Dealflow.es #518: Orbio raised $21M. NeuralTrust $20M. Magnific layoffs.
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 zenital:
¿Y si el problema con la IA no es la herramienta, sino la falta de foco?
Muchas empresas ya la están usando, pero pocas están viendo resultados. Y no es un problema técnico. Sin procesos ni casos de uso claros, sin priorización ni marco de trabajo, la IA se queda en pilotos aislados.
Si quieres que tenga impacto en tu negocio, hace falta integrarla de verdad en la operación: identificar dónde aporta valor, automatizar tareas concretas y escalar lo que funciona. En zenital acompañamos ese proceso con un programa de consultoría: en pocas semanas, pasas de la experimentación a procesos definidos y automatizaciones en marcha.
Reserva una llamada breve con nuestro equipo y vemos qué tiene sentido en tu caso.
Startup funding news 💸
€20M+ rounds:
Orbio AI, the Barcelona and Madrid-based HR startup, raised $21M led by Dawn Capital, with participation from existing investors Visionaries VC, Plus Partners and Enzo Ventures. The company uses AI agents to help businesses hire, onboard, and manage frontline workers. More info here
NeuralTrust, a Barcelona-based platform for securing AI agents, raised a $20M seed round led by Alstin Capital, with Seaya, Kibo Ventures, Banc Sabadell (among others) as investors
€5M to €10M rounds:
Causa Prima, a Madrid and Munich-based startup, raised $10M in a pre-seed round led by Creandum, with participation from us at Kfund, as well as Rodrigo Martinez’s HelloWorld. The company aims to fix B2B payments thru an agent-to-agent network where AI agents on the buyer and supplier sides handle disputes, negotiate payment timing, and capture early-pay discounts automatically. More from the team here
Range, a startup co-founded by Spaniard Andres Monteoliva, raised an $8.3M Series A to help companies worldwide adopt stablecoins and digital assets safely and at scale. Backers included TX Ventures, SixThirty, Maven 11 Capital, and Onigiri Capital. More info here
Gate2Brain, a Barcelona-based biotech spin off, raised €7M from Shilpa Biocare. The funds will advance the development a therapeutic candidate for aggressive paediatric and adult brain tumours
€1M to €5M rounds:
Optiak, a Madrid-based platform to deploy, govern, and optimize enterprise AI across models, raised a €4M pre-seed round led by Market One Capital, with Next Tier Ventures, Plug and Play, Mission, and other investors. Co-founder and CTO Borja Balle previously worked at Google DeepMind and Amazon
Trak, the Basque and Valencia-born startup specializing in AI-powered physical rehabilitation, raised €3.7M in a round led by CRB Health Tech
Floox, the Barcelona-based maker of fast chargers for electric vehicles, raised €2M in a round led by Inclimo Climate Tech Fund. After reaching €1.2M in revenues last year, it targets €3.6M in 2026
Bihar Batteries, a San Sebastián startup developing proprietary sodium-ion cells and storage systems for commercial and industrial use, raised €2M from international investors. The round adds to €10M secured across two Spanish PERTE grants.
Node.ai, a Swiss and Madrid-based fintech startup, closed a €1.5M round. The startup specializes in AI solutions for asset and wealth management
SMART Fusion Energy, a spin-off from the University of Seville in the nuclear fusion space, raised €1.5M from BeAble Capital
M&A news 🎉
American Express announced its intention to acquire European restaurant reservation platform TheFork for $700 million. TheFork, although headquartered in Paris, has more employees in Spain than in France, according to LinkedIn. Marcos Alves co-founded the business, previously called ElTenedor in Spain
Filmin agreed to acquire the distribution business of Valencian producer Elastica, marking the first time a Spanish streaming service takes control of a film distributor
Portobello Capital has delayed the sale of its 76% stake in Spanish legal-tech firm Legálitas amid concerns that AI could disrupt the sector. Portobello acquired the stake in 2021 in a deal valuing Legálitas at around €120M. Legalitas did €50M in revenue in 2020, but I couldn’t find more recent figures
Startup news 💡
Magnific (formerly Freepik) is negotiating an ERE that would cut 111 jobs, around a third of its ~340-person Spanish workforce (250 in Málaga). When Freepik pivoted to generative AI three years ago, it kept the legacy stock business running in parallel rather than killing it. With AI revenue having overtaken stock in 2024 (~$230M ARR now), the cuts are expected to fall mainly on the stock-side roles (designers, editors, SEO). Majority-owned by EQT since 2020, the company frames it as organizational, not economic. Union CCOO is demanding the ERE be withdrawn.
