March did not bring major surprises. It brought data that confirmed what the previous month had already suggested: capital has not disappeared from the ecosystem, but its behaviour has changed. Fewer deals, more demanding ticket sizes, and a trend that is starting to look structural.
At the same time, digital health continued to send strong signals, European regulation once again generated news with real impact for startups, and the intersection of technology, insurance and health continues to produce some of the most interesting rounds on the continent.
Welcome to the month in which the ecosystem began to close the first quarter with more questions than answers on capital volume, but with clearer ideas about where value continues to move.
Is there still money? Yes. But it is being distributed differently
The first quarter of 2026 closed in Spain with EUR 706.9 million across 69 deals. The figure sounds reasonable until it is put into perspective: in the same period of 2025, Spain recorded EUR 1,247.9 million across 86 deals. The difference is not marginal.
February had already sent a similar signal: EUR 138.52 million across 23 deals, the lowest monthly level in years, with the top three rounds concentrating more than 60% of total capital. March confirms that this was not a one-off anomaly. The pattern repeats and consolidates at quarterly scale: a small number of large deals – in March, especially in the aerospace sector – are once again absorbing most of the available capital, while verticals such as fintech, ehealth, constructech and proptech remain active but with more contained ticket sizes.
Read together, February and the first quarter point in the same direction: capital has not disappeared; its distribution has been reconfigured. Clear theses, models with proven fit and assets with a real operational edge are concentrating the flow. Projects without visible traction face longer fundraising cycles and more demanding entry criteria. There is also a relevant territorial signal: Madrid led March deal flow with 10 transactions, while Catalonia maintained its weight in health and energy.
For founders and investors, the practical conclusion is simple: there is money, but it requires a stronger case. For a corporate venture player, this environment reinforces the value of supporting companies with more than capital.
The ecosystem looks for new nodes: Seville gains weight as a hub connecting startups and investors
As capital becomes more concentrated, the Spanish ecosystem continues to build relational infrastructure. In March, Seville hosted the presentation of CTx Tech Experience 2026 Sevilla Hub, an event designed to connect startups, technology companies and international investors, with a forecast of more than 15,000 attendees, 1,000 startups and 100 international investors, and an estimated economic impact of more than EUR 10 million for the city.
Beyond the event itself, what matters is the trend it points to: the Spanish ecosystem is starting to need active nodes beyond the Madrid-Barcelona axis. CTx Tech’s proposal is not that of a generic showcase, but of a space aimed at B2B companies focused on technology, digitalisation, industry and artificial intelligence applied to large companies, where the value lies in real matchmaking between startups, corporates and investors, not in superficial visibility.
From GCO Ventures’ perspective, this type of event matters because it reinforces a view of the ecosystem in which closed rounds are not the only thing that counts; so do the environments where the agreements that precede those rounds are formed: pilots, partnerships, co-investments and commercial relationships with corporates that can accelerate model validation before institutional capital arrives.
Europe tackles company formation friction: EU Inc. arrives, and it matters more than it may seem
On 18 March 2026, the European Commission presented EU Inc., a new harmonised company form for the entire European Union, framed within the so-called 28th regime. The headline sounds technical, but the practical implication is direct: any company could be incorporated fully digitally in under 48 hours and for a maximum of EUR 100, with homogeneous rules across all Member States and access to modern financing instruments.
What makes this strategic news for the ecosystem is the scale of the problem it aims to solve: Europe’s legal fragmentation. Today, a startup that wants to operate in several EU countries has to navigate different company structures, uneven notarial costs, variable timelines and market-specific compliance requirements. EU Inc. does not remove all these obstacles at once, but it does address the entry layer: incorporation and the underlying legal framework.
If the framework moves forward – and there is still a legislative road ahead – it could reduce expansion costs and simplify life for startups and scaleups with a pan-European ambition from day one. It does not solve the ecosystem’s scale problem, but it could lower a significant part of the structural friction that today slows international growth for companies that, by thesis and model, should operate across several markets at once.
In digital health, AI is no longer a trend: it is the starting point for attracting capital
If February showed that compliance had stopped being a cost and had become a product, March offered an equally clear signal in health: AI applied to specific clinical processes is no longer a differentiator; it is the starting point. The healthtech startups attracting investor attention in Spain are not talking about “applying AI to healthcare” in the abstract. They are talking about solving specific problems within the healthcare system: trial design, assisted surgery, hospital management and preventive diagnosis.
4YFN 2026 in Barcelona acted this year as one of the best thermometers of that transformation. Disruptores’ coverage highlighted how several startups with concrete proposals in surgery, clinical trials, care delivery and healthcare management moved to the foreground at the event. There were no big “AI will revolutionise medicine” headlines; there were solutions to measurable problems, with an identified customer and real friction to solve.
The most concrete and illustrative case of that trend was Biorce, winner of the 4YFN26 Awards. The Barcelona-based company is not proposing a superficial layer of intelligence on top of clinical data; it is proposing something much more precise. Its platform automates and optimises the design and execution of clinical trials, one of the most expensive, slow and error-prone processes in the entire biomedical chain. As its CEO recalled in the 4YFN interview, bringing a drug to market can take between 10 and 15 years and exceed one billion dollars, and a significant part of that cost comes from inefficiencies in documentation, protocol design and change management.
