Based on a current Dealroom report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the mixed worth of Spanish startups surpassed 100 billion euros in 2023. The newest affirmation of this upward pattern is a enterprise capital fund from Madrid Seya closed Seaya Andromeda, a €300 million Article 9 local weather expertise fund primarily based in Madrid.
Article 9 refers to EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulationwhich locations a accountability on funding corporations to make sure that their investments have a optimistic affect on society or the setting.
Seaya has been round for 12 years, primarily specializing in mission-driven startups in Europe and Latin America. The brand new fund, Andromeda, will put money into progress corporations centered on power transition, decarbonization, sustainable meals worth chains, and the round economic system.
The corporate mentioned the brand new local weather fund would offer between €7 million and €40 million as an preliminary payout; retain capital for subsequent payouts; and plan to make 25 investments by the tip of 2027. To this point, the fund has made 5 investments (see beneath).
Seaya itself was launched in 2013 by former non-public fairness investor Beatriz Gonzalez, who moved into local weather and sustainability investing after investing in a recycled clothes line. She beforehand labored at Morgan Stanley, Excel Companions, and Darby Abroad Investments within the US. She then turned a director of Telefonica’s pension fund, heading up its different property programme.
Below Gonzalez’s management, Seaya has invested in local weather expertise corporations together with Biome Makers, Readability.ai, Crowdfarming, Descartes, RatedPower, Samara, and electrical automobile charging station firm Wallbox (which listed on the New York Inventory Trade in 2021).
Throughout a telephone name, I requested González whether or not she thought there was a selected benefit in having a Spanish-based fund centered on local weather expertise, given the nation’s proximity to a few of the worst impacts of local weather change, similar to excessive warmth, droughts, wildfires and storms.
“That’s an excellent query,” she mentioned. “If you concentrate on the power transition and decarbonisation from southern Europe, significantly Spain, we’re higher positioned for 2 causes. One is that southern Europe has extra excessive heatwaves. So clearly there may be much more social consciousness there. However we additionally assume we now have a aggressive benefit within the industries we’re concentrating on.
“We had been pioneers in renewable power, so we now have expertise and huge auto components corporations. So we now have a big industrial base. Similar with agriculture and actual property. So we expect we now have trade expertise and expertise from southern Europe, particularly Spain, which provides us a bit little bit of a bonus.”
I additionally requested what expertise and data they’d that will allow them to make selections about investing in high-tech local weather applied sciences.
“Now we have a few engineers, so we now have the inner experience, however in our LP community we now have huge EU banks like Santander that do undertaking finance for power or factories. So gaining access to that data helps us do our due diligence and transfer a lot quicker.”
To this point, Seaya has used this data to put money into a number of related corporations. Augmented actuality abilities coaching answer primarily based in Spain, SeaburyFor instance, the corporate has developed augmented actuality software program and {hardware} to coach welders, which means they do not have to make use of actual welding to be taught, decreasing carbon emissions by 95% in a single welding session.
The corporate has additionally invested in a UK-based AI-powered waste administration startup. Recycleeye in February 2022, which is engaged within the creation of robots for sorting waste for recycling.
In San Francisco, the agency invested in Pacamaa local weather expertise firm that makes use of information to confirm the standard of carbon credit and launch new carbon credit score tasks.
The information of the brand new fund follows different indicators of a funding revival in southern Europe. Simply final week, Plus Companions launched in Barcelona with the intention of elevating a fund of $30-50 million.
Annual State of European Know-how Report in 2023 additionally discovered that Spain’s ecosystem is in fourth place general and that it has the best the variety of startup fundings final yr.