There were a bunch of comments last week sort of attacking CEO Joaquin Cuenca and Magnific about the layoffs, saying that how could a company making so much money make such drastic changes. Layoffs suck, especially for the people affected. I think this tweet from Javi Santana sums it up well: this is part of the ‘game’ of building companies and doing so aggressively, even more so in the middle of a seismic change like AI
Startup financials:
Exoticca hit ~€400M in sales (up from ~€300M) and turned profitable in Q4 2025. The company says that thanks to AI back-office automation it was able to double productivity to €1M revenue per employee
Profile of Rever, the Barcelona-based reverse logistics startup. It claims to do €10M in annual sales
Criptan, the Valencia-based crypto company, launched its fifth funding round, aiming to raise €7M
New companies and product launches:
José María Álvarez-Pallete, former chairman of Telefónica, is back to business, according to ABC. He registered two companies in April, Themis Future and its subsidiary Themis Data Group, to process data and AI workloads using existing telecom infrastructure closer to users
ShowMe launched AI Sales Reps for teams selling inbound
AI startup Luzia launched Spilo, an AI-powered personal memory that organizes scattered WhatsApp information. Luzia started off a sort of “ChatGPT on Whatsapp” play, but has since pivoted as the core business has become more of a commodity
Tuvalum, the Valencian platform for buying and selling second-hand bicycles founded in 2015, entered liquidation just months after filing for voluntary insolvency. The company reported €4.26M in revenue in 2024 but closed with losses of €573k
Crescenta launched an SCR vehicle aimed at corporate and high-net-worth institutional investors (insurers, foundations, family offices), a segment now nearing 1,000 clients
Revolut launched a savings account in Spain paying 3.51% APR for new clients
Anzi Finance, a Spanish fintech building infrastructure for credit risk mitigation, launched a $25M (€21M) five-year financing plan backed by Spanish fund Tritemius Fund I. The blockchain-based platform tokenizes credit guarantees and has already issued over 65k in Colombia
AWS Trainium & Inferentia: purpose-built AI chips, up to 50% lower cost & 4x inference throughput vs GPUs. Splash Music slashed training costs via the GenAI Accelerator. Train & run models at half the cost — no performance trade-off. PyTorch ready.
VC news 🚀
Columbus Venture Partners raised €210M for its Columbus Innvierte Life Sciences Fund V. The Valencia-based fund will back growth-stage biotech, healthtech, and AI-applied-to-health companies
Ecotechers published an article on the flow of funds from EIF to Spanish VC firms over the years. EIF committed €205M to six Spanish VC funds in 2025 (4Founders, BSocial, Klima II (Alantra), Montana (Ship2b), LifeX and SC Net Zero) after 2024’s €610M peak driven by a €350M cheque to Kembara (Mundi Ventures). Spain has held a steady 5-7% of the EIF’s European VC over five years
Samaipata launched a network of Operating Partners to support its portfolio startups beyond capital
Big company news 🏢
Sponsor: AWS Trainium & Inferentia: purpose-built AI chips, up to 50% lower cost & 4x inference throughput vs GPUs. Train & run models at half the cost — no performance trade-off
British quantum computing firm Oxford Quantum Circuits chose Barcelona for its first global manufacturing centre, investing €92M and creating 210 jobs over five years. The facility, breaking ground in Q4, follows OQC’s recent €300M Series C, which included €46M from COFIDES
In the travel sector:
Lastminute.com announced a global reorganization affecting 25% of its 1,628 employees. In Spain, the company filed an ERE to cut 163 jobs in Madrid (34% of its 474 local staff)
Over 1,400 Spanish hotel companies joined a class action against Booking over abusive parity clauses
Just Eat agreed with unions to a collective layoff affecting up to 50 corporate coordination staff
Workday marked its tenth anniversary in Spain by shifting focus toward mid-sized companies (under 3,500 employees)
Spain’s car-sharing sector reached around €20M in revenue in 2025, with over 3,000 vehicles and 4M annual rentals, though Madrid concentrates 80% of activity. Profitability remains a challenge, with an aggregate loss of €6.81M across the five main players
Interesting reads 🤓
Manu Martin (Tinybird) wrote “Reflexiones sobre el mundo Startup y VC”