Dealflow.es #515: Asana acquired StackAI. Multiverse to receive €100M from SETT. Prediction marktes + Spain.
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
There’s a number from a recent a16z podcast that’s stuck with me. Even with Anthropic and OpenAI now adding more revenue per month than Meta, Google or Microsoft, AI has diffused into less than 5% of the real economy. And almost all of that 5% sits in one place: coding and tech-forward companies. Every other function, and every other industry, is essentially nowhere yet. The takeoff we’ve already watched in software is now starting to repeat itself, one vertical and one department at a time.
That gap is one of the main reasons why we just co-led a €2M pre-seed round in Mafer AI, alongside 4Founders Capital, Masia and Lavanda Ventures (the Puig family’s vehicle), with a strong group of operators and angels around the table.
Mafer is building an AI operating system for the chemical industry, a ~$5T sector that, despite being one of the most R&D-intensive in the world, still runs on spreadsheets, decades-old lab software and the tacit knowledge of senior experts who are now retiring. Founders Fer Oliver and Marc Montalbo are starting with its most complex, value-dense corner: flavours and fragrances. The platform trains proprietary models on each client’s own historical data (chromatograms, formulas, regulatory docs) and embeds forward-deployed engineers Palantir-style inside customer workflows. The more it gets used, the smarter the underlying models become.
What convinced us wasn’t only the thesis. In just six months, Mafer has already sharpened its commercial motion around fast, paid pilots that convert into substantial contracts, and it’s landing them. Pair that with a credible path toward €1M by year-end, privileged access to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s H100 cluster, and a team scaling with strong technical hires from the likes of Amazon, MIT and Spain’s top ML programs, and you have a company moving far faster than its age would suggest.
To us, Mafer is exactly what the next phase of AI diffusion looks like. Not another coding tool, but vertical intelligence reaching an industry the software era never really touched. We couldn’t be more excited to be backing Fer, Marc and the team.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Manfred:
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24 de septiembre en Espacio Rastro (Madrid). Solo hay 300 entradas gratuitas. ¡Corre!
Un evento para líderes técnicos y managers enfocado en llevarte un aprendizaje de cada charla que puedas poner en práctica al día siguiente en tu empresa. Revisa la agenda y consigue tus entradas antes de que vuelen aquí.
Startup funding news 💸
Multiverse, the Basque quantum software company specializing in AI language model compression, is set to receive an additional €100M from Spain’s SETT (Sepi Digital) as part of a private investor-led funding round. The SETT had already invested €60M in the company last year
Substrate AI, a Madrid-based AI infra startup whose stock trades on the BME Growth, is finalizing a €40M funding round through convertible bonds
Capchase, the Madrid and NYC-based revenue based financing company, secured €200M+ in funding to scale its embedded financing platform for enterprise tech companies. The round consists of $26M in equity and a $174M credit facility. 01Advisors led the round, which included participation from Caffeinated Capital, Thomvest Ventures, Scifi VC, Bling Capital, Invesco and others
Didit, a Barcelona and SF-based AI identity verification platform, closed a €6.4M seed round from YC, Pioneer Fund, Orange Collective, and Masia. Didit says that it is profitable and growing 30%+ MoM while serving 2k+ companies
Mafer AI, a Barcelona-based AI company for R&D teams in formulation industries like cosmetics, food, and fragrance, closed a €2M pre-seed round led by us at Kfund, with participation from 4Founders Capital, Masia and Lavanda Ventures
Mathew, a Barcelona-based AI edtech startup, raised €1.2M in seed funding from Encomenda, Decelera, and business angels
Banbu, a Cantabria-based natural cosmetics company, closed a €120k crowdlending campaign through Goparity
Publicit, a Barcelona-based adtech startup, closed a €700k pre-seed round co-led by BStartup Banco Sabadell and Successful Fund
M&A news 🎉
Asana acquired AI workflow-automation startup StackAI for $75M, the US and Spanish startup. Founders Tony Rosinol and Bernard Aceituno join Asana. StackAI had raised just under $20M. More from Toni here. Congrats!
