Auro and Google have partnered to use Google Cloud Platform to scale its vehicle route optimisation solution.

Auro currently manages 2,500 cars across Spain. Its app development team needs to automate and scale the availability of drivers in order to offer the cheapest rates to customers and maximize driver's benefits. In a competitive environment such as car sharing, the importance of data, speed and ML will be key to winning this space of sustainable urban mobility.

Julien, CTO of Auro: "At Auro we have decided to take our technology 100% to Google Cloud to take it to the next level, moving from classic mono-kernel to kubernetes microservices.

Our partnership will ensure our technology is flexible, open source and cost effective as this is mandatory to our demanding business requirements. Our technology team is growing at 200% in the past few months and the GCP platform is simplifying our devops process with SRE. The ease of use of GCP is key to our success and to accelerate our development speed."

Startup funding news 💸

• Barcelona-based corporate travel company Bizaway raised €10M led by Gellify, Digitech and EXOR Seeds
• Barcelona-based AI powered search engine API Nuclia raised a €5M seed round co-led by UK investment firm Crane and French VC Elaia
• Madrid-based crypto custody company Onyze raised €1.2M, led by The Valley
• Other rounds of funding: Aura Pay, Flit2go, Quantic Brains, Blue Bamboo, Time Is Brain, Satlantis

M&A activity 🎊

• Barcelona-based Tiendeo was acquired by its Italian competitor DoveConviene for up to €35M in cash and stock. The founders of the company still owned around 60% of shares (it had raised about €1M in more than 10 years of operations). Cabiedes & Partners had a 19% stake and other well known Spanish business angels such as Jesus Monleon, François Derbaix, Iñaki Berenguer and others were also investors. In 2020, Tiendeo posted sales of €10.5M
• Norwegian giant Visma acquired tax consultancy startup Declarando. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Visma is the same company that bought Holded a few months ago. According to Crunchbase, Declarando had raised €2.7M from JME, Bankinter, Encomenda and other investors. Seems like a deal that could have a lot of synergies with Holded. The latter has all the financial information of many Spanish SMBs, and Declarando has the tools and processes to help those businesses optimize and file their taxes
• Amazon aggregator Razor Group set to acquire rival Factory14 in multi-million dollar deal as the European market shows signs of consolidation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Factory14, although based in Luxembourg, has most of its employees in Spain
• Madrid and Boston-based cloud-native logging and security analytics company Devo announced that it has acquired Kognos, a company that provides threat hunting tools, for an undisclosed price
• MasMovil has provisioned up to €30M to fully acquire digital energy company Lucera*. MasMovil already owns a majority stake in the company co-founded by Emilio Bravo. Lucera is a portfolio company of ours at K Fund

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Mundi Ventures opens €250M fund with €120M to back insurtech firms
• Truora, a Colombian user authentication startup, raised $15M in Series A funding co-led by Accel and BBVA investment fund Propel
• BBVA to invest $20M in sustainability VC firm Lowercarbon Capital, co-founded by legendary VC Chris Sacca
• Here's an interview with Stephanie Chan, investment associate at Samaipata based in London. In the interview, Stephanie talks about Samaipata's investment focus, areas of interest and other topics
• Cardumen Capital participated in the $30M Series B round of Israeli startup DoControl
• Nauta Capital led a €7M round in German white-label blockchain custody company Tangany

Startup news 💡

• El Mundo profiled edtech startup Edpuzzle and one of its co-founders, Quim Sabria. The company combines simple video-editing tools with powerful analytics so that a teacher can take a video and make it personal. The company has been able to seduce 80% of the schools in the United States and +11,000 in Spain to use his educational platform
• Wallbox opened a Barcelona manufacturing plant to produce up to 750,000 electric chargers per year and employ more than 500 people
• There's an increasing number of startups building products and services for the elderly. Durcal*, Senniors or Rosita* are some examples highlighted in this article
• Roboadvisor startup Indexa Capital included for the first time the possibility of investing in sustainability funds through its platform
• Budgeting app Corgee unveils 2.0 version to help freelancers cope with invoice management
• Freepik's CEO Joaquin Cuenca explained in this interview to the keys to Freepik company's growth, the challenges of international markets and future projects
• Hans Christ, co-founder of mobility company Bipi (acquired by Renault) was interviewed to talk about the Spanish automotive sector and the relevance (or not) of electric vehicles in the country
• Interview with Patrik Bergareche, managing director of Just Eat in Spain. The interview focuses on the tailwinds experienced by food delivery caused by the pandemic, regulation and the rider law, and other topics
• Here's another interview, this time with Anna Boldu, co-founder of ecommerce business Platanomelon, which sells sex toys and other products. The company doesn't disclose revenue numbers, but in recent times it has amassed a significant audience and brand in the sex toys sector. It currently has more than 3M followers in social media
• Startup profiles:
• Yumminn: restaurant payments

Big company news 🏦

• In 2021, Amazon provided its Spanish logistics subsidiaries with more than €600M in funding, four times more than in previous years. The company continues its expansion across the country, where it currently has more than 50 distribution centres
• Minsait's CEO, Indra's tech division, has stepped down
• German software company T-Systems expects to create 300 new jobs in its Reus office. Another German company, CommerceTools announced the opening of a software development centre in Valencia

Interesting reads 🤓

• Another sales record for e-bikes set in 2021 in Spain, 223,561 (+5,3% YoY) despite all the supply chain delays. All in all, turnover of the bike industry in Spain reached a new record of almost €3B in 2021, growing double digits for a second year in a row
• CatalanGate: extensive mercenary spyware operation against Catalans using software Pegasus and Candiru

Podcasts 🎧

• SeedRocket interviewed Lluís Cañadell, co-founder of Treinta
• Itnig interviewed Guillermo Llibre, founder of Groupalia, Gymforless (Andjoy) and Housell
• Lunes Inspiradores interviewed Ander Michelena of All Iron Ventures
• Product Hackers interviewed ecommerce and Amazon consultant Jordi Ordoñez