An adjustment shaped by the comparative baseline
The quarter closes with €731 million invested in startups across 79 deals. The decline is real, but so is its context: the first quarter of 2025 was extraordinarily active, setting a benchmark that is hard to match.
The shift in ticket size confirms this:
- The average ticket falls to €9.5 million (–12%)
- The median rises to €2.5 million (+19%)
That divergence between mean and median reveals that the typical deal is, in fact, larger than a year ago. This is not widespread weakness: it is fewer rounds, but bigger ones.
Three mega-rounds account for half of all capital
The quarter has had very clear protagonists. Just three deals absorbed €370 million, representing 51% of total capital invested: PLD Space (€180M, reusable rockets based in Elche), Preply (€126M, edtech) and Universal DX (€62M, biotech in Seville).
Excluding these mega-rounds, the market shows a sharper contraction: volume falls to €361 million (–40%) across 76 deals, and the average ticket without large rounds drops to €4.9 million. It is the portrait of an underlying market that is more subdued, where mid-sized rounds are practically absent.
Stages: Series A on the rise, Pre-Seed with no deals
The breakdown by funding stage reveals a clear pattern. While Series A grows 48%, the Pre-Seed stage records no deals at all and Seed rounds fall 34%. Intermediate stages also retreat: Series B drops 25% and Series C 75%.
The Observatory explains this shift: more and more startups, especially those with experienced teams and proven initial traction, are directly accessing larger first rounds. Early-stage capital does not disappear, but rather skips stages.
The quarter closes with only five exits, 64% fewer than in the same period the previous year, in a context of greater caution on the part of strategic and financial buyers.
Sectors and geography: the weight of large rounds
The sector distribution is directly shaped by the mega-rounds. Space & Navigation leads with 199.5 million, driven by PLD Space. It is followed by Edtech with 159.6 million, due to the Preply deal, and Biotech & Life Sciences with 84.7 million (88% growth), thanks to Universal DX.
Geographically, Barcelona maintains its leadership in volume. The main development is the rise of Elche to second place, driven by PLD Space’s round. Madrid remains in third place and Seville moves up to fourth place thanks to Universal DX.
A more demanding market in capital allocation
Bankinter’s Observatory frames this behavior within the normalization process that began in 2022, following the highs of 2021 and 2022. The start of 2026 stands below the recent historical average in number of deals, although it maintains a volume higher than the lowest quarters of 2024.
The report’s conclusion is clear: the ecosystem is moving toward a more mature market, with lower activity but greater concentration of capital in large-scale deals, and growing scrutiny in the evaluation of each project before investing.
Compass added value: Less early-stage capital, greater project scrutiny
A market that funds fewer but larger projects is not a market that innovates less: it is a market that is learning to be more selective. For the innovation ecosystem, this has a direct implication: the scarcity of early-stage capital is not only a symptom of the cycle, it is a sign that project quality matters more than ever before when seeking investment. Teams with proven traction and a clear value proposition will continue to raise capital. Those that depended on favorable market conditions no longer will.
