Barcelona’s Masia closes €18 million debut fund and opens a physical hub for frontier tech founders and investors

Masia, a Barcelona-based venture capital platform, today announced it has closed its €18 million debut fund to invest in early-stage AI and frontier tech companies with a Barcelona connection. 

The fund attracted backing from more than 70 limited partners, including successful technology founders, executives and experienced investors, alongside two institutional investors.  

“We launched Masia’s first fund last year because we saw Barcelona’s tech ecosystem was nearing a tipping point, and we wanted to connect successful LPs and international VCs in the city with talent choosing to build and scale global frontier tech businesses from here,” said Carlos Trenchs, co-founder and Chairman at Masia. 

Alongside closing its debut fund, the firm also announced the opening of Masia House, a 1,000 m² physical community space in the city’s Gràcia neighbourhood, designed to bring founders, international investors, and operators together under one roof. Spanning four floors, Masia House will serve as a physical gathering point for the firm’s community through workspaces, meeting rooms, accommodation for visiting investors, and terrace events.

“Masia House is the next step in that mission, providing a physical space because we know capital alone doesn’t create innovation. It happens when ambitious people repeatedly encounter other ambitious people,” added Trenchs.

Founded by Trenchs and Pepe Borrell in 2025, Masia operates as a super angel fund investing at the pre-Seed and Seed stages, writing cheques of between €125k and €250k. In May 2025, it announced its launch and its intention to deploy €20 million across sixty pre-Seed and Seed investments, specifically in local and international founders building global technology companies in Barcelona.

The firm says it does not lead rounds or take board seats, instead positioning itself as a founder-first, collaborative platform that connects its portfolio with a broad network of experienced operators and capital.

Since launching last year, Masia says it has deployed capital across 46 companies representing 60 founders, co-investing alongside 60 international and special VC firms, including Common Magic, Nina Capital, Point Nine, and Lunar Ventures. Its portfolio companies have subsequently attracted follow-on investments from major names including a16z, DST Global, Norrsken VC, Y Combinator, and Initialized Capital.

The standout in Masia’s portfolio is Biorce, which applies AI to optimise clinical trials and closed a $52 million Series A earlier this year; Prosper, an AI-driven patient journey management platform that raised $30 million in a round led by a16z; and Didit, a Y Combinator-backed AI-native identity verification platform.

“We’re already seeing companies we backed last year raise Series A rounds and expand into the US. Our focus is on founders using AI and frontier technology to address significant market opportunities, with international ambition from the outset. We want to support that growth through both investment and access to people who can help them scale,” said Pepe Borrell, Founding Partner at Masia Fund.

The debut fund from Masia comes on the back of startups in Barcelona attracting €1.175 billion in investment in the first nine months of 2026, a 14% increase year-on-year, according to Fundación Bankinter. The city also ranks as the sixth-largest hub for DeepTech startup funding in Europe, having raised €610 million between 2020 and 2024, per data from Accio.

With the fund closing and Masia House opening, the firm has grown to seven, with Gemma Torruella joining to lead operations, bringing over 20 years of experience across Spain’s financial and entrepreneurial sectors. Cathy White, a veteran of the European tech and venture ecosystem with more than 15 years of experience and prior roles at Seedcamp, has joined as a Fractional CMO.

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