In line with a current Dealroom report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the mixed enterprise worth of Spanish startups surpassed €100 billion in 2023. Within the newest affirmation of this upward pattern, Madrid-based VC fund Seaya has closed Seaya Andromeda, an “Article 9” €300 million local weather tech fund primarily based out of Madrid.
Article 9 refers back to the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation Act, which places the onus on funding corporations to make sure their investments have a optimistic influence on society or the surroundings.
Seaya has been round for 12 years, primarily specializing in mission-driven startups in Europe and LatAm. The brand new “Andromeda” fund will put money into development firms focusing on power transition, decarbonization, sustainable meals worth chains, and the round economic system.
The agency stated the brand new local weather fund will deploy between €7 million and €40 million as a primary test; will retain capital for follow-ons; and plans to make 25 investments by the tip of 2027. To this point, 5 investments have been constructed from the fund (see beneath).
Seaya was launched again in 2013 by former personal fairness investor Beatriz González, who obtained into local weather and sustainable investing after backing a recycled clothes line. She beforehand labored for Morgan Stanley, Excel Companions and Darby Abroad Investments within the U.S. After that she turned a director of Telefónica’s pension fund, main its different belongings program.
Beneath González, Seaya has invested in local weather tech firms, together with Biome Makers, Readability.ai, Crowdfarming, Descartes, RatedPower, Samara, and electrical automotive charging stations firm Wallbox (which went public on the New York Inventory Alternate in 2021).
Over a name, I requested González if she thought there’s a explicit benefit in having a fund out of Spain tacking local weather tech, given the nation’s proximity to a number of the worst results of a altering local weather, akin to excessive warmth, drought, wildfires and storms.
“It’s a very good query,” she stated. “If you concentrate on power transition and decarbonization, coming from Southern Europe, notably Spain, we do see that we’re higher suited to two causes. One is as a result of Southern Europe is having extra excessive warmth waves. So clearly, there’s rather more social consciousness. However we additionally suppose that we’ve got aggressive benefits within the industries that we’re focusing on.
“We’ve been pioneers in renewable power, so we’ve got the expertise and we’ve got the large firms within the manufacturing of auto components. So we’ve got a giant industrial base. The identical with agriculture and actual property publicity. So we do imagine that we’ve got the trade experience and expertise coming from Southern Europe, particularly, and Spain, that does give us a little bit of benefit.”
I additionally requested what sort of experience they’ve that may enable them to make deep tech funding selections about local weather tech.
“We have now a few engineers so we’ve got that in-house experience, however in our LP community we’ve got huge European Union banks like Santander which do mission finance for power or factories. So accessing that information helps us do the due diligence and transfer a lot quicker.”
Up to now, Seaya has used that information to put money into a number of related firms. Spain-based augmented-reality ability coaching answer Seabery, for instance, developed AR software program and {hardware} for coaching welders, which means they don’t want to make use of actual welding to coach, thus decreasing carbon emissions by 95% per welding session.
It has additionally invested in U.Okay.-based AI-powered waste administration startup Recycleye in February 2022, which builds robots to type garbage for recycling.
In San Francisco, the agency invested in Pachama, a local weather tech firm that makes use of information to confirm the standard of carbon credit and allow the launch of recent carbon credit score initiatives.
The information of the brand new fund follows different indicators of the Southern European funding renaissance. Solely final week, Plus Companions launched in Barcelona, aiming to drum up a $30 million to $50 million fund.
The annual “State of European Tech” report for 2023 additionally discovered Spain’s ecosystem to be in fourth place total and stated it had the highest variety of startup fundings final 12 months.
