El lujo silencioso de invertir donde no llegan los focos

Hay un lujo que no se ve, y quienes lo practican rara vez hablan de él. En inversión también existe: mientras la mayoría mira a la bolsa, los grandes patrimonios llevan décadas invirtiendo en empresas que aún no cotizan.

TCV, por ejemplo, identificó Netflix, Strava, Revolut o LinkedIn antes de que fueran conocidas. Eso es el lujo silencioso: llegar antes, con convicción y a largo plazo.

Ese terreno estaba reservado a unos pocos. Ya no. Crescenta, la primera gestora digital española especializada en Private Equity, lanza Private Equity Access I, ahora en formato ELTIF: mejor acceso, misma selección.

Invierte como imaginas.

Startup funding news 💸

• €100+ rounds:
• ID Finance secured €545M in debt and equity financing from several investors. The company did €243M in revenue in 2025, while Plazo (its financial app offering a virtual card and money-management tools) reached profitability, grew revenue 300% and surpassed 400k customers.
• €5M to €10M rounds:
• Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, the Barcelona-based quantum-computing startup, secured nearly €20M in the first close of its Series A, with €10M from Indra and €9.6M from SETT.
• Causa Prima, a Madrid and Munich-based startup to automate finances with agents, raised a $20M seed round led by Base10 Partners. We (Kfund) backed Causa Prima at the pre-seed and we’ve double down in this round. They now also plan to expand in the US.
• Harbor, the Spanish-founded, San Francisco-based startup building insurance for AI agents, emerged from stealth with a $10M seed round led by Base10, and the participation of local investors Kibo Ventures and Masia. More on its Spanish founders.
• Symbe, a London and Madrid-based startup using AI for B2B sales, raised a $5.7M seed round led by us at Kfund, with participation from Next Tier Ventures, 4Founders Capital and others. Symbe automates business cases and ROI calculations to help enterprise buyers justify purchases.
• €1M to €5M rounds:
• Spotahome, the Madrid-based rental platform, raised €1.2M through convertible bonds. Spotahome generated €16.9M in 2025 revenue, up 2.4%, with €2.2M in operating losses, and targets positive EBITDA in 2026.
• Other rounds of funding:
• Ruit, which builds software for professional second-hand sellers, raised an €880k pre-seed round led by Abac Nest
• Flavii Therapeutics, a University of Barcelona spin-off developing epigenetic therapies for neurological diseases, raised €843k led by Grow Venture Partners
• Constrik Intelligence, a Barcelona-based construction-software startup, raised a €350k pre-seed round led by Plus Partners

M&A activity 🎊

• esPublico, the software company behind municipal platform Gestiona, received preliminary bids near €1B from several PE firms. Another PE firm acquired the company in 2022 for around €500M. esPublico generated €85.6M in 2025 revenue, +23% YoY, with €44M in EBITDA
• Secture acquired digital-experience and ecommerce specialist Bisiesto. The combined business has 80+ staff and over €5.5M in revenue. It plans to hire 10–15 people over the next year.
• Amper and Hyperion fund are finalising the acquisition of Advanced Radar Technologies (ART) for €40M
• CitizenX, the Swiss citizenship platform co-founded by Spaniards Luis Cuende and Alex Recouso, acquired Caribbean advisory firm NTL Trust

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Nauta launched its 6th with a €60M first close and a €150M–€200M target. Nauta was founded 22 years ago and it currently manages around €600M in AUM. Their focus will remain in investing in B2B software and deeptech startups
• Axon Partners increased its stake in drone-autopilot company Embention to 32.91%, buying shares for over €2M from founder David Benavente. Embention reported €13.38M in revenue and €4.99M in profit last year.
• Mutua Ventures plans to grow its portfolio from 12 startups to 25–30 in the coming years. Mutua Madrileña’s CVC arm invests €1M–€3M for 10%–15% stakes in mobility, health, fintech and home services
• Spanish investors active abroad:
• Adara led a $12M seed round in French startup Goodweek. Part of the Goodweek founding team previously built Scalefast, an Adara portfolio company acquired by ESW in 2022
• Adara also participated in the $30M round of Prisma Photonics, an Israeli company that turns existing optical fibre into sensors for power lines, pipelines and railways

