Masia has closed its first \u20ac18M fund with support from more than 70 limited partners.<\/p>\n
For each deal, it invests between \u20ac100K and \u20ac300K and co-invests with specialist European venture capital firms.<\/p>\n
Masia House, a four-storey building in Barcelona that provides accommodation for founders and investors visiting from abroad, is now open.<\/p>\n
Masia<\/a>, based in Barcelona, has completed its first fund at \u20ac18M. Although this figure is lower than the amounts raised in the Series A rounds by two of its companies, Carlos Trenchs<\/a>, co-founder and chairman, says this is deliberate.<\/p>\n Biorce, a company that uses artificial intelligence in clinical trials, raised $52 million in a Series A<\/a> in February, with DST Global Partners as the lead investor. On June 22, Prosper, which uses artificial intelligence to manage the patient journey, raised $30 million<\/a>, with a16z as the lead. Y Combinator has supported Didit, an artificial intelligence-oriented identity platform.<\/p>\n Since its founding in 2025, Masia has backed 46 companies involving 60 founders and, as the fund closed, opened Masia House, its office in Barcelona\u2019s Gr\u00e0cia neighbourhood.<\/p>\n Unlike most venture capital firms, Masia raises funds from individuals rather than institutions, invests small amounts suitable for most funding rounds, and relies on specialist investors from abroad to lead later rounds.<\/p>\n Small investments, by design<\/p>\n Masia mostly invests in a startup\u2019s first institutional funding round, usually between \u20ac100,000 and \u20ac300,000, and typically corresponds to rounds of \u20ac1.5 million to \u20ac3 million. He explained that this investment level reflects a strategic decision.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to invest more, you are competing with other funds. Writing a small cheque that is meaningful for our fund, but relatively small compared with the round, allows us to participate in all the ones we want, but at the same time we are not competing,\u201d said Trenchs.<\/p>\n The same way of thinking influenced the fund\u2019s backers. More than 70 limited partners participated, including successful tech founders, executives, experienced investors, and two unnamed institutional investors.<\/p>\n Masia doesn\u2019t aim to initiate funding rounds; it seeks out such opportunities. <\/p>\n The fund has already co-invested with 60 international and specialist VC firms, such as Common Magic, Nina Capital, Point Nine, and Lunar Ventures. Furthermore, the companies in the fund\u2019s portfolio have obtained funding from a16z, DST Global, Norrsken VC, Y Combinator, and Initialized Capital.<\/p>\n A house for a network that has never met<\/p>\n Trenchs and Pepe Borrell<\/a> built Masia using their existing networks. Trenchs, co-founder and chairman, started Aldea Ventures, a fund of funds that backs specialist European VCs. Borrell co-founded Crowdcube Spain.<\/p>\n Trenchs says the network is Masia\u2019s main value, and Masia House is where these connections happen. Among LPs, founders, and co-investing VCs, he estimates 160 to 170 people are connected to Masia, most of whom do not know each other.<\/p>\n The house, located in Gr\u00e0cia, spans more than 1,000 m\u00b2 and has four floors, offering workspaces, meeting rooms, accommodation for visiting investors, and a terrace for working sessions, private dinners, and more casual get-togethers. <\/p>\n Now that the fund is closed and Masia House is open, the team has expanded to seven members, with Gemma Torruella leading operations and having more than 20 years\u2019 experience launching projects and strategies in Spain\u2019s financial and entrepreneurial sectors. <\/p>\n Barcelona\u2019s case, and the Madrid problem<\/p>\n As Masia states, startups in Barcelona raised \u20ac1.175 billion in the first nine months of 2026, a 14% increase from the previous year, and the city has become the European Union\u2019s sixth-largest centre for deeptech startup funding, having raised \u20ac610 million between 2020 and 2024.<\/p>\n Madrid is closing the gap: according to Bankinter\u2019s Q3 2026 figures, Madrid has \u20ac1.153 billion, a 37% increase, and is just \u20ac22 million behind Barcelona.<\/p>\n Barcelona has already advanced toward that claim. TFN has covered Opereit\u2019s $2.5 million increase<\/a> for its logistics AI agents and THEKER\u2019s $85 million Series A<\/a>, which attracted CRV, Samsung, and LVMH. For comparison, Graduate Ventures<\/a> raised a \u20ac125 million seed fund for Dutch university spinouts on October 6, nearly seven times the size of Masia\u2019s fund.<\/p>\n Trenchs concludes, \u201cMasia is rooted in Barcelona, but our ambition is global. We want Masia House to become a home for founders building international companies and investors looking to connect with them. We aim to build one of Europe\u2019s most connected communities, giving founders access to the talent, expertise, and capital they need to scale. When founders and investors come to Barcelona, we want Masia to be their first call.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Masia has closed its first \u20ac18M fund with support from more than 70 limited partners. For each deal,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[138,336,2024,111,43,139,69,8202],"class_list":["post-640333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-europe","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-vc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}