Biorce is not an exception within 4YFN: it is the most visible expression of a broader trend. AI in healthcare finds an especially clear path to traction and capital when it enters critical, regulated and measurable processes along the chain. When it solves something that, without technology, would be slower, more expensive or simply unviable.
Femtech and prevention: Spanish healthtech gains scientific depth
At the edge of that same ecosystem, a much earlier-stage initiative points in an equally relevant direction. BASE4 Biosciences, a spin-off from the Research Institute of Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, is working on an approach that combines blood analysis and artificial intelligence to estimate female biological age and anticipate disease risks before clinical symptoms appear.
It is not yet a large round or a scaled product. But it is a useful piece for understanding how the Spanish healthtech proposition is becoming more sophisticated in the verticals of femtech and predictive medicine: more science, more biomarkers, more AI applied to prevention and less reactive focus on disease once it has already appeared. The value is not yet in the financial volume, but in the signal that there is enough scientific depth to build relevant propositions at this intersection, with potential fit in more personalised and preventive care models.
Insurtech and fintech: value keeps shifting towards those who automate with discipline
At the intersection of fintech, insurtech and technology, March left two signals worth reading together.
The first comes from Spain. TaxDown raised EUR 4 million to accelerate its growth, expand its technology team and develop new AI-based solutions. The company, specialised in digital tax services, already exceeds 4 million users, works with more than 500 companies and ended 2025 with more than 100% year-on-year growth, as well as having reached profitability. The interest of the transaction lies not in who is financing it, but in what type of company is still attracting capital: a fintech with a very specific focus, solid operating metrics and automation applied to a complex, recurring task with a high propensity for human error. For founders, it is proof that the market continues to reward efficiency turned into business. For corporates and investors, it is a signal that specialised solutions with proven product still find space, even in a more demanding environment.
The second comes from France. Alan raised EUR 100 million in March, lifted its valuation to more than EUR 5 billion and ended 2025 with EUR 785 million in recurring revenue, profitability in its main market and more than one million users in Europe. But more than the round, what is interesting is the product it is scaling. Alan is not limited to selling health insurance with a customer app: it integrates health insurance, prevention and wellbeing services, and the flexible benefits systems many companies use to offer social benefits to their employees into a single digital platform. On this basis, it has built a proposition that combines healthcare coverage, digital experience and intelligent automation with a clear logic: reducing the administrative friction around health insurance and materially improving the user’s relationship with their coverage. It does not only sell a digital policy: it sells a model in which technology makes something that has historically been opaque and costly to navigate more useful, more accessible and more manageable.
The underlying signal is the same in both cases: in fintech and insurtech, capital continues to flow towards companies that intelligently automate processes where there is real friction, high cost and a customer with a concrete problem. Technology narrative alone is no longer enough. What works is having a clear problem, a solution that solves it in a measured way and an economic model that holds up.
Europe also modernises its infrastructure: from financial core systems to AI compute
Two pieces of news from the final stretch of March point in the same direction, but from different angles: Europe is investing in the infrastructure that will make the next layer of technological innovation possible.
On the one hand, Upvest raised USD 125 million to strengthen its investment API platform, which already serves more than 30 financial institutions and processes more than 100 million orders per year. Its proposition is clear: helping banks, brokers and wealth managers renew legacy systems and launch investment products with less operational friction. It is not a consumer-facing piece of news, but it is a signal of how the regulated financial services market is evolving: value is shifting towards the infrastructure layer that simplifies compliance, operations and product deployment. For B2B companies with a hard-to-replicate proposition in regulated sectors, that trend creates room.
On the other, Mistral AI announced a EUR 722 million round on 30 March to build its first large data centre near Paris. The transaction goes beyond a large round: it is a statement about European technological ambition. Mistral’s thesis is not only to compete in language models, but in the industrial and computational base that supports them. For those building AI solutions in regulated sectors – health, insurance, finance – that proprietary infrastructure matters because it will determine which layers of technology will be accessible from Europe, under what data sovereignty conditions and with what level of dependence on non-European providers.
What March tells us
March closed with four mutually reinforcing signals. First: capital selectivity is not a temporary crisis, but a durable reconfiguration that benefits those building with thesis clarity and real metrics. Second: AI-driven digital health is maturing towards specialisation, and the projects attacking critical and regulated workflows are the ones attracting the greatest investor attention and market recognition. Third: the intersection of technology, insurance and finance remains one of the most fertile spaces, especially for companies that combine automation, user experience and fit with complex processes. Fourth: Europe is building company law, financial and technological infrastructure, which in the medium term could change the baseline conditions for scaling from here.
The ecosystem is not stagnant. It is learning to move with greater rigour. And in that environment, clear theses, difficult problems and teams with execution capacity remain the best currency.
Come back next month for more analysis on news and trends in venture capital, startups and the sectors where GCO Ventures builds and invests.