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Innovation has emerged as the driving force behind Spain’s economy, particularly as digital transformation, sustainability, and technology reshape traditional industries. Startups are pivotal in this shift, serving as catalysts for change. However, the challenge extends beyond creation to scaling, requiring integrated connections among knowledge, financing, talent, and infrastructure. The Scaleup Spain Network, promoted by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, supports the country’s most promising startups in their growth journey.
In 2024, investment in Spanish startups surpassed 3.1 billion euros, reflecting a maturing ecosystem with multidisciplinary entrepreneurial teams focused on global scalability. Barcelona leads in investment, with other cities like Madrid and Valencia showing growth. Key sectors include fintech, digital health, energy, and smart mobility, where advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain, and big data drive innovation. University spin-offs contribute significantly, transforming scientific research into market-ready solutions, although challenges like funding gaps and industry disconnection remain. Medium-sized enterprises (ETIs) also play a crucial role, combining agility and stability to foster industrial reindustrialization and competitiveness.
Industry 4.0 technologies enhance productivity and create new business opportunities, while programs like Cre100DO support ETIs in technological adoption. Sustainable innovation is now essential; successful startups integrate social and environmental responsibility into their growth strategies. Spain’s entrepreneurial future depends on bridging science and market, academia and business, and innovation and regulation, positioning the country to lead transformative change in the knowledge economy.
This is how new companies are consolidated in an increasingly competitive ecosystem, between young talent, spin-offs, technology and strategic alliances.
Innovation has become the true engine of the Spanish economy. In a scenario where digital transformation, sustainability and technology redefine traditional sectors, Startups play a key role as catalysts for change. However, the challenge is not only to create: also to scale. For this, connections between knowledge, financing, talent and infrastructure are needed. That’s where the program comes into play Scaleup Spain Network, promoted by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation to accompany the most promising startups in the country in their growth process.
The startup ecosystem in Spain: sectors, investment and trends
The truth is that innovative entrepreneurship is experiencing a key moment in Spain. In 2024, investment in startups exceeded 3,100 million euros, marking a growth of 36% compared to the previous year. This upturn reflects a greater maturity of the ecosystem and a change in the profile of the entrepreneur: it is no longer just about founders with good ideas, but multidisciplinary teams with a global vision, the ability to adapt and the ambition to scale.
According to the Foundation’s Startup Observatory , which analyzes the evolution of the Entrepreneurship profile in Spain, the average size of funding rounds has grown by 58%, and international investment has doubled. Barcelona accounts for more than 50% of the national total invested, consolidating itself as the main hub, although Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao and Malaga are also making strong progress.
As for emerging sectors, Fintech continues to lead, but there is notable dynamism in areas such as digital health, travel tech, energy, sustainability and smart mobility. Companies such as Sequra, TravelPerk or Zunder have attracted millionaire rounds by applying advanced technology to everyday services with a customer-centric approach. As you can read in the article The keys to entrepreneurship by innovating, emerging technologies – AI, blockchain, big data – are the common axis of the most disruptive proposals.
A paradigmatic example is that of Ciudadela, a startup that has revolutionized real estate management with automated processes and artificial intelligence. Founded in 2022, in just a few years it has gone on to manage more than a thousand buildings and reach a turnover of almost 3 million euros. This case illustrates how even the most traditional sectors can be renewed based on a strategic, technological and people-centric vision.
The new entrepreneurial profile combines agility and focus, with a growing awareness of social and environmental impact. Entrepreneurship today is not just about creating a company: it is about detecting real needs, building sustainable solutions and scaling with purpose and focus on the customer. Because entrepreneurship is not just about innovating: it’s about doing it with real-life impact.
From the laboratory to the market: how knowledge is activated
In this sense, technology transfer is one of the great challenges – and opportunities – of the ecosystem. Turning scientific discoveries into real solutions requires collaboration between universities and companies, but also a cultural change: seeing science not as an end in itself, but as a lever for social transformation.
Programs such as InspiraTech exemplifies this vision: young researchers work with experts from the private sector to turn research into viable projects. In the same way, Research Results Transfer Offices (RTOs) and science parks make it possible to bring the two worlds closer together.
Spin-offs such as Beonchip, Alén Space or Multiverse Computing show that it is possible to start from an academic idea and reach the market with cutting-edge solutions in personalized health, nanosatellites or quantum computing. Innovating from science is not only desirable: it is essential.
University entrepreneurship: ideas that change the world
Increasingly, classrooms are hotbeds for companies. Universities not only train, they also incubate. In Spain there are more than 1,200 active deep tech spin-offs that generate 12,200 qualified jobs and have a turnover of close to 2,000 million euros per year. Catalonia and Madrid are leading this phenomenon, but other regions such as the Valencian Community or Andalusia are beginning to consolidate dynamic ecosystems.
As detailed in the report Startups that are born in the classroom: university entrepreneurial talent, many of these university startups address strategic sectors such as sustainability, health, space or artificial intelligence. Its competitive advantage lies in technical knowledge, access to research infrastructures and the possibility of experimenting in protected environments.
But they also face obstacles: the famous “valley of death” between idea and market, lack of initial funding, legal difficulties or disconnection with the industry. For this reason, it is key to strengthen programs such as Akademia – also from the Bankinter Innovation Foundation – that promote strategic thinking in university students and bring them closer to the technologies of the future.
TSIs: bridging companies to scale
Among small startups and large corporations there is a group that is often forgotten, but crucial for the economy: Medium-Sized Companies (ETIs). In Spain there are about 3,300, which generate 18% of GDP and employ one million people. Its turnover ranges between 50 and 500 million euros, with a workforce that can exceed 2,000 workers.
As the report explains Voices of the middle market, these companies combine agility with solidity, innovation with stability, and many of them have an export vocation. Its role in the reindustrialization of the country is remarkable: 32% belong to the industrial sector, well above the national average.
In addition, they invest in R+D, bet on qualified talent and seek strategic alliances. They are often less visible than startups, but their ability to scale and consolidate makes them key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Industry 4.0: innovation at the service of competitiveness
Industrial digitalisation is another key front. The so-called Industry 4.0 not only optimizes production processes, it also creates business opportunities for new companies. Technologies such as IoT, robotics, AI, digital twins and big data make it possible to automate tasks, anticipate failures and make smarter decisions.
As stated in the article Industry 4.0, digital transformation in favour of competitiveness, automation transforms sectors such as manufacturing, energy, health and retail. Productivity can increase by 20 to 30 percent, and while certain jobs are transformed, new specialized roles are also created.
Initiatives such as the Cre100DO programme, promoted by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, ICEX and the Círculo de Empresarios, have accompanied more than 100 ETIs on their path to excellence, encouraging the adoption of new technologies and advanced management practices.
Scaling with purpose: the challenge of sustainable innovation
In an environment as dynamic as it is competitive, innovation is no longer enough: you have to do it with purpose. The startups and scaleups that succeed are those that, in addition to offering technological solutions, understand the social and environmental challenges of the present. Sustainability, social impact, diversity and digital ethics are no longer complements: they are necessary conditions.
The future of entrepreneurship lies in building bridges: between science and market, between academia and business, between innovation and regulation. Strengthening these ties is already essential, because in the knowledge economy, scaling is not just growing: it is transforming. And Spain has the talent, creativity and infrastructure to lead that change.