Aurora, la aceleradora de Soltec que lucha contra el cambio climático

Aurora, la aceleradora de Soltec que busca impulsar proyectos innovadores que luchen contra el cambio climático a través de las energías renovables, promete revolucionar el panorama emprendedor. La aceleradora busca startups con soluciones tecnológicas validadas o en fase pre-comercial, spin-offs universitarias que busquen un socio industrial, e incluso scale-ups con nuevas soluciones que deseen validar en un entorno real.

Aurora busca proyectos en campos como el hidrógeno verde, el almacenamiento energético, las redes inteligentes o nuevos materiales estructurales de plantas de energía y su reciclaje. Ofrece asesoramiento técnico, entornos para pruebas, acceso al mercado nacional e internacional y financiación a todos aquellos proyectos con potencial para impulsar la transición energética, especialmente en el ámbito de la energía solar.

Soltec pretende ayudar a estas nuevas empresas a través de la financiación de proyectos que mejoren el campo de las energías limpias y el sector fotovoltaico en particular.

Las startups tendrán acceso a infraestructura para la realización de pruebas piloto, asesoramiento en materia de industrialización de procesos, validación comercial de soluciones innovadoras y acompañamiento en la entrada a nuevos mercados y recursos financieros. El objetivo de Aurora es conseguir una relación simbiótica entre las startups y Soltec. Consulta más información aquí.

Startup funding news 💸

• Valencia-based startups raised a combined €71M so far in 2022, up 45% versus the same year-ago period
• Madrid-based employee benefits startup Cobee raised $41M, co-led by Octopus Ventures and Notion Capital. Cobee has raised more than €60M to date and claims to have more than 800 customers. Profile of the company here
• Subsea Environmental Services, an American company co-founded by Spaniard Juan Puente, raised $31M from Orion Infrastructure Capital. Subsea recovers and decommissions out-of-service submarine telecommunications cables
• Barcelona-based proptech Ukio raised €27M in Series A round of funding (€17M in equity and €10M in debt. The round was led by UK investor Felix Capital
• Barcelona-based second hand clothing marketplace Trendier raised €13M from new and previous investors. New investors are BID Invest, Creas Impacto and IDC Ventures
• Barcelona-based Xceed, a B2B city nightlife promotions and bookings portal, raised €2M, led by Trind Ventures
• Barcelona-based foodtech and payments startup Yumminn raised €1.4M, led by Oryon Universal and Antai Ventures
• Madrid-based instant payments API provider Devengo raised €1.2M, led by TheVentureCity
• Other rounds of funding: Rozett.ai,
• Startups looking for funding:
• Napptilus Battery Labs: developers of fast charging batteries using hybrid nanomaterial technology

M&A activity 🎊

• The first payment made by Enverus to acquire RatedPower was of €35M, or 10X ARR. Seaya had invested €5.8M into the company in October 2021 and owned 25%. The deal includes three earnouts until 2024 based on the evolution of RatedPower's ARR, which could bring the deal to around €70M
• Sngular acquired Valencia-based app development firm Belike Software. The company had revenues of €2.5M, 20% of EBITDA margin and annual growth of 25%. More info here
• Spanish cloud unified commerce platform Openbravo to merge with French company DL Software

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Sponsored
• Aurora, Soltec's accelerator for projects that aim to fight against climate change, is looking for startups to join its most recent program. More info here
• Pablo Fernandez acquired a 16% stake in Alicante-based company GDV Mobility, which specializes in the recycling of electric batteries
• It appears as if Telefonica is thinking twice about its previously announced investment into crypto startup Bit2me. A few weeks ago it was announced that Telefonica would invest as much as €30M in Bit2me, but it seems as if the quantity is now not confirmed
• Venture builder Mutter Ventures plans to IPO on the Euronext Access with a valuation of €26M. Mutter is co-founded by Christian Rodríguez, also founder of ByHours
• Testing and certification company Applus+ to invest in the the new €200M+ climate tech fund created by Enagas and Alantra
• Nina Capital backed German startup Ryver, that's on a mission to tackle performance fluctuations of radiology AI in clinical practice. Nina also published an interesting report last week, about the type of healthcare entrepreneurs investors tend to back: outsiders or insiders?
• Start Bizkaia is a new fund by Seed Capital Bizkaia to invest €100K in startups
• A consortium of investors, including BBVA, invested an additional €35M in British neobank Atom Bank

Startup news 💡

• Cybersecurity company Devo and personal shopper platform Lookiero to lay off 15% and 10% of its workforce, respectively. Devo has 600 employees and Lookiero 400
• British neobank Revolut to sell consumer loans in Spain
• Federico Sainz, CEO of fashion brand Sepiia, talked about sustainability, being a B Corp company and other topics
• Business Insider talked to various female entrepreneurs and investors about the role and relevance of women in the tech sector
• Startup profiles:
• Idoven: healthcare and cardiology
• Gataca: online identity and cybersecurity

Big company news 🏦

• Amber Capital, a significant shareholder in Indra, would like the company to be split into parts and some of those parts sold
• Inditex's online sales are growing significantly in countries where it doesn't have a retail presence. In its last fiscal year, ended in January 2022, this division of the company posted sales of €448M, up by 64% versus the previous year
• Mercadona Online plans to reach €530M in sales this year. The online division of the supermarket giant already employs more than 2,000 people
• The Spanish government plans to create incentives for Netflix, HBO and other video on demand platforms, including subsidies and tax breaks
• More details about the ownership of Amancio Ortega's family office, Pontegadea, in Telefonica's infrastructure subsidiary Telxius, which owns submarine cables, among other assets
• ABANCA and Startup Galicia announced a partnership to promote Galicia's ecosystem

Interesting reads 🤓

• Spain’s digital nomad visa, everything you need to know: non-EU residents working for foreign companies will be able to more easily move to Spain from early 2023
• Zaryn Dentzel, co-founder of Tuenti, talked for the first time about the theft that he suffered a few months ago which resulted in the loss of millions of euros in bitcoin
• Simon Muñoz, platform PM at Voicemod, published "The dictatorship of performance reviews"
• Angel Paredes, senior software engineer at Glovo, published "Bring back the monolith"
• Iñaki Arriaga, co-founder of Acumbamail, published "How to find business ideas (a data-oriented approach)"
• Interview with Jose del Barrio, co-founder of VC firm Samaipata and previously of food delivery company La Nevera Roja. He talks about the current state of the foodtech market, areas of investment of Samaipata and other topics

Podcasts 🎧

• K Fund interviewed Carina Szpilka and Iñaki Arrola to chat about the evolution of the firm
• Product Hackers interviewed Jordi de los Pinos, founder and CEO of adtech company Smadex
• Life on Mars interviewed Alexandra Cavero, managing partner at The Data Venture
• Gananzia interviewed Koldo García, co-founder of MadPixel and Bakarts
• Itnig interviewed Adrián Domenech, co-founder of Camillion, a company backed by Itnig's fund
• Hablando con Lideres interviewed Pepita Marin, co-founder of We Are Knitters
• Bioemprendedores interviewed Alfons Carnicero, CEO and founder of Able Human Motion