"When it's your first company, every problem looks like a fire. Adara has seen enough to know which ones actually are. From the first ticket, they've been in the work with us, not watching from the cap table.”
Manu Ferreira
CEO & Co-Founder
Adcities
The story behind our name
The brightest star in the sky is one you have never seen.
Adhara pours out more light than almost any star we know, but nearly all of it is in the ultraviolet, beyond what the human eye can see.
To the casual observer, it appears ordinary. But with the right instrument, its true brilliance is revealed.Similarly, the companies that will define the next era are often invisible to the market at first.
They are already kindled, but in places only patience, depth, and conviction can reach.We have spent two decades becoming that instrument: finding and backing them early, and staying until the world can see what we saw all along.
To the casual observer, it appears ordinary. But with the right instrument, its true brilliance is revealed.Similarly, the companies that will define the next era are often invisible to the market at first.
They are already kindled, but in places only patience, depth, and conviction can reach.We have spent two decades becoming that instrument: finding and backing them early, and staying until the world can see what we saw all along.
through the years
Milestones
2005
Founded in Madrid
2006
First fund closes (AV1)
2008
First cheque in AlienVault
2013
AV2 closes
2015
First cheque in Seedtag
2018
AlienVault exits to AT&T
2019
AV3 closes · PlayGiga exits to Facebook
2022
Opportunity Fund launches
Seedtag raises €250M · Hdiv exits to Datadog
2023
Ross Strachan & Alberto Echeverri join the Partnership
2025
AV4 & AVE close
2025
Cyber Guru exits to Libraesva
2026
Same thesis, fourth cycle
INVESTMENT thesis
As AI transforms technology, hard problems become more valuable
AI is rewriting how companies build defensibility. As software becomes easier to create, some advantages are more exposed to change, while others are more embedded in their market context. Defensibility is a spectrum, not a formula: no part of the spectrum is automatically better, and the strongest companies are built where multiple advantages combine and compound over time.
01 / THE SHIFT
THE SHIFT: how AI reset the rules of defensibility
AI is changing how defensibility works
more directly changed by AI
depends on combination and context
more embedded in real-world systems
Workflow
agents rewrite it
Distribution
rebuilt around agents
Ecosystem
lock-ins loosen
Data
compounding wins
Scale
capex still matters
Network
trust intensifies
Regulatory
licenses hold
Physical
hardest to replicate
INVESTMENT VERTICALS
Capture. Secure. Compute. Connect.
We see the greatest opportunity in four investment verticals. Each is a market layer where AI is reshaping demand, accelerating company formation and creating new paths to durable advantage.
New Data Frontiers
We back the software and sensing that connect physical systems to intelligence, letting them sense, respond and act.
Our Focus
Industrial automation, energy grids, manufacturing, mobility, and embedded hardware.
Industrial automation, energy grids, manufacturing, mobility, and embedded hardware.
Trusted AI Infrastructure
We back the security and trust systems that let organisations deploy AI in sensitive, mission-critical settings.
Our Focus
Cybersecurity, compliance, sovereignty, governance, and model and data trust.
Cybersecurity, compliance, sovereignty, governance, and model and data trust.
CAPTURE
SECURE
COMPUTE
Connect
Our verticals focus where we look. The founder determines what we back. Because the right founder can redefine the opportunity, whatever the market.
PLATFORM
What partnership looks like in practice
Twenty years of building companies means we know where founders get stuck. We help you make the hire, hold the line in the negotiation, open the door to the customer, and stay in the room for every crucible round.
Winning New Markets
Established US presence, then restructured for scale.
Attracted investment from eCapital, In-Q-Tel, and Evolution Equity. Led board dynamics. Established initial US presence, then restructured. Placed the COO and CRO.
CounterCraft
Winning New Markets
Relocated the company to Silicon Valley, and built the syndicate there.
Funded and rallied the founders to relocate. Supported the integration of a new CEO with the existing team. Participated in every round from Seed to Series D.
AlienVault
Exiting the Right Way
From Seed to Exit, partnering to maximise valuation.
