Banco Santander delivers the Santander X Spain Awards 2025 to nine innovative business ideas with high potential

Banco Santander presented its Santander X Spain Awards 2025 during the Valencia Digital Summit, an international benchmark event for entrepreneurs, startups, innovators, and investors.

These awards recognize the most innovative and promising university business ideas, startups, and scaleups in Spain, offering support for their growth, visibility, international exposure, and mentorship free of charge.

The juries for the three established categories, composed of experts in entrepreneurship, investment, and technology, among other fields, selected Arkadia Space as the winning project in the Scaleup category, Atom H2 as the best project in the Startup category, and Haptika in the University category.

The three category winners stood out among 30 finalists after competing with 1,300 scaleups, startups, and university entrepreneurs registered in this edition.

Scaleup Winner – Arkadia Space
The scaleup winner, Arkadia Space, develops green chemical propulsion systems for satellites and spacecraft. Their proposal consists of a family of mono- and bipropellant engines based on H2O2 (>98%) and proprietary fuels, which are modular, scalable, and less toxic. These engines are designed for orbital maneuvers and deep-space missions, offering long-term storage and simplified operation.

Startup Winner – Atom H2
Atom H2 is a startup that provides a hybrid energy storage system (lithium batteries + solid hydrogen in metal hydrides) for continuous, emission-free power, which can replace diesel in critical infrastructures.

University Winner – Haptika
In the University category, the first prize went to Haptika, which has developed a sensory bracelet for arm prostheses that provides real-time feedback and greater control, without surgery or device modifications. This facilitates daily tasks and reduces device abandonment.

Additional Awardees

In the Scaleup category, the second prize went to Reveni, which offers a platform integrating operations and fintech to help brands scale internationally without compromising profitability. The third prize was awarded to Captoplastic, which develops solutions for capturing and controlling microplastics in marine waters, wastewater, and sludge.
In the Startup category, Libera Bio won the second prize. This emerging company is developing precision nanomedicine to tackle incurable diseases with transformative solutions. The third prize went to Calpech, which converts olive mill wastewater into carbon-encapsulated iron nanoparticles as a sustainable, circular economy solution.
In the University category, the second and third prizes went to Awa Monitoring and Albor Space, respectively. Awa Monitoring offers a Ceramic Passive Sampler (CPS) for integrated, cost-efficient, and representative water monitoring over time. Albor Space develops a fast and cost-effective satellite emulator to test 5G networks, significantly reducing costs.

The winners shared a total of €75,000 in prizes and will have the opportunity to compete internationally with the best peers from eight other countries, representing Spain at the Santander X Global Award 2024.

Santander Startups

Banco Santander in Spain offers Santander Startups, a comprehensive suite of services and products for startups and innovative companies with growth and scalability potential. These include financial and non-financial solutions tailored to each stage of a company’s growth cycle, helping them develop and contributing to the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Spain. The bank also has risk teams and startup specialists in the main entrepreneurial hubs across the country.

Santander’s financial offerings are complemented by non-financial support. The bank helps companies grow and transform through the global Santander X platform, which provides a wide range of tools, training programs, online courses, discounts, exclusive events, challenges, and awards, among other benefits. In addition, Santander offers access to its more than 30 urban Work Cafés across Spain, open to clients and non-clients, where entrepreneurs can work, hold meetings, attend events, and receive support from startup-specialist managers.

Santander and Its Commitment to Education, Employability, and Entrepreneurship

Banco Santander maintains a pioneering and consolidated commitment to education, employability, and entrepreneurship, which it has promoted for nearly 30 years, setting it apart from other financial institutions worldwide. The bank has allocated more than €2.4 billion to these initiatives and has provided scholarships and support to over 3.7 million people and companies through agreements with nearly 1,200 universities and institutions (www.santander.com/universidades