Europe is increasingly becoming a hub for Latin American founders. According to Spanish think tank Elcano Royal Institute, 4.2 million LATAM immigrants have moved to Spain, and 3 million across all other EU countries.
Many immigrants are entrepreneurs, looking for access to venture capital funding and commercial partnerships that are more difficult to come by in Latin America.
The EU is home to a range of initiatives that support innovators from abroad. For instance, ICEX, IDB Lab, and Endeavor have an initiative designed to entice Latin American scale-ups to expand into Spain. The programme, now on its fifth edition, aims to provide Latin American startups with access to European institutions, venture capital funds, corporations, and other startups in the region.
But why are so many founders moving? There are many reasons, but arguably the biggest factor is the greater access to funding. The reality is that Europe’s tech ecosystem has much more investment opportunities than LATAM, at least in terms of overall investment.
Accessible VC funding
Accessible VC funding is one of the biggest reasons why more founders are migrating to Europe. Market intelligence provider Cuantico VP finds that venture capital in Latin America amounted to €3.55 billion ($4.126 billion) in 2025 across 681 funding rounds. While this was a 13.8% increase from 2024’s total of €3.125 billion ($3.627 billion), it pales in comparison to Europe.
For reference, according to KPMG, venture capital investment in Europe reached €73.36 billion ($85.3 billion) across 8,626 deals in 2025.
This suggests there is a vast gap in the level of funding availability to startups in LATAM compared to Europe. That being said, while Latin America doesn’t see the same scale of VC investment as Europe, its 2021 peak of €14.97 billion ($17.381 billion) does demonstrate its potential.
In any case, for the foreseeable future, founders can either compete for a lower volume of deals and overall funding in LATAM, or they can migrate to high VC regions like the U.S. or Europe to gain access to new opportunities. Many founders choose the latter.
From Venezuela to Barcelona: One founder’s journey
One founder who’s made the trip from LATAM to Europe with great success is Stephany Oliveros, co-founder and CEO of EdTech startup SheAI, a platform that provides women with access to educational courses and training to address the gender gap in AI. Oliveros left Venezuela in 2017 and has since taken up residence in Barcelona.
“Honestly, it was not one single decision. Like many people from Venezuela, I did not leave by choice in the way that word is usually understood. I left because staying meant accepting a future that was not really there,” she told EU-Startups.
She said that Europe, and Spain specifically, offered something she needed: “stability, proximity to a Latin American diaspora that understood the context, and a tech ecosystem that was growing fast enough to be interesting but not so saturated that there was no room to build something new.”
“There is also something about Europe’s relationship with education and social policy that felt aligned with what I was trying to build. The conversation here about digital inclusion, about who gets access to technology and on what terms, is more present than in other markets. That mattered to me,” Oliveros added.
For Oliveros, Spain didn’t just offer a healthy funding landscape, but real institutional support for initiatives that address social equity. “I have been able to access networks and conversations that would have been much harder to reach from Latin America. That said, it is not without friction. As a Latina founder, you are often the only one in the room, and you spend energy navigating assumptions that your European counterparts do not have to think about,” she said.
Today, the organisation has built a broad network of contacts, with organisations including the United Nations, the International Red Cross, Tech Barcelona, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, as well as various universities and female-led groups.
Expanding to Latin America
Although there’s a distinct trend of founders like Olivero migrating to Europe, in turn, many European companies have also expanded to Latin America in recent years – eyeing an increasingly digital market. Companies like Revolut, Payflow, and Cobee, have all expanded into the continent with varying levels of success.
For example, Revolut made headlines after its decision to acquire the Argentinian bank Cetelem Argentina from BNP Paribas, as part of a plan to expand globally and enable multi-currency accounts.
Spanish FinTech startup PayFlow has also reportedly seen great results from the LATAM market, seeing 60%-70% user adoption in Colombia and Peru compared to 40%-50% user adoption in Spain.
Latin America not only offers such companies access to a new market, but also a fast-growing tech scene, with cities like São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogotá and Buenos Aires home to increasingly diverse startup communities. The continent’s close geographical proximity to the U.S. also presents further opportunities for expansion northward.
For now, it appears more founders are moving to Europe than the other way round, but this could change if the LATAM market continues to grow.
