolina Rodriguez, CEO of ENISA