Clustag, a Valencia-based RFID and intralogistics solutions company, completed the acquisition of Labelmasters, a Sabadell-based firm specializing in advanced labeling systems for high-demand logistics environments. Clustag does €18M in annual sales, while Labelmasters did €1.4M in 2024. More info here
Amper acquired the assets of Zeleros, the Spanish startup specializing in advanced electrification and energy storage, for approximately €1M during the company’s voluntary bankruptcy proceedings
Indra sold its consulting unit Minsait Business Consulting to Dutch PE firm Waterland for €125M-€150M, with additional earn-out payments based on future performance. Minsait does ~€200M in revenue and €20M in EBITDA
Salto Systems, a Spanish company leader in electronic locks and access control, is in exclusive talks for Lukas Asset Management (the family office of Aldi Nord) to buy a ~20% stake. The bid values the group at €1.5B+
Startup news 💡
Henrik Gebbing and Maex Ament teased Causa Prima, a Madrid/Munich fintech in the B2B payments space. It's a network that sits between buyer and supplier and handles both sides of every transaction. Gebbing co-founded Finoa (the $10B EU crypto custodian); Ament built Taulia (~$50B/quarter, sold to SAP) and Centrifuge. Philip Stanislaus is the third co-founder
Delivery Hero (Glovo's owner) is being pursued by Uber, which has built a 37% stake plus options and floated an informal €33/share offer, rejected as too low. Seaya Ventures still holds 412K Delivery Hero shares from the 2021 Glovo sale. More info here
EsTech welcomed four new members: travel agency Destinia (€250M revenue), real estate portal Fotocasa, cybersecurity firm Transparent Edge (€3M revenue), and AI platform Alinia. Barcelona’s electric mobility company Cooltra (€60M revenue) will join soon, bringing EsTech’s total to 24 scale-ups driving Spain’s digital transformation
SolarProfit, the Catalan solar-panel installer, filed a second restructuring plan with the Barcelona commercial court after creditors challenged its first, proposing a haircut of up to 90%
Ideaded, the Barcelona maker of more sustainable “beyond-silicon” chips, will invest €12.3M to expand its cleanroom and grow headcount 40%
GoodNews, a coffee chain with VC as backers, plans to expand into travel retail with its first airport location opening at Barcelona-El Prat T1 in June. The company generated over €13M revenue in 2025, up 65% YoY, with 55% from international markets
HolaCamp, another retail business with VC backing, is in talks with Hungarian group Indotek to form a ~€100M joint venture investing in Spanish campsites. HolaCamp expects €40M revenue this year
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VC news 🚀
Junyo launched a startup studio that lets senior operators build companies without quitting their day jobs (fractional senior teams, shared infrastructure, AI, majority ownership and profit sharing). Founded by Gorka Muñecas, it aims to originate ~50 startups in 4yrs and starts with 3: KINDA (corporate social-impact content), XABIK (data center infrastructure with guaranteed energy) and Klipik (real-time AI editing for live events). More info here
Xunta de Galicia launched three new specialized business accelerators focusing on biotechnology, renewable energy, and healthcare. The €14M initiative aims to support 70+ projects by 2028
Spanish investors active abroad:
LifeX participated in the €12M Series A round of Munich-based allO
Big company news 🏢
Sponsor: AWS Summit Madrid. June 4, IFEMA, free entry. A day for founders: direct access to AWS experts and VCs, plus generative-AI and Bedrock demos. Scale faster with AWS. Reserve your spot here.
Diamond Foundry, the US synthetic diamond company, abandoned a €1B investment in Málaga TechPark due to insufficient electrical capacity, ultimately choosing Zaragoza instead
Spain's Consumer Affairs Ministry opened sanctioning proceedings against prediction-market platforms Polymarketand Kalshi and ordered their websites blocked, on grounds they're operating in Spain without the required gaming licence
eDreams reported a 42% jump in adjusted net profit to €72.9M for its fiscal year ending March 2026, reaching 7.9M Prime subscribers
Spotify reported that Spanish musicians generated €156M in royalties in 2025, a 14% increase from €137M the previous year
Interesting reads 🤓
Last week we covered NeoCalculator, an open-source graphing calculator built by 15-year-old Juan Ramón Egea from Almería. He authored last week’s Bonilista