Startup Competition at South Summit Madrid: 13 Years Driving Innovation with Over 1,000 Finalist Startups and $15.3 Billion in Investment
Over 1,000 startups from around the world have participated in the 13 editions of the South Summit Madrid Startup Competition, each year, the competition selects the 100 most innovative and disruptive entrepreneurial projects on the planet. These startups have achieved a survival rate of close to 90% and have had a significant impact on the ecosystem: $15,3 billion raised in investment rounds, $11,4 billion in revenue, and nearly 60,000 jobs created. Additionally, they have been involved in over 100 exits, with eight reaching unicorn status, including notable Spanish companies such as Cabify, Factorial and JobandTalent.
Since its first edition in 2011, the Startup Competition has stood out for its economic impact and its ability to attract innovative talent from diverse cultures and regions. Evidence of this is that 19% of the participating startups are of Spanish origin, while 21% come from the rest of Europe. Other standout regions include Latin America, representing 29% of projects, Asia Pacific with 13%, North America with 11% and Africa with 7%.
Building on these impressive figures, South Summit Madrid is already preparing the next edition of its Startup Competition. The registration period ends on January 31, 2025. Entrepreneurs interested in registering their projects can do so.
Since its first edition, the Startup Competition at South Summit Madrid has served as both a platform for thousands of startups to make themselves known to investors and corporations and as a springboard to become global benchmarks in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. A good example of this is JobandTalent, one of the 8 unicorns that have come out of South Summit Madrid and that in September of this year received a convertible loan of 20 million dollars from its investors, with which it has already raised more than 1,000 million dollars in different investment rounds.
Another success story is Wallbox, the global winner at South Summit Madrid 2017. This summer, it closed a capital increase of 41.6 million euros and has already accumulated more than 600 million dollars in different investment rounds. For its part, PLD Space, a startup finalist in the 2015 Startup Competition and a pioneer in the Spanish aerospace industry has closed important rounds of funding during its history, including 31 million euros for developing its Miura 5 orbital launcher.
Among the most innovative projects that have been finalists in the Startup Competition is IDOVEN, which has had investors of the stature of Pau Gasol and Iker Casillas and was recognized in 2021 at South Summit as the most disruptive startup for its impact on the prevention of heart disease through Artificial Intelligence. The last edition of South Summit Madrid crowned Navilens as the Most Sustainable startup and, since then, it has continued to add spaces in major brands such as Nestlé, Foxy or Cinfa where it provides information to visually impaired people through its codes.
As these and many other startups did at the time, the 100 finalist projects in the Startup Competition will be able to make themselves known to top-level investors and representatives of international companies who will attend South Summit Madrid 2025, which is co-organised by IE University and will be held from June 4 to 6, 2025 at La Nave in Madrid under the slogan 'In Motion'.
In its previous edition, South Summit Madrid brought together more than 18,000 attendees from 133 countries in the global entrepreneurial ecosystem, including more than 6,500 entrepreneurs, 2,000 investors with an investment portfolio of more than 500,000 million dollars -174,000 million more than last year-, and 6,000 representatives of corporations from all over the world. as well as 26 unicorns of great international renown.
