Enzo Ventures Doubles Its Bet on Southern Europe’s Diaspora Founders

Enzo Ventures announced Enzo II on 19 October 2026, a €20 million ($22 million) pre-seed fund built to write the first cheque into Southern European founders wherever they build. The Barcelona and Madrid firm is doubling its 2023 vehicle, a €10 million fund, after founding partner Edgar Vicente said 90% of those backers came back and raised their cheques. Three new investments are already in, in London, Madrid and Zurich.

The bet has not moved. Enzo still wants founders from Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Lisbon, including the ones who incorporate in London, Paris or San Francisco and keep hiring from the networks they left.

Enzo II Puts €20 Million Behind Day-Zero Cheques

Iván Fernández Lucas, the other founding partner, said Enzo I was about proving they could find these teams extremely early, and that Enzo II is the same formula with more cash, better access and three years of pattern recognition. Vicente put the dollar figure at $22 million in his own announcement, and said the job is still to be the first cheque, not a late follower once a round is obvious.

HOW ENZO II WRITES CHEQUES

• Initial tickets: New holdings are meant to get between €250,000 and €600,000, up from the €200,000 to €400,000 band on Fund I.
• Follow-on cash: The fund keeps reserves for the companies that move fastest, and can add special purpose vehicles on top of the main vehicle.
• Who decides: Vicente and Fernández take the call themselves, rather than running a long investment committee.
• Where they look: Sector is secondary to speed, ambition and the size of the problem; AI, B2B software, automation and robotics sit at the front of the queue.

That ticket step-up is how a €20 million fund still tries to own a real slice at pre-seed without pretending to lead every round. In 2026 Vicente still described Enzo as the first believer in a company, even when a larger name later prices the round.

The First Three Bets Sit in London, Madrid and Zurich

Only one of the three Fund II names is public. London-based Cori Clinical, an AI workspace for trial design, closed a $4 million seed on 7 October 2026, led by Breega, with Enzo, Heartfelt, Together Ventures and Bynd in the round. The Madrid and Zurich companies will be named in the coming weeks, the firm said.

Cori was founded by Jorn Jansen Schoonhoven, the chief executive, and Patricio Fernández Weisson, the chief technology officer, who previously led data science at Sanofi and AstraZeneca. The company says it already works with two of the five largest enterprise contract research groups, and that Erasmus MC in Rotterdam used the product on two neurosurgery and neuro-oncology trials.

A 2026 Tufts CSDD study cited by Cori found 76% of protocols are amended, with a substantial Phase II change costing about $141,000 and a Phase III change about $535,000. Cori’s own review, run against finished trials, said its software flagged 82% of protocol errors classed as avoidable, and the firm models at least a 33% cut in average set-up cost. Vicente’s note on the round was that trials are moving from scattered documents to machine-readable systems, and that Cori is trying to sit underneath that shift.

Vicente posted the Fund II launch the same morning, with a short film, and said the first three investments were already done.

Today were announcing Enzo II, our new €20M ($22M) fund to be the first cheque into the best Southern European founders, wherever they build.

A few years ago, we started @EnzoVentures with a simple conviction. Some of the worlds most extraordinary founders come from Southern… pic.twitter.com/giKjmKOXnH

— Edgar Vicente (@EdgarVisi) October 19, 2026

The useful detail in that post is not the applause around it. It is that the London cheque went out before the seed was fully shopped, which is the only way a €250,000 to €600,000 check still buys a meaningful line on the cap table.

Why Origin Beats Headquarters in This Fund

Enzo’s own site still sells a depth beats speed investing approach built around Southern European teams, “wherever they’re building.” Vicente has been saying the same thing since 2023: do not underwrite a Spanish or Italian company because of its registered office. Underwrite the founder’s origin, then follow the company to London or San Francisco if that is where it incorporates.

When we started investing in 2023, our conviction was that something structural was changing in Southern Europe. The new generation of founders coming out of the region was more ambitious, more technical and much more global from day one. We didn’t want to build a fund around where companies were incorporated. We wanted to build one around where exceptional founders came from.

Edgar Vicente, founding partner, Enzo Ventures

He later put the mistake more bluntly: treating Southern Europe as a map of local headquarters misses the people who leave and still hire from home. The firm’s language for that group is the Southern European diaspora, founders out of Barcelona, Lisbon and Milan who build in London, Zurich, Paris, New York or San Francisco and keep the talent pipeline behind them.

That is also why a first cheque is the product. Once a Southern European team is already in a Northzone or Dawn Capital round, the price has the story in it. Enzo is trying to be the name that shows up while the round is still a conversation in a kitchen in Gràcia or a lab in Milan.

Fund I Already Handed Northzone and Dawn a Map

Fund I deployed into 28 companies across nine countries, Vicente said, and he called the return good enough that almost every limited partner came back. He has repeatedly named Orbio, Murphy and Milan-based Complaion as the holdings that later pulled global funds and now turn over millions of euros. Enzo was, he said in the spring, the first institutional cheque into Murphy and the only Spanish fund in that round.

