In keeping with Dealroom’s latest report on Spain’s tech ecosystem, the full enterprise worth of Spanish startups will exceed €100 billion by 2023. Seaya Andromeda, the “Article 9” €300 million local weather expertise fund primarily based in Madrid.
Article 9 pertains to the EU’s Sustainable Monetary Disclosure Regulation, which imposes a accountability on funding companies to make sure that their investments have a constructive social or environmental impression.
Seaya has been round for 12 years and focuses totally on mission-driven startups in Europe and Latin America. The brand new “Andromeda” fund will spend money on development corporations centered on the vitality transition, decarbonization, sustainable meals worth chains and the round economic system.
The corporate stated the brand new local weather fund will deploy between 7 million and 40 million euros as an preliminary tranche; capital will likely be reserved for follow-on tasks; and it plans to make 25 investments by the tip of 2027.
Seaya itself was launched in 2013 by former personal fairness investor Beatriz González, who entered the world of local weather and sustainability investing after backing a recycled clothes line. She has labored at Morgan Stanley, Excel Companions and Darby Abroad Investments in america. She then grew to become a director of Telefonica Pension Fund, main its various property programme.
Underneath González’s management, Seaya has invested in local weather expertise corporations equivalent to Biome Makers, Readability.ai, Crowdfarming, Descartes, RatedPower, Samara, and electrical automobile charging station firm Wallbox (to be listed on the New York Inventory Alternate in 2021).
On the cellphone, I requested Gonzalez, contemplating the nation is near a number of the worst impacts of local weather change, equivalent to excessive warmth, drought, wildfires and storms.
“That is an excellent query,” she stated. “If you consider the vitality transition and decarbonization from Southern Europe, particularly Spain, we do discover that we’re higher suited to two causes. One is as a result of Southern Europe is experiencing extra excessive warmth waves. Clearly, social consciousness is far larger. However we We additionally consider that we have now aggressive benefits in our goal industries.
“We’ve been a pioneer in renewable vitality, so we have now the expertise, and we have now large corporations within the automotive elements manufacturing sector. So we have now an enormous industrial base. The identical goes for agriculture and actual property. So we do consider that we have now the expertise from The business experience and expertise in Southern Europe, particularly Spain, does give us some benefits.
I additionally requested what experience that they had that may permit them to make deep technical funding selections in local weather applied sciences.
“We’ve just a few engineers, so we have now in-house experience, however inside our restricted companion community we have now massive EU banks like Santander who present mission finance for vitality or crops. So, entry to these Data helps us conduct due diligence and transfer sooner.
To date, Seaya has used this data to spend money on various associated corporations. For instance, Spanish augmented actuality expertise coaching resolution Seabery has developed AR software program and {hardware} for coaching welders, that means they don’t want to make use of actual welds to coach, leading to a decrease carbon footprint per welding session. 95%.
It additionally invested in British synthetic intelligence waste administration startup Recycleye in February 2022, which makes robots to type waste for recycling.
In San Francisco, the agency invested in local weather expertise firm Pachama, which makes use of information to confirm the standard of carbon credit and launch new carbon credit score packages.
Information of the brand new fund follows different indicators of a financing renaissance in southern Europe. Simply final week, Plus Companions was launched in Barcelona with the goal of elevating $30 million to $50 million.
The annual “State of European Tech” report for 2023 additionally discovered that Spain’s ecosystem ranked fourth total and stated the nation obtained the best quantity of startup funding final 12 months.