Lead investor from the earliest days. Helped drive the product and company positioning in a competitive category, leading to an acquisition by Datadog.
HDIV
Backing through the Rounds
Followed on through every round, as the company repositioned.
Provided follow-on funding at critical turn-around points. Supported reorganization. Stayed in the round when others wouldn't.
XYZ Reality
Backing through the Rounds
Attracted the follow-on investors who made scale possible.
Invested in the Series A3 and provided the signalling to bring SparX Capital, Presto Ventures, NIF, and BBB into the round. Continued CEO support at the board.
SatVu
Exiting the Right Way
Guided the Board on early M&A offers, to hold out for the bigger outcome.
Strategic and corporate development across secondaries, financings, inbound M&A, and the acquisition of a competitor. Institutional readiness, at the moment it counted.
Cyber Guru
Backing through the Rounds
Led the seed and assembled the Series A syndicate.
Led the seed round. Helped bring in the follow-on syndicate for Series A. The kind of lead investor that makes the next round possible.
Acoru
Exiting the Right Way
Led the Board through M&A negotiations, leading to an acquisition by Meta.
Long-term lead investor through multiple rounds, shaping the investor syndicate and equity story.
PlayGiga
Building the Team
Rebuilt the leadership team to unlock global expansion
Established the operating mechanisms, commercial intensity, and geographic ambition to enable the company to open new markets concurrently.
Wirescan
Building the Team
Introduced the CFO and CRO who navigated Series B.
Support through the toughest moments. Helped navigate venture debt. Focus on international expansion. The right hires at the moment they were needed.
Plenit
Building the Team
Recruited a CRO/CEO to evolve the GTM.
Helped the Founders reduce geographical and product complexity to streamline GTM.
Eluviant
Winning New Markets
Opened the doors that unlocked European and Latam enterprise revenue.
Introductions to our network of large European industrial organisations generated a significant pipeline of qualified leads in a region where the company had previously low penetration.
Articul8
01
Big Vision
We back founders with the ambition to shape a category. The scale of that ambition must match the scale of the problem. We listen for the moment a founder describes a future that does not yet exist, and makes us realise we’ve been waiting for someone to build it.
02
Execution
Vision without execution is decoration. We look hard at what a founder has already shipped, not just in their current company, but across their career: the teams they’ve built, the products they’ve shipped, the decisions they’ve made under pressure, and the constraints they’ve turned into compounding advantage. Execution isn’t speed; it’s the rate at which a founder learns. We invest in founders who want to run a better company tomorrow than they run today.
03
Technical Conviction
We invest in founders who have made deliberate, difficult choices about how to build their technology, and can explain precisely why those choices create structural advantage. Not a demo. Not a general story about AI or the market. This matters more than ever. The technical decisions a founder makes determine whether the company can build a position competitors cannot easily reach.
04
Courage
Building a category-defining company requires the conviction to take risks before the market is ready. It means persuading customers to see a future they do not yet recognise, and staying the course when the work takes longer than the market wants. We look for founders with the courage to step away from the beaten path in order to build something truly significant.
Testimonials
First company or fourth, we've walked the road
“If you are building your third or fourth company, you've earned the right to choose your investors. I'd seen how Adara thinks about complex problems when they were investors in my previous company, Scalefast. For Goodweek, I wanted that thinking on my side again."
Nic Stehle
Founder of Goodweek
Scalefast
Our Values
Values aren’t what we say
they’re what we do
they’re what we do
You can expect us to show up throughout your journey, bringing energy when momentum is high, perspective when decisions are hard, and practical support where it makes the greatest difference.
Committed
Transparent
We tell founders what we think they need to hear, not what they want to hear. No sugarcoating, no politics. If we see a problem, we say it. That's how trust is built.
We don't try to be everything to everyone, we focus on the things where twenty years of doing this actually makes a difference.
Focused
Reliable
We do what we say. No empty promises, no saying one thing and doing another. True to our word when things are good, and especially when they're not.