Oct 14, 2024

The Spanish capital is drawing talent from Latin America, and its eye-catching startups are working on smarter payments, eldercare, and an AI-powered virtual nurse. Save Having spent many years as second fiddle to Barcelona, Madrid surpassed its Catalan cousin in 2023 with startups securing €605 million ($672 million) investment above Barcelona’s €457 million ($507 million). “Lots of Latin American talent is arriving thanks to the recent entrepreneur visa and talent programs run by Telefonica to bring promising startup founders from Mexico, Argentina, Columbia and Venezuela,” explains Bu Haces, innovation consultant at Madrid’s Impact Hub. Europe's 100 Hottest Startups From Amsterdam to Zurich, these are the hottest startups in Europe in 2024 The city has seen solid growth in transportation, mobility and fintech startups during the last three years with AI and deep tech supercharged by an astonishing 56 universities. “The business schools in particular are providing lots of startup networking opportunities, and are keen on developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem,” says Miguel Arias, general partner at VC K Fund. With Meta, IBM, Google and Amazon all expanding in the city, the main worry is lack of housing stock for the flood of students, engineers and entrepreneurs. “We need more accessible housing if we continue like this,” Haces warns. Invopop When Invopop co-founder and CTO Sam Lown worked as CTO for Cabify, a Latin American rival to Uber, he found that the company had to issue invoices in different formats in different countries. More than 30 governments across South America and Europe also insist that online businesses report every sale to tax authorities as they happen, often with different reporting rules. “I thought it would be great to send all that to one place and have a company deal with it,” he explains. Invopop’s platform converts sales into electronic invoices and reports them to the local tax authority in the correct format. With CEO Juan Moliner Malaxechevarría, Lown raised €2.2 million ($2.4 million) from Y Combinator, Rebel Fund and Wayra. Since its launch, Invopop’s 500 business customers—including Property Management Services, Amenitiz, Fever and Sunday—have issued more than one million invoices in 25 countries. This year they launched the Invopop App, which connects to Slack, Chargebee and Google Drive. invopop.com Uelz Uelz is designed to simplify online payments for companies that use a variety of payment methods, such as credit card billing, mobile payment and buy now, pay later services. It’s also designed for international companies that use different payment providers in separate countries. Uelz’s platform connects with all payment gateways including Apple Pay, Visa, Global Payments, Klarna, Stripe and Truust.io. It automates subscriptions and one-off payments and selects the most appropriate payment provider—for instance, if rates of commission vary between countries, Uelz will ensure the gateway with the lowest commission is used. The company tracks payments and provides data to sales teams and finance departments. Co-founded by Xandra Etxabe and María Luke Astigarraga (the former goalkeeper for Atlético Madrid), Uelz has raised €2 million ($2.2 million) from Angels Capital and Wayra. The company is expanding into Latin America in 2025. uelzpay.com Tucuvi Tucuvi is a healthtech company offering a voice-based conversational AI and “virtual nurse” called Lola. The service monitors patients after they leave hospital to reduce readmissions. Lola leads patients through a structured conversation and sends the results to the patient’s medical team for review. Co-founded by María González Manso and Marcos Rubio in 2019, the company obtained €5.5 million ($6.1 million) in funding from the European Innovation Council. Offering Lola in Spanish, Portuguese and English, Tucuvi has worked with more than 60,000 patients in Spain, Portugal and the UK, reducing hospital stays by 26 percent and cutting the 30-day readmission rate by more than 50 percent. tucuvi.com Tucuvi’s Marcos Rubio and María González Manso. PHOTOGRAPH: JAMES RAJOTTE iFeel iFeel is a workplace mental health platform aimed at companies as a service to employees or as part of health insurance cover. People talk to an AI that assesses their levels of stress, depression and anxiety. It then decides what sort of attention is needed—from an online therapist to a standard self-care wellbeing program. iFeel claims its treatment halves working hours missed, with 90 percent of users reporting improved emotional and mental wellbeing after using the service. Available in 26 languages and 30 countries, iFeel customers include 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 recent €20 million ($22 million) Series B investment round co-led by FinTLV Ventures and Korelya Capital. The new funds will support international expansion. ifeelonline.com Luzia Luzia, created by Spanish engineer Álvaro Higes, is a WhatsApp and Telegram-based AI personal assistant which uses OpenAI and Meta’s Llama to provide a ChatGPT-style service. Luiza can research topics, suggest help with your math homework, create pictures and use translation tools. Founded in April 2023, Luzia secured a $2.5 million (£1.9 million) seed round in June 2023. Further rounds—$10 million (£7.6 million) series A in September 2023 and $19 million (£14 million) series A1 in April 2024—are funding international expansion. The company has more than 20 million users and 15 million app downloads, topping the Android and Apple Store charts across most LATAM countries. Luzia.com Embat Embat co-founders Antonio Berga and Carlos Serrano García-Lisón worked together at JP Morgan where, says Berga, “we were seeing clients struggling to manage multiple banks and banking platforms. It took hours.” They founded Embat with Tomás Gil, ex-CTO at Fintonic, in August 2021 to centralize financial operations on a cloud-based platform for 600 companies in 60 countries and 50 currencies. €6.5 million ($7.2 million) pre-seed and seed series were backed by Samaipata, 4Founders and VentureFriends. February 2024’s €15 million ($16.6 million) Series A will fund further international expansion. Future plans include developing AI for fraud detection, insurance underwriting and recommending investment opportunities. embat.io Tomás Gil, Antonio Berga, and Carlos Serrano García-Lisón. PHOTOGRAPH: JAMES RAJOTTE Senniors Senniors is an at-home care company for elderly people. It provides wearable tech from Fitbit to monitor users’ health and needs, and gives families access to the data through the Senniors app. The company also connects elderly users to healthcare professionals when needed, provides a longevity program in partnership with Fitbit as well as insurer Klinc to improve activity, 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 round led by SixThirty Ventures. The company has provided 800,000 hours of home care to more than 40,000 families in 100 Spanish cities. US expansion is planned for 2025. hola.senniors.com Boopos Boopos is an online broker for buying and selling businesses, founded in 2020 by Juan Ignacio García, the former CFO at Spain’s first unicorn Cabify. Many of the companies for sale on the platform are predominantly small online firms. The Boopos team vet them, while making sure they are profitable and have been operating for the last two years. García has raised $20 million (£15 million) in three rounds led by Bonsai Partners and K Fund. With almost $80 million (£60.9 million) transacted on the platform, Boopos has 5,000 active buyers and 200 businesses for sale, and will break even by the end of the year. “We want to scale,” says García. “There’s a wave of baby boomer business owners retiring and selling up.” boopos.com Onum Onum is a cloud-based platform that monitors companies’ data as it moves from collection to storage. Using AI algorithms, Onum spots anomalies, potential security risks, and system issues. It also helps “separate the noise from the signal,” identifying what should be discarded, archived, or analyzed, and claims customers cut the cost of managing data by up to 80 per cent. Founded 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 total of €38 million ($42 million) led by Kibo Ventures and Dawn Capital. onum.com Shakers Shakers is a digital workforce platform that helps companies build, manage and pay teams of freelancers. It can select an entire group from scratch or add new members to an existing talent pool. Founded 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 company claims it has grown 350 percent in revenue in the past two years. Charging businesses for access to the platform, it has worked with more than 600 Spanish companies including Inditex, Telefónica, Uber and Microsoft and more than 7,000 freelancers. Expansion across southern Europe is planned for 2025. shakersworks.com This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 edition of WIRED UK. Most Popular