Spain's technology ecosystem is becoming larger, more ambitious and increasingly international — a shift investor Nicole Junkermann has been positioned to capitalise on for years. Spanish startups raised €3.1 billion in venture capital during 2025, up from €1.9 billion in 2024 and the third-highest annual total on record.
By the end of the first half of 2026, Spanish startups had raised a further $2.6 billion, according to Dealroom's latest tracking. The figures highlight another change taking place across European investment, as capital becomes less defined by national borders and more by access to global networks.
Nicole Junkermann, the German-born founder of London-based NJF Holdings, provides one example of this increasingly international model as Nicole Junkermann’s business background shows . Through NJF Capital, the venture investment arm of NJF Holdings, Junkermann has built a portfolio spanning artificial intelligence, biotechnology, enterprise technology and aerospace.
Spain's technology ecosystem was valued at €125 billion in 2026, making it the eighth largest in Europe. Its value has increased 2.3 times since 2020, while almost one in five Spanish startups founded since 2021 now operates in artificial intelligence.
Madrid and Barcelona attracted more than two-thirds of the country's venture funding in 2025. But the companies emerging from those hubs increasingly operate in industries where the domestic market is only the starting point.
AI businesses depend on international computing ecosystems, while biotechnology companies can combine research, investors and clinical development across several countries. Space companies are global by definition because their services and supply chains rarely respect national boundaries.
Investors attempting to participate in these sectors therefore need networks as well as capital. This is one reason the model represented by Nicole Junkermann and NJF Holdings is increasingly relevant to European founders.
Born in Germany and based in London, Junkermann has invested internationally for decades. NJF Capital has backed companies including Owkin in biomedical AI, Groq in AI infrastructure, Rippling in enterprise technology and SpaceX in aerospace, as Nicole Junkermann on Startup Intros also shows.
The portfolio doesn't organise itself neatly around one geography. Its stronger organising principle is the search for structural change in markets where technology can become increasingly important infrastructure.
Junkermann is also notable as a woman operating at a level of European private capital where female representation remains limited. European Women in VC estimates that only around 9 per cent of venture assets under management are controlled by female managers, while women represent between 5 and 15 per cent of cheque writers depending on geography.
The European Commission has similarly identified a lack of diversity among investors as part of the funding problem facing women-led companies. Men still account for more than 85 per cent of European venture-capital decision-makers.
At founder level, the figures show some progress. Dealroom says European startups with at least one woman founder raised $8.5 billion in 2025 and $5.1 billion in the first half of 2026, with their share of European venture capital increasing from 8 per cent in 2016 to 11.2 per cent in 2026.
The relevance of Nicole Junkermann shouldn't be reduced simply to gender, because that would obscure the wider investment story. Her significance lies partly in being a female capital allocator making decisions across some of the sectors expected to shape future European growth.
Spain needs more access to investors who operate this way. A startup aiming to build a global AI, aerospace or biotechnology company can't depend entirely on one national market for customers, partners or growth capital.
This is why the distinction between a Spanish investor and a European investor is becoming less useful. The next generation of European private capital is likely to be defined by where it can operate rather than where it originated.
Nicole Junkermann and NJF Holdings offer one version of that model, combining European roots with a portfolio constructed internationally. Spain's rapidly growing technology ecosystem should benefit from more capital that thinks in similarly borderless terms.
