Spain's publicity to local weather change helps Madrid-based VC, Seaya, shut €300M climate-tech fund | TechCrunch

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 development, Madrid-based VC fund Seaya has closed Seaya Andromeda, an ‘Article 9’ €300 million climate-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 companies 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 spend money on development corporations which focus on vitality transition, decarbonization, sustainable meals worth chains, and the round economic system.

The agency mentioned the brand new local weather fund will deploy between €7M-€40M as a primary verify; will retain capital for follow-ons; and plans to make 25 investments by the tip of 2027. Thus far, 5 investments have been comprised of the fund (see beneath).

Seaya itself was launched again in 2013 by former personal fairness investor Beatriz González, who received 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 US. After that she grew to become a director of Telefonica’s pension fund, main its various belongings program.

Underneath González, Seaya has invested in local weather tech corporations 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 specific benefit in having a fund out of Spain tacking local weather tech, given the nation’s proximity to a few of the worst results of a altering local weather, comparable to excessive warmth, drought, wildfires and storms.

“It’s a superb query,” she mentioned. “If you concentrate on vitality transition and decarbonisation, coming from Southern Europe, significantly 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 may be way more social consciousness. However we additionally assume that we now have aggressive benefits within the industries that we’re focusing on.

“We’ve been pioneers in renewable vitality so we now have the expertise and we now have the large corporations within the manufacturing of auto elements. So we now have a giant industrial base. The identical with agriculture and actual property publicity. So we do consider that we now have 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 permit them to make deep-tech funding choices about local weather tech.

“We’ve got a few engineers so we now have that in-house experience, however in our LP community we now have massive European Union banks like Santander which do undertaking finance for vitality 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 spend money on a number of related corporations. Spain-based augmented-reality talent coaching resolution, Seabery, for instance, developed AR software program and {hardware} for coaching welders, that 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 UK-based AI-powered waste administration startup Recycleye in February 2022, which builds robots to kind garbage for recycling. 

In San Francisco, the agency invested in Pachama, a climate-tech firm that makes use of information to confirm the standard of carbon credit and allow the launch of latest carbon credit score tasks. 

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 $30M-$50M fund.

The annual “State of European Tech” report for 2023 additionally discovered Spain’s ecosystem to be in fourth place total and mentioned it had the highest variety of startup fundings final yr.