Venture Funding Climbs in Spain and Argentina in 2026
Venture capital investment in Spain and Argentina is on track to beat last year's totals, signaling that late-stage capital is still reaching secondary markets despite an ongoing concentration of AI funding in Silicon Valley.
Venture capital funding in Spain and Argentina is trending higher in 2026, with both countries logging year-over-year gains even as they continue to lag behind their regional leaders.
Spanish startups have raised less than $2 billion so far this year, which amounts to roughly one-third of France’s total for the same period. Despite this gap, the country's pipeline features significant late-stage rounds. PLD Space closed a $206 million Series C in March to build a "global space transportation service provider to support cargo and human spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars."
Factorial, a Barcelona-based AI-enabled HR and payroll platform, raised $150 million in a June Series D at a $2.5 billion valuation, bringing its total equity funding above $350 million. Other notable Spanish rounds include $140 million in Series D funding for Madrid-based EOS-X Space, which focuses on space tourism and aerospace data, and $130 million in Series B capital for Xoople, a developer of AI tools for geospatial data.
In Latin America, Argentinian startups have already surpassed last year’s total funding. The market typically pulls in a few hundred million dollars annually, a figure that consistently trails the larger economies of Brazil and Mexico. However, Argentina's funding tallies fluctuate heavily from year to year depending on the presence or absence of a few massive rounds.
The country's long-term track record includes MercadoLibre, the online marketplace founded in a Buenos Aires garage that now commands a roughly $94 billion market cap on Nasdaq. Recent capital is heavily concentrated in the fintech sector. Ualá has raised $1.1 billion in known funding to date, including a $195 million round in March.
Further down the cap table, payments infrastructure startup Pomelo closed a $55 million Series C co-led by Kaszek and Insight Partners. Tapi, another provider of payments and collections infrastructure, secured $27 million in Series B funding in February.
For institutional investors, the 2026 data underscores the persistent geographic concentration of global venture capital. While the current AI-driven investment cycle continues to funnel the bulk of capital into primary hubs, these European and Latin American rounds show specialized infrastructure and fintech plays in secondary markets can still attract sizable checks.
