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Spain and Portugal are bubble up in the European tech ecosystem , with mess of new inauguration and financial backing troll being announced in the two land . Barcelona - basedPlus Partnersrecently set up with the aim of closing a $ 30-$50 million monetary fund ; Yellow is a new VC business firm that found with a € 30 million fund ; and Spanish VC Kfund lift $ 75 million .
Today , another Spanish firm , All Iron Ventures , is rebranding . It ’ll now be have intercourse asAcurio Venturesand it is closing its third fund of $ 166 million ( € 150 million ) . The store will exclusively make “ keep up - on ” investments and will not lead deals .
Under its premature moniker , launched in 2018 , the firm had back European tech inauguration including Seedtag , Jobandtalent , Lingokids , Preply , Refurbed and Lookiero . Acurio was co - founded by Ander Michelena , who sold his late startup , Ticketbis , to eBay for € 16.5 million in 2016 .
LPs in the new fund include an unnamed U.S. university natural endowment , pension funds , corporates , some 35 family offices , an insurance companionship , and technical school executive .
The new fund has already made around 20 investments , and it will operate with a generalist thesis ( not focusing on any particular sphere ) , investing across the whole of Europe . The fund has assets under direction deserving around € 300 million .
Michelena told TechCrunch the pursue - on fund will take equity stakes of between 3 % and 10 % , as he feels it consecrate the firm greater flexibility to entree party , manage keep up - on investment reserves , and undertake divestments .
“ In the last 12 months , we ’re probably been one of the most active VCs in Europe , doing 20 investments , ” he say . “ We believe the marketplace is at the tip of turning and has go far at the bottom of valuation , and we are taking advantage of that . There will be a deadening recovery , so we want to make a push there . It was meter to push the accelerator pedal . ”
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Michelena point out that the firm ’s portfolio building is dissimilar from other firms : “ We do 50 companies per fund instead of the distinctive 20 [ … ] We basically , every quarter , look at the portfolio and decide how much we follow up . ”
He said the other big vantage of this model is it lets the house do statistical distribution to paid - in ( DPI ) earlier . DPI is one of the core fiscal metric that VC funds employ to evaluate their investiture execution .
“ We can pop off in round , and we do n’t have to wait until the end of the life of the fund . So it ’s a small bit unlike approach than regular VC in that sense , ” he say .
The house has a squad of 12 citizenry based in Bilbao , Madrid , Barcelona , and London . Its partners let in Michelena , Diego Recondo , Hugo Mardomingo , and Kate Cornell .
The firm is drawing on Basque origins for its new “ Acurio Ventures ” moniker : It is instigate by Juan de Acurio , one of the 12 bluejacket who returned to embrasure from the expedition around the world led by Magellan and Elcano five century ago .
According to a Dealroomreporton the Spanish technical school ecosystem , the combined enterprisingness value of Spanish inauguration surpassed € 100 billion in 2023 . The report also found that venture investment in Spanish startups held up last yr , with € 2.2 billion raised across some 850 financial backing round .
The one-year “ United States Department of State of European Tech ” account for 2023foundSpain ’s ecosystem to be in quaternary place overall in Europe , with the highest number of inauguration backing last twelvemonth .
Earlier this year , Madrid - base VC business firm SeayaclosedSeaya Andromeda , an “ Article 9 ” € 300 million climate technical school fund based out of Madrid .
Plus , the European Investment Bank ’s venture capital branch also backed a young fund in Spain this year that aims to invest € 1 billion ( $ 1.1 billion ) in maturation - stage tech inauguration .