This week on May 4^th and 5^th, the ecosystem meeting point is at the AWS Summit Madrid, in IFEMA.

Some top names will be present, with speakers including Laura Urquizu (RedPoints CEO), Carlos Herrera (Cabify CTO) and Dimas Gimeno (Founder and Executive President of WOW Concept and Kapita); and 25+ exhibiting startups including Wefox, Holaluz and Signaturit.

There will also be networking cocktails at the end of each day, to meet and mingle with startups and industry experts. Discover more and register for free here.

Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid-based electric vehicle charger company Wenea says that it wants to raise €500M
• UK and Barcelona-based knowledge sharing platform Arbolus closed a $15M Series A, led by Element Ventures
• Valencia-based ecommerce company Singularu raised €4M and plans to triple its number of retail stores
• Barcelona-based NFT marketplace Agora Awards raised €2.2M
• Madrid-based foodtech company Baïa Food raised €1.8M
• Madrid-based Managing Composites closed a €1.5M financing round to accelerate composites growth
• Madrid-based fintech company Embat raised €1.5M, led by 4Founders Capital and VentureFriends
• Barcelona-based health startup Onalabs raised €1.2M
• Madrid-based phone charging company Chargy raised €1M
• Other rounds of funding: The Sampling Solutions, Datos101, Flobers, BuscoResi

M&A activity 🎊

• Online supermarket Ulabox has been acquired by Czech company Rohlik for, reportedly, €2.5M. The acquirer plans to invest €50M in the next five years in its Spanish operations
• Barcelona-based pricing and market intelligence startup Netrivals was acquired by French startup Lengow. Terms of the deal were not disclosed
• Barcelona-based HR company Woffu was acquired by Norwegian company Visma. This is Visma's third acquisition in Spain in recent times (Holded, Declarando)
• Jobandtalent announced the acquisition of Jobzone, a staffing firm based in Norway. La Informacion says that the deal could be valued at €50M. It's the 10th acquisition made by the Spanish company in recent months
• Freepik acquired Check My Presets, a product and company created by Jacinto Fleta de Castro
• Idealista agreed to acquire Regold, an Italy-based provider of services to real estate agents. The value of the transaction has not been disclosed
• The Supreme Court to force Santander and SEPI to sell 21% of Lleidanet to its founder

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Axon Partners has launched a new €40M fund to back university and research centre spinoffs
• Sevilla-based business angel Tom Horsey and Riva y García to launch a new €35M debt fund called Eoniq. It has already backed 11 companies
• Barcelona-based fund Iris Ventures announced its first investment to date, in Los Angeles-based Saysh, a purpose-led brand for and by women
• Business Insider interviewed my colleague Miguel Arias to talk about our (K Fund) most recent growth fund and other plans that we have for the rest of the year
• Fashion brand Mango launched its own startup accelerator

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Do not miss the AWS Summit Madrid on May 4^th and 5^th. At the AWS Startup Loft area you’ll discover 25+ exhibiting startups, 10+ startup sessions with founders and experts, and an ecosystem networking cocktail at the Founders Bar by bit2me. You can explore the event and registering for free in the official website.
• Nacho Gonzalez Barros (Mailtrack, infojobs) announced the launch of his new startup, Banktrack, a service to receive all of your bank movements in the app that you wish (email, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc). We're investors in the company
• Alejandro Artacho, CEO of Spotahome, talked to Merca2 about the evolution of the company in the past few years. The company was heavily affected by covid but seems to have rebounded quite well. It currently has 220 employees and expects to generate €250M of GMV this year
• Profile of We Are Knitters, the Madrid-based ecommerce and fashion brand that expects to do €15M in sales with just 35 employees. WAK plans to open its first retail store in Spain this year, in Madrid
• Profile of Oliva, the mental health company created by Javier Suárez, co-founder of Travelperk, and Sançar Sahin, former VP of Marketing at Typeform
• Glovo lost €475M in 2021, 5X more than in the previous year. The company soon-to-be-owned by Delivery Hero expects a negative EBITDA of €330M in 2022. In 2021, revenues increased by 60%, from €360M to €580M. The reason behind that big increase in losses is not explained in the company's filings. Provisions that Glovo had to do that year to tackle various labour and legal processes in Spain and other jurisdictions most likely played a role in the €450M lost
• Energy company HolaLuz posted a €11M profit in the first three months of 2022
• Creativity platform Domestika, which raised $110M a few months ago and also became a unicorn, laid off "tens of employees". EPE has more information
• 10 years of Google in Malaga: a profile of Virustotal, the cybersecurity company acquired by Google a decade ago
• Manfred published the software development career ladder of various Spanish startups, including Cabify, Glovo and Factorial
• Wallbox recently opened its third manufacturing plan in the world, located in Barcelona. Business Insider visited the plant, which can produce as many as 1,200 electric chargers per day
• Crypto startup Bit2me launched in Brazil
• Vogue profiled Andrea Barber, co-founder and CEO of photovoltaics startup RatedPower
• Startup profiles:
• Silt: identity verification

Big company news 🏦

• Hacienda (Spanish tax office) has opened its fourth investigation against Microsoft
• Telefonica has put an end to the Tuenti brand. Xataka looks at what the brand has meant for a generation of Spaniards

Interesting reads 🤓

• Forbes interviewed Spaniard Itxaso Del Palacio, partner at London-based VC firm Notion Capital, to talk about product led growth "Anything from anywhere: why A VC believes product led growth will drive a European software boom"
• David Miranda wrote an interesting thread about tax deductions in Spain for business angels
• Diego Parrilla (founder of Apility, sold to Auth0) wrote "The hateful GitOps"
• Samuel Gil (JME) wrote a post on Corporate Venture Capital

Podcasts 🎧

• Itnig interviewed Alejandro Fresneda, co-founder of Yaba
• Novicap interviewed Javi Fondevila, co-founder of Holded
• Product Hackers interviewed Pablo Moratinos, founder of 3ymedia