Spain and Portugal are becoming hotspots in the European tech ecosystem, with a barrage of new startups and funding announcements. Recent news includes the launch of Barcelona-based Plus Partners’ intentions to raise a $30-$50 million fund. In other news, Yellow emerged with a €30 million fund, and Kfund has successfully raised $75 million.
Today, another Spanish firm hit the headlines: All Iron Ventures is changing its name to Acurio Ventures and closed its third fund, at €150 million ($166 million). This fund is intended to be “follow-on” only, meaning it will not lead new deals, but rather pump its cash into existing investments.
Since its formation in 2018, All Iron Ventures has made investment decisions in the most notable European tech startups involved with Seedtag, Jobandtalent, Lingokids, Preply, Refurbed, and Lookiero. Ander Michelena co-founded Acurio, after selling his previous firm, Ticketbis, to eBay for €16.5 million in 2016.
The fund attracted diverse limited partners in its first closing, including an an insurance company, tech executives, approximately 35 family offices, corporate investors, pension funds, and unnamed U.S. university endowment. Acurio Ventures will continue to have a generalist investment thesis across Europe that already made around 20 investments.
Michelena said the fund will look at equity stakes of 3% to 10%. This should give it much more flexibility regarding its access to companies, management of follow-on reserves, and execution of divestments.
He said that Acurio’s portfolio strategy is different from the traditional market: “We target 50 companies per fund rather than the traditional 20. We review our portfolio quarterly to decide on subsequent investments.”
This way, it enables producing distributions towards paid-in (DPI), which are among the popular measures of the performance of a VC.
The firm operates with a team of 12, based out of Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona, and London. Its partners also include Kate Cornell, Michelena, Hugo Mardomingo, and Diego Recondo. The name “Acurio” was inspired by Juan de Acurio, one of the 12 sailors that, five centuries ago, completed the historic expedition led by Magellan and Elcano.
According to Dealroom, the aggregated enterprise value for Spanish startups arrived at more than €100 billion in 2023. Venture investment in the sector was sustained at €2.2 billion across about 850 funding rounds. Spain’s ecosystem was ranked fourth in Europe in the “State of European Tech” report for the year 2023. The ranking was based on the number of startup funding rounds for countries.
Earlier this year, Madrid-based Seaya closed its €300 million climate tech fund, called Seaya Andromeda. This underscored the place of the region in the broader scale of tech development.
