Barcelona's Weekly Tech Update

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Hello and happy Monday,

This week, we tracked over €100M investment in Catalan companies – including two industry record-breaking rounds – and over €30M in Spain. Elsewhere, BCN startups top lists, OpenAI opens its first Spanish office, and Ubisoft announces layoffs. 

Enjoy the issue and have a great festivo! 💥 ⚽️

Startup & Investment News

Barcelona investment news

• THEKER raises €72.3M, the largest robotics Series A round ever raised in Europe

• NeuralTrust gets €17.3M, the largest cybersecurity seed financing raised by an EU company to date

• “Catalan Nvidia” Openchip receives another €10M from the Catalan government 

• Gate2Brain secures €7M to advance brain tumour candidate

• Cyberclick acquired by Siloy to boost expansion & leadership in AI and HubSpot

Barcelona startup news

• High-design wearable for calm Sou hit 100% Kickstarter funding in 24 hours — betting that less tech is the new luxury

• Platanomelón Founder & CEO Anna Boldú recognized at WITH Gala as a leading woman in innovation and leadership

• Six BCN firms make the Sifted Consumer 100 including Heura, Kings League, Impress & Incapto

• Payflow recognized in the Deloitte EMEA Technology Fast 500 

• Startup SCIRCLE unveils with FC Barcelona the club’s first AI-created olfactory brand identity

Spanish investment news

• Madrid AI workforce platform Orbio raises €18.09M Series A

• Basque-Valencian 100% digital rehab clinic TRAK raises €3.7M

• Seville spin-off Smart Fusion Energy gets €1.5M from BeAble Capital

VC, investment & crowdfunding news

• EIB & INBONIS sign agreement to support financing for European startups and scaleups through credit ratings

• Columbus Venture Partners closes its largest biotechnology and life sciences fund, sized at up to €220M

Open calls, accelerator news & incubator stories

• Women TechEU is looking for independent evaluators to assess application quality; deadline 30 July

  • Applications for women-led deeptech startups are also still open; deadline 30 June

• Spanish Government announces €162M grant package for dual-use technologies

Barcelona startup & entrepreneur profiles & interviews

• TB interview with Marta P. Estarellas of Qilimanjaro on the future of supercomputing

• Adrià Salvador, Co-founder of Lace Lithography: chips at full speed

Tech & Business News

• BSC AI Factory & NVIDIA collaborate to accelerate AI adoption for startups

• Spain approves €719M contribution to Catalan AI gigafactory project

• British firm OQC to open biggest quantum center in Southern Europe in Barcelona, with €92M investment & 210 jobs

• Ubisoft begins a new wave of global layoffs that will affect 51 employees in Barcelona

• OpenAI opens first office in Spain, in Madrid

Good Reads & Watches

• Analysis: Catalonia surpasses 2,600 tech companies and approaches €1.3B in startup investment by 2025

• Miguel Carranza: (RevenueCat): 100 Lessons From Building a 100-Person Org

• Chema Alonso on hackers, AI, Cloudflare and the future of the internet (ES)

• How standardizing AI boosted our dev efficiency up to 50%: Building MarsBased (EN)

Great Events

This week:

• Mon 22 Jun @13:00 Women Investors’ Lunch by SIA

• Mon 22 Jun @18:00: CTO Networking Barcelona

• Mon 22 Jun @18:00: A.fterwork I.ntelligence Drink Barcelona

• Thu 25 Jun @08:30: Climate Coffee Barcelona

• Thu 25 Jun @18:30: Business Networking: Startups, Investors & Tech

Upcoming:

• Mon 29 Jun–Thu 2 Jul: Barcelona Activa & Mobile World Capital Upskilling Week

• Tue 30 Jun @20:00: Tech Founder Hang - June

• Wed 1 Jul @12:00: The evolution of the CFO: Webinar

• Thu 2 Jul @18:00: Hello Operator & Kunoichi Growth Tech Marketing Leaders Vermut & Networking

Got news or an event to share? Fill out this form.

Startup Jobs

• Lexroom is hiring an Account Executive

• HappyScribe is looking for a Product Marketer

• THEKER Robotics is recruiting a People & Talent role

• Maisa needs an AI Automation Consultant

• haddock is hiring a Senior Head of Marketing