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Vicio raised €17m. Ac2ality, the TikTok masters. Indra's M&A strategy.

April 10, 2023 • Issue #365

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Startup funding news 💸

  • Wallbox is preparing a stock offering to raise around $100m. In 2022, Wallbox doubled its revenues to €144m and posted a loss of €63m
  • Barcelona-based foodtech company Vicio raised €17m, led by Iris Ventures. Professional football players Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann also participated in the deal. Vicio reached sales of €20m in 2022, up by 5.4x YoY. To complement its food delivery business, the company also runs 15 restaurants in Madrid and Barcelona. It has 450 employees. Iris Ventures published this about the investment
  • Madrid-based gaming startup Toteemi raised €2.5m

M&A activity 🎊

  • Analysis of Indra's M&A strategy, The company made three acquisitions in 2022, down from 7 in the previous year. Acquisitions in 2022 include Mobbeel, a startup offering online identity services, and two more deals in the defense space. Indra has been surrounded by turmoil in recent months, with significant changes in various leadership positions and the involvement of the Spanish government, which owns a large stake in the company
  • vLex, a legaltech company with headquarters in Barcelona, Miami and Washington, to merge with Fastcase Merge to create a global legal research company. As part of the merger, Oakley Capital, a majority owner of vLex, and Bain Capital, will investing an undisclosed amount in the combined business

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

  • GoHub Ventures announced an investment in LifeX Ventures, the fund co-founded by Iñaki Berenguer. Just last week, LifeX announced another investment from Angels Capital
  • Eoniq Fund, the fund managed by Tom Horsey, has already backed 22 companies. More about the fund activity here
  • Two new Spanish funds have been registered with the CNMV: a new €60m fund from Swanlaab and Kibo's Nzyme, with a target size of €200m
  • GED Conexo Ventures invested in two Portuguese startups: CO2offset and AssetFloow

Startup news 💡

  • Ac2ality is one of the larger news channels on TikTok, with more than 4.3m followers. In the world, there's only four other news accounts on TikTok with more followers than Ac2ality. The company is run by four Spaniards that are only 26 years old that have nailed how to talk (and monetize) to a young audience. Atresmedia has now signed a commercial agreement with the company: in exchange for running Ac2ality advertising business, Atresmedia will get a minority stake and board seat
  • Interview with Bernardo Quintero, founder of VirusTotal, about Malaga's startup and tech ecosystem. The article is behind a paywall and I wasn't able to read it all. Bernardo claims that "it's time to be demanding with the projects that come to Malaga"
  • Long interview with Alfonso Gutiérrez, co-founder of Galician startup VisualMS. Alfonso started the company in 1999 with the goal of it lasting 100 years and with a clear set of values. The company develops software for third parties and also its own products, such as Vidiv, Velneo and visualTrans
  • Indexa Capital now manages €1.6b across 62,000 customers
  • The founders of Series.ly have been absolved of criminal charges for the second time. The founders of the company were arrested in 2015
  • EU-Startups put together a list of 15 innovative Catalan startups, "you need to know about"
  • Overview of the Spanish proptech sector, featuring startups such as Spotahome, Tiko and others. The article is paywalled
  • Startup profiles:
  • Payflow: fintech and salary advancement

Big company news 🏦

  • Jaguar Land Rover to open a software development centre in Madrid to focus on autonomous driving technology
  • Vodafone's Spanish business is attracting takeover interest from potential buyers, including Apollo Global Management. According to Bloomberg, the Spanish unit could be valued at more than $4b
  • The European Commission to investigate the Orange and Masmovil merger to assess if it limits competition in the Spanish market. In Spain, the CNMC is also increasingly putting more pressure on the tech giants, with no large fines yet

Interesting reads 🤓

  • El Confidencial published a couple of interesting articles on Spain's efforts to have a bigger presence in the semiconductor race. As part of the EU's 'Recovery plan for Europe', Spain would like to open a fab in the country in cooperation with one of the leading companies in the space, of which there are not many worldwide, but apparently it's been hard so far to convince the Intel an TSMCs (among others) of the world to invest in Spain, despite up to €12b in subsidies and loans. The second article on the topic was authored by Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania: "What semiconductors tell us about the future of the economy"
  • Lluis Ingles, formerly of Exoticca, wrote about his time as the company's CTO: "Goodbye Exoticca: A Look Back at Four Years as CTO"
  • Simon Muñoz, platform product manager at Voicemod, published "product management in times of crisis", about what companies will look for in the new funding and economic environment
  • David Pereira, CPO at German company omoqo, published "Pragmatism instead of Bullshitism", on how to be more efficient as startup leaders and managers. "Let me show you opportunities where pragmatism saves time, cuts costs, and accelerates progress", he writes
  • Samuel Solis, former tech lead at Openbank, wrote about his experience at the bank: "My experience as a manager"

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