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Having spent a few years as second fiddle to Barcelona, Madrid surpassed its Catalan cousin in 2023 with startups securing €605 million ($672 million) funding above Barcelona’s €457 million ($507 million). “A lot of Latin American expertise is arriving because of the latest entrepreneur visa and expertise packages run by Telefonica to carry promising startup founders from Mexico, Argentina, Columbia and Venezuela,” explains Bu Haces, innovation marketing consultant at Madrid’s Impression Hub.
Town has seen stable development in transportation, mobility and fintech startups over the past three years with AI and deep tech supercharged by an astonishing 56 universities. “The enterprise faculties specifically are offering a lot of startup networking alternatives, and are eager on growing an entrepreneurial ecosystem,” says Miguel Arias, normal associate at VC Ok Fund.
With Meta, IBM, Google and Amazon all increasing within the metropolis, the primary fear is lack of housing inventory for the flood of scholars, engineers and entrepreneurs. “We want extra accessible housing if we proceed like this,” Haces warns.
Invopop
When Invopop co-founder and CTO Sam Lown labored as CTO for Cabify, a Latin American rival to Uber, he discovered that the corporate needed to problem invoices in numerous codecs in numerous international locations. Greater than 30 governments throughout South America and Europe additionally insist that on-line companies report each sale to tax authorities as they occur, typically with completely different reporting guidelines. “I believed it will be nice to ship all that to at least one place and have an organization take care of it,” he explains. Invopop’s platform converts gross sales into digital invoices and stories them to the native tax authority within the right format. With CEO Juan Moliner Malaxechevarría, Lown raised €2.2 million ($2.4 million) from Y Combinator, Insurgent Fund and Wayra. Since its launch, Invopop’s 500 enterprise clients—together with Property Administration Providers, Amenitiz, Fever and Sunday—have issued multiple million invoices in 25 international locations. This yr they launched the Invopop App, which connects to Slack, Chargebee and Google Drive. invopop.com
Uelz
Uelz is designed to simplify on-line funds for corporations that use quite a lot of fee strategies, corresponding to bank card billing, cell fee and purchase now, pay later providers. It’s additionally designed for worldwide corporations that use completely different fee suppliers in separate international locations. Uelz’s platform connects with all fee gateways together with Apple Pay, Visa, International Funds, Klarna, Stripe and Truust.io. It automates subscriptions and one-off funds and selects probably the most acceptable fee supplier—as an illustration, if charges of fee fluctuate between international locations, Uelz will make sure the gateway with the bottom fee is used. The corporate tracks funds and gives knowledge to gross sales groups and finance departments. Co-founded by Xandra Etxabe and María Luke Astigarraga (the previous goalkeeper for Atlético Madrid), Uelz has raised €2 million ($2.2 million) from Angels Capital and Wayra. The corporate is increasing into Latin America in 2025. uelzpay.com
Tucuvi
Tucuvi is a healthtech firm providing a voice-based conversational AI and “digital nurse” referred to as Lola. The service screens sufferers after they go away hospital to cut back readmissions. Lola leads sufferers via a structured dialog and sends the outcomes to the affected person’s medical staff for evaluate. Co-founded by María González Manso and Marcos Rubio in 2019, the corporate obtained €5.5 million ($6.1 million) in funding from the European Innovation Council. Providing Lola in Spanish, Portuguese and English, Tucuvi has labored with greater than 60,000 sufferers in Spain, Portugal and the UK, lowering hospital stays by 26 p.c and slicing the 30-day readmission price by greater than 50 p.c. tucuvi.com
iFeel
iFeel is a office psychological well being platform aimed toward corporations as a service to staff or as a part of medical health insurance cowl. Folks discuss to an AI that assesses their ranges of stress, melancholy and nervousness. It then decides what kind of consideration is required—from a web based therapist to an ordinary self-care wellbeing program. iFeel claims its therapy halves working hours missed, with 90 p.c of customers reporting improved emotional and psychological wellbeing after utilizing the service. Obtainable in 26 languages and 30 international locations, iFeel clients embrace Glovo, Insud Pharma, Cabify, TravelPerk, Spotahome and H&M. Launched in 2020 by co-founders CEO Amir Kaplan, COO Martin Villanueva Ordas and Gabriele Murrone, the startup has raised €40 million ($44 million), with a latest €20 million ($22 million) Sequence B funding spherical co-led by FinTLV Ventures and Korelya Capital. The brand new funds will assist worldwide growth. ifeelonline.com
