Spanish tech in review: the key moments of 2022

Spanish tech certainly hasn’t been immune to the general slowdown in the markets this year, but things could definitely be worse.

While it looks like Spanish startups will raise a little less than they did in 2021, the dropoff in funding volume in the second half of the year wasn’t anything like as dramatic as was seen across Europe. Overall funding into European startups fell from $62.3bn in H1 2022 to $32.1bn in H2 (as of December 20), while in Spain the figure fell from $2bn to $1.5bn in the same period, according to data from Dealroom.

This was helped along by some chunky raises in the latter half of the year, like HR software builder Factorial’s $120m Series C, which saw the company hit unicorn status. So-called “soonicorns” also raised, including fraud prevention scaleup Red Points. It announced a fresh €20m funding round in November, although it declined to share its valuation — a possible symptom of the wider downward pressure on startup pricing in Europe.

But while the economy always moves in cycles — and we’re currently in a tough moment — Spain’s tech startup sector continues to move in the right direction.

Here are some of the main moments from Sifted’s Spanish coverage in 2022.

Soonicorns and new unicorns

Factorial and Red Points aside, less recognisable names also raised big rounds: cybersecurity startup IriusRisk landed $28.7m to scale its teams in Spain, the UK and the US. The round is evidence of Spain’s growing reputation as a tech exporter, with founder Stephen de Vries telling Sifted that the majority of the company’s clients are US-based. Barcelona-based business travel startup TravelPerk also reached unicorn status, after raising a $115m top up to its$160m Series D.

Deeptech renaissance

Spain’s starting to produce more and more deeptech success stories, like Red Points and IriusRisk. Quantum computing startup Multiverse Computing was one of Spain’s fastest growing startups this year, while photonics startup iPronics raised €3.7m to develop and scale its technology to build ultrafast microprocessors.

Other cutting-edge tech companies highlighted by investors this year include “edge computing” startup Nearby Computing, AI-powered voice modulator tech company Voicemod and radiology image analysis tool Quibim.

Read full article by Sifted here.