InnoCells, the digital business hub of Banco Sabadell, has contributed $10 million to Silicon Valley venture fund Base10.
Base10 was created in 2017 in San Francisco as Urizen Ventures, which has a target size of $200 million dollars. The fund is led by Adeyemi Ajao, Spanish co-founder of Tuenti and Cabify, and Thomas Nahigian, American co-founder of Jobr and investor in Accel Partners. Compapnies in its investment portfolio include startups such as Ethos Lending, Reflektive and Wonolo.
For Banco Sabadell, the investment marks the Spanish bank's entry into Silicon Valley and contact with the region's dynamic startup scene, with a particular emphasis placed by the bank on advancements in artificial intelligence.
Julio Martínez, executive director of InnoCells, states: “It is a privilege to work hand-in-hand with Base10 and to bring our day to day work at InnoCells closer to startups which, from Silicon Valley, lead ambitious sector transformation. We share the idea with Base10 that machine learning is the technology which has the most disruptive capacity in fintech.”
In July last year, InnoCells contributed EUR7.5 million to a tech investment fund run by Cardumen Capital, giving the Spanish bank access to new technological breakthroughs emerging from Israel's thriving startup ecosystem.