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Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid and NYC-based Fence raised a $20M Series A led by Galaxy Ventures to accelerate its real-time infrastructure for asset-backed finance. Other investors in the round are ParaFi Capital and Crane Venture Partners. Fence was co-founded by Juan Montero and Ignacio Rosario
• TietAI, a Madrid-based company that develops an AI platform for hospital operations, closed a €2.5M seed round led by Plus Partners and JME Ventures
• Impetux, a University of Barcelona spin-off developing advanced photonics instrumentation for life sciences, closed a €2.5M funding round led by Bullnet Capital
• Sateliot launched a €100M Series C funding round to deploy its 5G satellite constellation. Sateliot has six satellites in orbit and expects to launch five more in 2026, backed by €270M in pre-contracts across 60 countries

M&A activity 🎊

• Amadeus will acquire French biometrics firm Idemia Public Security (IPS) from Advent International for €1.2B in cash (plus up to €150M earn-out). Amadeus aims to embed biometric identity across the full travel journey, from booking to boarding to border control. IPS has 3,300 employees, 600+ clients and generated €711M revenue with €112M EBITDA in 2025 (9.8x 2026E EBITDA). Closing expected mid-2027.
• Norwegian software giant Visma acquired Málaga-based Bilky, a business management platform connecting accountants, companies, and employees. The acquisition marks Visma’s 8th investment in Iberia and 6th in Spain
• Seaya acquired a majority stake in baby food company Smileat through its Andromeda fund. Smileat generated €21M in revenue in 2025 with €2M+ EBITDA

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• We (Kfund) launched the fundraising process of KFounders Preseed II, our new ~€20M pre-seed fund. The vehicle continues the strategy from our 1st pre-seed fund, which backed 40 companies (70%+ from outside Spain), including Enginy, Quiver, Complaion, Nilo and 2501. Initial tickets of ~€300K targeting early-stage tech founders with global ambition
• LifeX Ventures launched Life Extension Fund II EU, targeting €70M to invest in European life sciences and longevity startups
• Seaya welcomed Rika Christanto (formerly of LifeX and Idoven) as Partner and Co-Head of Ventures
• Spanish investors active abroad:
• Tether led a $14M Series A round for Argentine crypto platform Belo, alongside Spanish fund The Venture City

Startup news 💡

• Amazing stuff from Freepik. I mean… Magnific. Freepik is rebranding as Magnific (the AI startup it acquired in 2024 for €20M+ co-founded by Javi Lopez and Emilio Nicolas. Javilop wrote about the launch here ) and has hit $230M ARR with 1M+ paying subscribers, roughly 2x in 18 months. AI suite revenue tripled YoY. Freepik positions itself as a model-agnostic creative production layer, aggregating third-party AI models rather than building its own. EQT (52.9% since 2020) is past its typical 5-year hold, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. More details about the changes here
• ElevenLabs, the voice AI unicorn ($11B valuation, $430M ARR), is opening a Madrid office with ~20 hires across engineering and sales. The company also announced that Banco Santander has joined as investor. More info about the launch here and here
• Several Spanish startups are among 21 European startups that VCs recommended as ones to watch in this Techcrunch article: Theker, HappyRobot, Cala, PLD Space and Multiverse
• Bit2Me CEO Leif Ferreira discussed the company’s expansion challenges in Italy and Portugal, calling the market penetration more difficult than expected
• Revolut will open its first-ever physical store near Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona by late 2026 or early 2027
• Bihar Batteries and NX Technologies announced a partnership to accelerate European deployment of sodium-ion batteries for commercial energy storage. Bihar, founded in 2023, aims to start product sales by late 2026. The company was co-founded by Sebastián Fernández-Medrano and Alberto Cendoya
• Multiplo Capital received authorization from CNMV as a financial advisory company. The AI-powered fintech, backed by Antai Ventures and ex-executives from BBVA, Fidelity, and Fintonic, offers wealth management through financial aggregation. After three months, it manages over €20M in AUM. More info here
• Skyboria, a Madrid-based drone startup developing civil and military drones with 500kg cargo capacity, plans to raise around €1M in 2027. The company expects to complete product design this year and begin mass production in 2027, with interest from clients in Chile, Greece, Italy, and Spain
• Profile of Waabi, the Canadian autonomous driving startup founded by Pamplona-born engineer Raquel Urtasun, which just raised $1B. The company is developing "physical AI" for both autonomous trucks and robotaxis

Big company news 🏦

• Bizum launches contactless NFC payments in physical stores on May 18, bypassing Visa/Mastercard rails entirely. Money moves via instant bank transfer directly from buyer to merchant
• A Madrid court ordered Cloudflare to block pirate football streaming sites including Roja Directa and PirloTV, following a lawsuit by LaLiga and Movistar Plus+. The judge also summoned Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince to testify — he didn't show.The company called LaLiga's complaint "an abuse of the system."
• Merlin Properties presented its data center transformation plan at its AGM, targeting 730 megawatts across País Vasco, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisboa and Zaragoza by 2032. Merlin will invest €7.84B in the initiative

Interesting reads 🤓

• Jose Ramon Perez Agüera (Mercadona Tech) published “Cómo construimos nuestro buscador en Mercadona Tech (y cómo construir el tuyo)”. More about it here
• Juan Luis Hortelano (Blinkfire, Startup Valencia) published “IA y salud: siete días para un prototipo, diez años para un producto”
• Antonio Herranz (Director of Global AI Transformation at Banco Santander) published “La paradoja de los 2,5 billones: por qué las empresas invierten más que nunca en IA y obtienen menos de lo que esperan“
• Philippe Gelis (Kantox) wrote “Slow Capital: A Philosophy for Building Wealth That Lasts”