Summer 2024 Review

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As we head into the second half of 2024, we wanted to reflect on the key moments from the past few months: celebrating new investments, team promotions, and impressive growth stories from our across portfolio.

🚀 Wrapping up our third fund (AVIII)

We have completed the final investments of AVIII, our €80m third fund dedicated to supporting the best early-stage enterprise tech founders across Southern Europe.  

In February, we announced our investment in WIVI Vision, a fast-growing startup improving vision care with cutting-edge immersive 3D and AI technologies. The €4 million Series A round was led by Adara, with participation from Hearstlab, Caixabank DayOne, BBVA Spark, Banco Santander, Avançsa, and others. Learn more. 

In April, we announced our investment in Indigitall, an AI-powered omnichannel marketing platform. Adara participated in the €6 million Series A round alongside Data Point Capital, a US venture capital firm, and Spain-based GoHub Ventures. Learn more. 

We have now backed 20 exceptional teams addressing complex challenges for the modern enterprise through our third fund. We are excited to share what’s next for our flagship fund soon!

🎉 Team Promotions

In March, we announced the promotions of two highly deserving members of our team: Ross Strachan to Partner and Jorge Baron to Principal.

Our team is key to our success at Adara, and Ross and Jorge have made significant contributions to our growth. Ross joined Adara in 2018 after completing his MBA at IE in Madrid. Starting as an Associate for Portfolio Management in our AVII fund, he was promoted to Principal in 2019 with the launch of our AVIII fund. Ross has led investments in Caravelo, XONAI, among others, and works closely with BeonX and Cyber Guru. Since 2020, he has also overseen Adara’s Platform strategy, focused on adding value through Network, Knowledge, Tools, and Partnerships.

Jorge joined Adara in 2019 from BMW i Ventures. As an Analyst, he supported investment cases for XYZ Reality, 42Crunch, IOMED, Freeverse, and Bigle Legal (part of our AVIII fund). Promoted to Associate in 2021, Jorge began supporting portfolio companies like Intelex Vision and Quality Clouds, and helped shape investments in Kimera Technologies and Jotelulu.

🌱 Inaugural Meeting of the Industrial Advisory Committee for Adara Energy

In May, we hosted the inaugural meeting of the Industrial Advisory Committee for Adara Ventures Energy, our first Pan-European, thematic fund dedicated to technologies enabling the energy transition. 

This milestone event brought together over 30 attendees from more than 10 countries and different areas of the energy industry, including energy generation and transportation companies, OEMs, and engineering and procurement firms.

We were delighted to have Elewit, the technology platform of Redeia, and Grupo Energía Bogotá at the event, who have been instrumental in supporting our vision. During the event, we also had the pleasure of hearing from keynote speakers and innovative startups at the forefront of energy technology. Check out a full recap here.

💫 Investor Conference 2024

In May, we also held our annual Investor Conference in Madrid, bringing together investors, portfolio founders, and industry leaders from across our network for a day of celebration and insightful discussions on the current investment landscape and next-generation technologies.

Our Founding Partner, Nico Goulet, started the day with updates on Adara Ventures, highlighting success stories over the past year and our vision for the future. Our Founding Partner, Alberto Gomez, also took the stage with three LPs for a discussion on emerging investment trends.

Throughout the day, we also had the pleasure of hearing from portfolio founders, such as Seedtag's Jorge Poyatos, who shared the innovative growth strategies that have fueled the company's success. 

JOTELULU’s Founder and CEO David Amorín and Eva García Ramos, co-founder and CEO of WIVI Vision, also took the stage to showcase how emerging technologies can be leveraged to solve real-world problems. We also enjoyed a presentation from XYZ Reality’s Senior Solutions Engineer Joe Hughes on the pioneering AR technology they are developing and its potential to transform data center construction projects. 

During the conference, our Partner, Alberto Echeverri, also shared our strategic vision for Adara Energy, outlining our objectives and the importance of sustainable value creation.

We wrapped up the conference with a networking cocktail lunch, where we could all connect and celebrate our collective successes. Thank you to everyone who attended!

🙌 More growth stories we celebrated across the portfolio

🔹 Intelex Vision continues to grow its two-layer approach to video surveillance, powering 35K+ surveillance cameras in 20+ countries. Learn more.

🔹 Caravelo was featured on Forbes' list of 50 most innovative startups in Spain, continues accelerating subscriptions (10 airline clients and counting), and is targeting new growth areas this year, including corporate travel and high-speed train operator subscriptions in Europe. Learn more. 

🔹 JOTELULU announced a new infrastructure investment of more than €10 million to strengthen and expand the capabilities of its cloud platform, including the opening of a new infrastructure region in 2025 and a new availability zone in Madrid in 2024. Learn more.

🔹 Seedtag celebrated 10 years of leading contextual advertising through technology and has significantly increased revenues after entering the US market last year. Learn more.

🔹 IOMED received the European Union Seal of Excellence, highlighting the company's commitment to quality and innovation. Learn more.

🔹 Quality Clouds launched a fresh look, featuring new and improved product demo videos and customer case studies. Learn more. 

🔹 Quibim received the CE and UKCA mark for the EU and UK, clearing it for use in these markets, and announced the launch of a new product, QP-Insights, enabling researchers to leverage clinical imaging data throughout drug development programs, and QP-Liver to improve the diagnosis of diffuse liver diseases. 

🔹 CounterCraft released the newest version of The Platform™, including a new tool for reporting Threat Intelligence incidents to keep users ahead of the evolving threat actor landscape. Learn more. 

🔹 Freeverse announced LAOS, a new universal Layer-1 blockchain for interoperable digital assets that supports 1 million transactions per second. LAOS will operate as an independent foundation based in Switzerland. Learn more.

🔹 Xonai has open-sourced its Dashboard, a Grafana-based application that assists Big Data infrastructure optimization initiatives where Spark applications are a dominant cost driver. Learn more.

🔹 BEONx secured NextGenerationEU funding through a grant from SEGITTUR, which is part of the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Tourism and is responsible for driving innovation in the Spanish tourism sector. Learn more.

🔹 Constella announced its new focus on Identity Risk powered by AI, marking an important milestone in becoming an intelligence-focused organization. Learn more. 

🔹 XYZ Reality welcomed data center industry leaders Christian Belady and Brian Mattson as strategic advisors to enhance its data center construction solution and product roadmap.

✨ Thank you

We want to extend our thanks to our growing community of founders, investors, and partners for an exceptional year so far. Reflecting on the past few months fills us with excitement for the future, and we look forward to sharing new investment announcements and significant news related to our family of funds in the coming months.

Have a great summer! ☀️

- The Adara team

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📫 Stay up-to-date by subscribing to our monthly Caminos newsletter here and following us on LinkedIn for even more news. 

👩‍💻For anyone looking to join a high-growth company, we encourage you to check out the open roles at our portfolio companies and join our Talent Pool here. 

👋As always, if you're an early-stage founder building something extraordinary, we'd love to hear from you. 

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