2021 ended with the highest cumulative number of public operations conducted in Spain in a single year (more than 400) and with more than €4.16 billion invested in Spanish technology companies, which is four times the figure for each of the previous three years, which ranged around €1 billion.
These figures mean that there have been many more operations (more than 50) in growth phases, operations in excess of €10M, which has greatly increased the annual accumulated figure. In just six years, investment in Spanish technology companies has increased tenfold, from €428M in 2016 with a total of 139 public deals to €4,207 billion in 2021 with 400 public deals.
[er-inversiones type=”acanual” chart=”1″ height=”400″ year=”2021″ css=”use-margin” link=”/inversiones/startups-destacadas/” link-text=”Más información” /]
With regard to the most important rounds and the most promising scaleups, this year we highlight Jobandtalent, which closed three rounds in 2021 (€88M, €100M and €440M) with a total of €628M, thus becoming a new unicorn, as well as Glovo, which closed €450M and Idealista, which closed two rounds of €250M and €175M in 2021.
[er-inversiones type=”acmens” chart=”1″ height=”400″ year=”2021″ css=”use-margin” link=”/inversiones/startups-destacadas/” link-text=”Más información” /]
By Autonomous Community and sector
A noteworthy fact of the annual accumulated figure is how close the two leading Spanish ecosystems (Madrid and Barcelona) are in terms of startups. In terms of cumulative investment, Madrid is the city with the most investment in 2021 (€2,296 billion), followed by Barcelona with €1,591 billion; however, Barcelona has closed more deals this year (148) than Madrid, which reached 118 deals.
Following both ecosystems in third position is the already consolidated Valencian Community with 51 deals and €116M, followed by the Basque Country with 19 deals and €63M and Andalusia with €52M and 16 public deals. You can analyze all Spanish public operations since 2016 at the following link.
In terms of sectors, this year the fintech (38) and health (33) sectors stand out in terms of the number of operations, coincidentally the two sectors that our Spanish database, Ecosistema Startup, confirms that there are 322 active fintechs and 290 health startups in Spain. Meanwhile, the sectors with the highest amount in million euros raised are Proptech (€637M thanks in part to Idealista); Logistics and Delivery (€471M thanks to Glovo’s round) and the Fintech sector, which is the sector with the highest number of rounds raised.
Startup Ecosystem
In addition, our startup initiative, Ecosistema Startup, which will undergo improvements and updates in 2022, provides interesting data on which we will now comment.
- Ecosistema Startups will end 2021 with more than 3,000 active startups in Spain, work that continues to be updated daily and that will continue to increase gradually.
- Regarding the creation of startups per year, it should be noted that in recent years the creation of startups in Spain has remained very stable between 300 and 350 startups (from 2020 to 2017). This year we have already identified 166 new startups, a figure that will continue to increase as we enter the new year.
- In terms of sectors, fintech and health are the ones with the highest number of startups. After those two sectors are the SaaS (203), Edtech – Education (183), Foodtech (182) and Proptech (157) sectors.