Luzia
Luzia, created by Spanish engineer Álvaro Higes, is a WhatsApp and Telegram-based AI private assistant which makes use of OpenAI and Meta’s Llama to offer a ChatGPT-style service. Luiza can analysis matters, counsel assist together with your math homework, create footage and use translation instruments. Based in April 2023, Luzia secured a $2.5 million (£1.9 million) seed spherical in June 2023. Additional rounds—$10 million (£7.6 million) sequence A in September 2023 and $19 million (£14 million) sequence A1 in April 2024—are funding worldwide growth. The corporate has greater than 20 million customers and 15 million app downloads, topping the Android and Apple Retailer charts throughout most LATAM international locations. Luzia.com
Embat
Embat co-founders Antonio Berga and Carlos Serrano García-Lisón labored collectively at JP Morgan the place, says Berga, “we had been seeing purchasers struggling to handle a number of banks and banking platforms. It took hours.” They based Embat with Tomás Gil, ex-CTO at Fintonic, in August 2021 to centralize monetary operations on a cloud-based platform for 600 corporations in 60 international locations and 50 currencies. €6.5 million ($7.2 million) pre-seed and seed sequence had been backed by Samaipata, 4Founders and VentureFriends. February 2024’s €15 million ($16.6 million) Sequence A will fund additional worldwide growth. Future plans embrace growing AI for fraud detection, insurance coverage underwriting and recommending funding alternatives. embat.io
Senniors
Senniors is an at-home care firm for aged folks. It gives wearable tech from Fitbit to watch customers’ well being and wishes, and provides households entry to the info via the Senniors app. The corporate additionally connects aged customers to healthcare professionals when wanted, gives a long life program in partnership with Fitbit in addition to insurer Klinc to enhance exercise, sleep and emotional well-being. Co-founded in November 2020 by Claudia Gómez Estefan and José de Diego Abad, Senniors raised €5.3 million ($5.8 million) in a seed spherical led by SixThirty Ventures. The corporate has offered 800,000 hours of house care to greater than 40,000 households in 100 Spanish cities. US growth is deliberate for 2025. hola.senniors.com
Boopos
Boopos is a web based dealer for purchasing and promoting companies, based in 2020 by Juan Ignacio García, the previous CFO at Spain’s first unicorn Cabify. Most of the corporations on the market on the platform are predominantly small on-line corporations. The Boopos staff vet them, whereas ensuring they’re worthwhile and have been working for the final two years. García has raised $20 million (£15 million) in three rounds led by Bonsai Companions and Ok Fund. With virtually $80 million (£60.9 million) transacted on the platform, Boopos has 5,000 energetic consumers and 200 companies on the market, and can break even by the tip of the yr. “We need to scale,” says García. “There’s a wave of child boomer enterprise house owners retiring and promoting up.” boopos.com
Onum
Onum is a cloud-based platform that screens corporations’ knowledge because it strikes from assortment to storage. Utilizing AI algorithms, Onum spots anomalies, potential safety dangers, and system points. It additionally helps “separate the noise from the sign,” figuring out what ought to be discarded, archived, or analyzed, and claims clients reduce the price of managing knowledge by as much as 80 per cent. Based in October 2022 by Pedro Castillo—former CEO of cybersecurity unicorn, Devo— he’s joined by co-founders Lucas Varela and Pedro Tortosa. Onum closed two rounds of funding for a complete of €38 million ($42 million) led by Kibo Ventures and Daybreak Capital. onum.com
Shakers
Shakers is a digital workforce platform that helps corporations construct, handle and pay groups of freelancers. It will probably choose a whole group from scratch or add new members to an current expertise pool. Based by CEO Héctor Mata, COO Nico de Luis, CPO Adrián de Pedro and COO Jaime Castillo in 2021, Shakers has raised €7 million ($7.7 million) in rounds led by Brighteye Ventures, Adevinta Ventures and Wayra. The corporate claims it has grown 350 p.c in income up to now two years. Charging companies for entry to the platform, it has labored with greater than 600 Spanish corporations together with Inditex, Telefónica, Uber and Microsoft and greater than 7,000 freelancers. Enlargement throughout southern Europe is deliberate for 2025. shakersworks.com
This text first appeared within the November/December 2024 version of WIRED UK.
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