FUND I NAMES THAT LATER DREW GLOBAL CAPITAL

Orbio’s three founders, Sergi Bastardas, Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé, had already built Colvin, Cobee and Nucoro. Yum! Brands names including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have been cited as customers. Murphy, founded in 2024 by Borja Sole and Marc Sanchez, came out of stealth with that Northzone round and said it was already inside banks, telecoms and utilities. Vicente has also pointed to Karumi in San Francisco and Intelligence Factory in New York as proof the same scouting works when the company never comes home.

Those names are the LP pitch in miniature. A small Spanish cheque at pre-seed, then a London or Stockholm fund prices the company once the product is real. Enzo is not trying to win the Series A. It is trying to still be on the cap table when that Series A happens.

A 29% Drop in Spanish Pre-Seed Deals

The timing of a bigger day-zero fund is not a boom in early cheques. Fundación Innovación Bankinter’s startup observatory found that Spanish pre-seed deals fell 29% through September 2026, to 55 rounds, even as seed deals rose 22% to 104. Headline volume looks like a record because it is not a pre-seed story.

SPAIN STARTUP CASH THROUGH SEPTEMBER 2026

• Headline total: 3,827 million euros, up 49% from the same stretch of 2025, across 274 rounds, down 5%.
• Where it went: Sixteen rounds of 50 million euros or more took 2,560 million euros, or 67% of all cash.
• Without those sixteen: The rest of the market was 1,267 million euros, down 8%.
• City split: Barcelona 1,175 million euros, Madrid 1,153 million, a 22 million euro gap.

Local-only money still does most of the small deals, 138 of them, but only 362 million euros, about 10% of the cash. Mixed local and foreign rounds took 2,449 million. PitchBook’s 2026 Southern Europe private capital breakdown made the same regional point in August, that Southern Europe lagged Europe’s venture recovery in the first half of the year because the AI mega-rounds sat elsewhere.

A €20 million pre-seed fund does not fix that funnel. It does sit in the tranche that shrank. Seed is busy. Growth is a handful of very large cheques. The first million is thinner, which is the slot Enzo is trying to occupy before a Southern European founder decides the only serious cheque is in London.

Two Operators Who Started as Founders

Vicente was 23 when he and Fernández set up Enzo in 2020, after they sold DiHola, a contact-exchange app, to Social Labs. Vicente had come up through Glovo, first as a rider, then on the inside; Fernández was with him at DiHola. Forbes Europe put both on its 30 Under 30 finance list in 2022. The founding partners and operating partners page now wraps a long list of operators around those two names, which is how a two-person decision process still claims coverage from Milan to San Francisco.

FROM A FIRST MICROFUND TO ENZO II

1. 2020: Vicente, Fernández and Markus Törstedt launch Enzo after the DiHola sale, first as a tiny early-stage vehicle.
2. 2022: Forbes Europe names Vicente and Fernández on the 30 Under 30 finance list.
3. 2023: Enzo I, a €10 million fund, starts deploying into Southern European founders at pre-seed.
4. August 2026: Vicente writes that they were 25 when they raised that fund, put in 10% themselves, spent a year on the road, and closed 45 wealthy individuals plus two funds of funds.
5. 19 October 2026: They announce Enzo II at €20 million, with three cheques already wired.

Vicente’s August note is the unglamorous half of the wager. Youth worked against them with limited partners, so they wrote a large personal cheque, ran rolling closes, and built the 28-company portfolio while they were still fundraising. Family offices in Spain, the rest of Europe and Mexico are the mix he described for the second vehicle.

Robotics Is Where They Want the Next Cheques

Enzo still calls itself sector-agnostic, then talks like a firm that wants more metal in the portfolio. Vicente said robotics has been the forgotten line while software AI took the oxygen, and that physical-world applications are where he wants to go further as models get good enough to drive machines, not just chat windows. That is a shift from Fund I’s visible winners, which were HR agents, collections agents and compliance software.

It also fits the hole in the Spanish numbers. Software still leads activity, but the cash that moved the 2026 headline sat in space, computing and a few other outsized rounds. A first cheque into a robotics team in Zurich or Madrid is a different duration bet than a B2B agent that can show revenue in a year, and Enzo is now large enough to hold some of those for longer.

The London, Madrid and Zurich holdings are the live test. One is a clinical-trial workspace with a Southern European co-founder in a British company. Two names are still in the drawer. If the 2023 idea was right, those three will look obvious in hindsight, which is the whole point of writing the cheque before they do.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a venture fund announcement and is for information only. It is not investment advice, an offer, or a recommendation to commit money to Enzo Ventures, Enzo II, or any company in the portfolio. Anyone considering an allocation to a private fund should speak with a licensed financial adviser and read the fund documents, including fees, liquidity and risk. Figures and status are taken from public statements as of 19 October 2026 and can change as fundraising, valuations and deployments move.