Startup news 💡

• On the topic of companies sharing liquidity with employees
• This is amazing news and the right way to compensate for employees that took a risk on a company and joined at an early stage, and also the flywheel that keeps startup ecosystems running. Kudos to Bernat, Jordi and the rest of the team! Factorial completed a secondary sale providing around €10M in liquidity to several hundred employees. Employees sold vested options at a discount to the latest round’s $2.5B valuation
• Another great example: Marosa founder Pedro Pestana shared €4M of his sale proceeds with all 120 employees, including recent hires, with a guaranteed minimum payout for everyone. The payout came from his personal proceeds following Marosa’s €112M exit
• New startups and products:
• Lokutor is a new Madrid-based AI voice startup that develops small, efficient models. PH launch here. The team also released Ito and Oído, open-source speech models for low-cost hardware. More from the founders here
• Tuyo launched a new version. Co-founder Alejandro Perezpayá published “Earning interest should be the default”
• Krea opened the beta for Krea 3, its new image-editing model
• Privera was launched, an AI platform for distributing private-equity and alternative funds, founded by Crescenta co-founder Eduardo Navarro
• Capchase launched Mila, a 24/7 AI deal desk for vendor financing. In a blog post, Guli Moreno explained how he built Mila’s launch video with Claude Code
• Cool example of companies building tools in-house, in this case instead of using Linear or Notion. Cabify built its own internal product-management tool, Cabify Connect
• Startup profiles and other news:
• Profile of iPronics and interview with its founder José Capmany. Talks about the round, future of the company and its new office in the Bay Area
• Fossa Systems opened a 3,000 sqm headquarters in Las Rozas, Madrid. It has launched 26 satellites and plans a 140-satellite constellation for secure communications and signals intelligence
• HeyDiga expanded into France and Italy through beauty brands. The company recently raised €5.5M (we’re investors in the company)
• Startup financials:
• Profile of Barkibu. 150,000 customers, €75M in revenue, 80-person team that works entirely remotely. We’re investors in Barkibu 🐶 🚀
• Substrate AI set a revenue target above €100M for 2030 after recently raising €39M. It generated €23.5M in 2025 revenue. It is shifting towards selling access to AI computing through its own Orion models.

Big company news 🏦

• Robotics giant ABB Robotics announced a tech and ops centre in Sabadell, due to open in 2028
• Unsurprising! Spain’s Startups Law delivered far fewer tax benefits than forecast, according to figures highlighted by David Miranda: corporate-tax deductions reached €4M against an expected €2B. @Ramon10 also noted that the number of companies using the improved stock-options regime fell from 194 to 144, with demanding eligibility requirements limiting uptake.
• Data centres:
• Microsoft and Google sent senior global public-affairs executives to lobby over Spain’s proposed data-centre decree
• PayPal appointed Marcelo Campos as country manager for Spain, previously chief growth officer at BBVA’s Openpay

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Interesting reads 🤓

• Oriol Aguilera (Murphy) published a super interesting tweet with salary bands of non-engineering roles at some of Spain’s largest startup and tech companies
• Emilio Nicolás (Magnific, Erasmusu) shared a practical playbook for launching and running a startup in Spain. Kiko Beats (microlink) contributed to the thread with more recommendations
• Xavier de Gracia (Prosper AI) published “The $108 Billion AI Opportunity for Specialty Practices ”.
• Xana Belastegui (Swanlaab) published “Proteínas Alternativas: De la promesa a la escala ”.
• Ruben Marzal (GTM AI at Orange) published “Cómo vender IA en 2026. Qué No me ha funcionado y que sí“
• Mickael Barreteau (Ballou), in partnership with Qwairy, published “How to appear in AI search results: a study of 73 European scale-ups and unicorns ”. Lots of Spanish data points