Today we interview Lucía Calabria, Deputy Director of Entrepreneurship at València Innovation Capital, a leading figure in driving entrepreneurship and in connecting talent, companies and institutions within the Valencian innovation ecosystem.
València is at a moment of consolidation and, above all, of maturity for its innovation ecosystem. We have moved from a stage focused mainly on generating and attracting projects to one in which the challenge is to help innovative companies grow, scale from here and connect with international opportunities.
The data reflect this evolution: 2025 was a record year for investment in the Valencian ecosystem, with €229 million raised by startups, and València is consolidating its position as one of Spain’s leading technology hubs. But perhaps what matters most is not only how much the ecosystem is growing, but how it is growing.
One of València’s distinctive strengths is its combination of quality of life, talent, universities and research centres, a strong business fabric, strategic infrastructure and a public administration committed to using innovation to respond to real challenges. On top of this comes a growing specialisation in fields such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and health, mobility, energy, industry, logistics, and aerospace and semiconductor technologies.
At València Innovation Capital, our aim is precisely to strengthen these connections between talent, technology, investment, business and the city, so that València is not only an attractive place to start a business, but also a place to grow and develop innovation with impact.
Sector-specific hubs are essential because they make it possible to move from generic innovation to innovation that is closely connected to the real needs of an industry.
A hub like Opentop understands the language, the players, the value chains and, above all, the specific challenges of the port and logistics sector. This makes it possible to identify technology solutions more precisely and to connect startups and innovative companies with organisations able to validate and adopt them.
Hubs also build trust. Open innovation works best when there is an intermediary that knows both sides, understands the needs of the corporation and the capabilities of the startup, and can support that relationship.
From a city perspective, having specialised hubs also allows us to make the most of València’s own economic strengths. In Opentop’s case, we are talking about innovation linked to a strategic asset such as the port and to areas with enormous potential, such as logistics, the energy transition, sustainability, security, supply chain efficiency and the blue economy.
That is precisely one of the areas where a public institution can create the most value. Very often the barrier is not developing good technology, but securing that first space in which to prove that it works under real conditions.
Our role is to help close the gap between the innovative solution and the challenge. This means connecting startups with companies, public bodies, knowledge centres and other ecosystem players, but also promoting instruments and spaces that make it possible to experiment, validate and generate references.
The city itself can also become a testbed. When a startup manages to validate its solution against a real challenge, it gains more than a use case: it gains learning, credibility and a reference that can later ease its entry into other markets.
That is why we see public innovation not only as a question of funding, but also as the ability to open doors, connect players and create opportunities for validation and growth.
Because specialisation and cross-cutting reach are not opposing concepts; they reinforce each other. PEIC brings a deeply specialised perspective on innovation and entrepreneurship in the port and logistics field, bringing together startups, scaleups, corporations, port authorities and international investors. VDS, for its part, offers a much broader, cross-sector technology environment.
Having both side by side means that a solution originally designed for logistics can find applications in energy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, mobility or sustainability, and vice versa. It also greatly expands networking opportunities for startups.
This crossover between ecosystems is especially valuable because many of the most interesting innovations emerge precisely at the boundaries between sectors.
We are seeing two simultaneous shifts. On the one hand, technologies such as artificial intelligence are no longer an isolated sector but a cross-cutting layer transforming virtually every industry. On the other, projects with a strong scientific, industrial and technological component are gaining weight.
In València we are seeing particular activity in fields such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and health, cybersecurity, semiconductors, energy and sustainability, advanced manufacturing, logistics and aerospace technologies.
It is also significant that some of the largest recent deals in the Valencian ecosystem come from very diverse technology fields. In 2025 there were notable deals in biotech, healthtech, fintech, artificial intelligence and photonics, which shows that this is an increasingly diversified ecosystem.
At València Innovation Capital, we are particularly interested in this ability to apply emerging technologies to the city’s strategic sectors and to generate solutions that, in addition to having business potential, deliver economic, social and environmental impact.
The next big challenge is precisely scaling. València has shown that it can generate talent, innovative projects and competitive startups. Now we need a growing number of those companies to be able to grow internationally while keeping their activity, talent and decision-making capacity here.
To achieve this, it is essential to keep increasing access to growth-stage capital, make it easier to attract highly specialised talent, strengthen connections with large corporations and international markets, and create more opportunities for tech companies to land their first major customers.
We also need to keep strengthening the links between universities, research centres, business, investment and public administration. The most competitive ecosystems are not necessarily those with the most players, but those in which the players are best connected.
That is why the goal cannot be limited to creating more startups. We have to build the conditions for the best of them to become scaleups and global companies from València.
Connecting to transform. Because the future of innovation does not depend solely on having more technology, but on our ability to connect talent and solutions with companies, institutions and real challenges. When those connections work, innovation stops being a possibility and becomes transformation.