Analysis

November 16, 2022

Spain’s fastest-growing startups outside of Madrid and Barcelona

Success stories are increasingly coming from every corner of Spain


Tim Smith

5 min read

Spain’s startup ecosystem is slowly but surely coming of age. It got its 10th unicorn in Factorial in October and successful entrepreneurs are beginning to put money back into the ecosystem.

The country’s startup scene has historically been centred around the two big cities of Madrid and Barcelona, but today more and more tech companies are raising funding from around the country.

So, which startups from outside of the two main hubs are growing fastest? Sifted analysed headcount data from Dealroom (which is pulled from LinkedIn) to give us a picture of which teams have been growing at the fastest rate over the past 12 months. 

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To avoid the results being skewed by younger startups with smaller teams, the list only includes companies founded since 2015 that have raised €10m or more.

1/ Sesame HR

Sesame HR founder Albert Soriano
Founder Albert Soriano

Sesame HR is building an automated HR management tool that centralises different elements of employee management — including payroll, time off and onboarding — into a single platform.

The company says it has more than 5,000 clients in over 30 countries and can provide solutions for companies that have between 10 and 2,000 employees. It raised a €10m round in March 2022 to help it adapt its product to the needs of more international markets.

Founded: 2015
HQ: Valencia
Team growth over 12 months: 157%, to 167 people
Total funding: $11m

2/ Multiverse Computing

Multiverse Computing sells its quantum computing software to financial clients like BBVA, the European Tax Agency and the Bank of Canada, as well as industrial manufacturing companies like Bosch. 

The company raised a €10m round in October 2021, and received a further €12.5m from the European Innovation Council two months later.

Speaking to Sifted ahead of the fundraising, it said the company would “have to grow like hell” to compete with institutional players like IBM and Google, which are also working on quantum computing.

Founded: 2019
HQ: San Sebastián
Team growth over 12 months: 131%, to 60 people
Total funding: $40.4m

3/ Zunder

Formerly known as Easy Charger, Zunder is an electric vehicle charging startup, which raised a €100m round in October 2022. Back then the company owned 150 charging points across Spain, but with the fresh capital it plans to expand its charger network across southern Europe and own 4,000 charging points and manage 40k more by 2025.

Founded: 2017
HQ: Palencia
Team growth over 12 months: 115%, to 58 people
Total funding: $110m

4/ Quibim

AI healthtech company Quibim uses algorithms to analyse medical imaging data, such as X-ray and CT scans, to find abnormalities and biomarkers that detect disease early. In July 2020 it raised an €8m seed round to scale its team and develop an algorithm for detecting Covid-19.

Speaking ahead of the round, the startup’s founder and chief executive Angel Alberich-Bayarri told Sifted that his technology had the potential to take some of the strain off public healthcare systems by freeing up radiologists’ time.

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Founded: 2015
HQ: Valencia
Team growth over 12 months: 35%, to 70 people
Total funding: $14.9m

5/ Triditive

Triditive Founder Mariel Díaz
Founder Mariel Díaz

Triditive is an industrial 3D printing startup that has patented large-scale 3D printing technology that can create metal and polymer structures.

The company raised €5m in June 2022 to help meet supply chain shortages that the Bank of Spain predicts could cost the Spanish economy €16bn. Triditive recently opened a 2,000 sq m production facility in Asturias where it builds its 3D-printing robots, which it hopes can make manufacturing of stock parts more local and less dependent on international freight channels.

Founded: 2016
HQ: Mieres
Team growth over 12 months: 31%, to 17 people
Total funding: $11.1m

6/ Lookiero

Lookiero is an online personal shopping service for women that sends customers personalised boxes of clothes based on their style preferences. 

Speaking to Sifted ahead of a $19m raise in 2019, founder Oier Urrutia told Sifted that he was relishing the challenge of competing with US rival Stitch Fix, which had entered the market that year.

The company raised a further €30m in June 2021, at which time it reportedly had 3m registered users.

Founded: 2016
HQ: Bilbao
Team growth over 12 months: 26%, to 437 people
Total funding: $56.5m

7/ Zeleros

A PR artist's interpretation of Zeleros's hyperloop in Spain

Zeleros is a startup working on Hyperloop — an alternative solution to high-speed rail that was popularised by Elon Musk in 2013. The idea for Hyperloop is essentially to create pressurised tubes that allow passenger pods to move rapidly through them with low air resistance.

Speaking to Sifted on the back of a €7m raise in 2020, cofounder Juan Vicén Balaguer told Sifted that he expects the futuristic mode of transport to become a reality by 2025.

Founded: 2016
HQ: Valencia
Team growth over 12 months: 25%, to 55 people
Total funding: $15.6m

Tim Smith

Tim Smith is news editor at Sifted. He covers deeptech and AI, and produces Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast . Follow him on X and LinkedIn