May 2026 has confirmed something many had already sensed, but few were saying out loud. Artificial intelligence has moved beyond being a decorative theme at innovation events and has become the operating foundation of businesses that generate revenue, attract investment and grow on top of it. In this context, Spain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem stands out not so much for its size, but for the speed at which it is expanding: it is now the second fastest-growing ecosystem in Europe over the past five years.
Artificial intelligence stops being a feature and becomes the architecture of the business
Corgi is a commercial insurance platform built natively with artificial intelligence: it manages underwriting, claims handling and embedded distribution without relying on traditional insurance infrastructure. In less than five months, the company has closed a $106 million Series B1 round, raising its valuation to $2.6 billion and multiplying it by more than 20 times since its seed round. Here, AI is not an add-on: it is the full architecture of the business, a model that the global insurtech market, estimated at more than $20 billion in 2026 and growing at annual rates above 20%, is beginning to replicate at scale.
European digital health enters a more demanding investment phase
In the first quarter of 2026, funding for European digital health fell by 44% in volume and by 46% in number of deals. However, the average deal size increased by 8%, reaching $21.1 million. The reading is not so much that capital is retreating, but that investor criteria are changing: capital is being concentrated in companies with real clinical evidence and proven commercial validation, rather than in propositions with many features but limited traction.
Lucis, a French startup developing a preventive health platform focused on early diagnosis and personalized monitoring, illustrates this pattern well. The company moved from Seed to Series A in less than four months, raising a €17.3 million round led by Singular and reinforcing the idea that capital remains available for models that can demonstrate impact and scalability.
This movement also coincides with greater regulatory maturity. In Spain, Royal Decree 415/2026, approved on May 27, creates the country’s first specific regulatory framework for healthcare technologies using artificial intelligence, bringing greater predictability to healthtech startups with clinical AI components.
Femtech moves beyond niche logic and gains substance as a market in its own right
Femtech raised $674 million in rounds closed in April 2026 alone, growing at a pace 32 percentage points above the broader healthtech sector during the same period. The sector is expanding its focus towards female longevity, brain health and oncology diagnostics, moving beyond its status as a niche category and gaining critical mass of its own. This expansion also has a clear economic correlation: Nelson Advisors’ FemTech Mid 2026 report estimates that every $350 million invested in women’s health research generates $14 billion in economic return, a 40x multiplier that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Spain begins to move beyond the “emerging ecosystem” label
Spain’s technology ecosystem has grown 2.3x over the past five years and is now the second fastest-growing ecosystem in Europe, with €3.1 billion raised in venture capital in 2025 — the third-best year on record — and 79 deals worth €731 million already closed in the first quarter of 2026. Artificial intelligence is leading this momentum: 392 AI startups have raised €3.3 billion since 2020, positioning Spain as the sixth-largest European market in this category. The closing of CRB Health Tech’s €50 million fund, the first European digital health fund based in Spain, confirms that the country is not only attracting capital, but also beginning to generate it in a more specialized way.
May 2026 clearly points to three converging signals. AI is consolidating as business infrastructure in sectors as different as insurance and preventive health. European capital is raising the bar, rewarding validation over promise. And femtech is gaining enough critical mass to claim its own place on the investment agenda. Spain, meanwhile, is consolidating its position as one of Europe’s fastest-growing technology ecosystems and is beginning to gain specific weight in AI and digital health.
The next trends analysis will be available in June on the GCO Ventures blog. Visit us again to keep reading about the verticals shaping the innovation and investment agenda.
