In the race to outsmart antibiotic resistance, Pragmatech AI Solutions just made a move worth watching. The Oviedo-based startup closed a €650,000 round that fuses equity and non-dilutive capital, precision finance for a precision problem. First Drop VC led with €300,000, Urriellu Ventures added €175,000, and ENISA backed it with a €180,000 participative loan. That mix isn’t luck, it’s strategic engineering built for scale, not burn.
Co-CEOs Javier Fernández Domínguez, PharmD, PhD, and Pablo Valledor aren’t your typical founders. One spent 15 years in hospital microbiology fighting infections molecule by molecule, the other spent nearly two decades training algorithms to think faster than humans. Together, they created iAST®, the first CE-marked AI software for antibiotic prescribing. In healthcare terms, that mark is more than paperwork, it’s permission to play across the entire EU.
The proof? Clinical trials at HM Hospitales showed iAST® outperforming physicians by 20+ percentage points in accuracy. That’s not incremental, it’s paradigm-level. When doctors guessed right 69% of the time, the AI hit above 90. In a world where antibiotic misuse feeds resistance like kindling, this is oxygen control.
For First Drop VC, this round is an impact investor’s dream, a solution perfectly tuned to the UN’s SDG 3, Good Health and Well-being. The firm’s €300K lead shows conviction in technology that saves lives and creates margin. Urriellu Ventures brought local muscle and deep Asturian roots, symbolic, given their name honors Urriellu Peak, the kind of climb only visionaries attempt. And ENISA’s €180K participative loan keeps Pragmatech’s founders in control while signaling state-level confidence that this tech isn’t science fiction, it’s public health infrastructure.
Antimicrobial resistance is projected to kill ten million people a year by 2050, a market problem disguised as a medical one. iAST® enters with clinical validation, regulatory clearance, and timing sharp enough to cut through bureaucracy. Spain is the launchpad, but CE-marking opens doors across Europe where hospitals are desperate for AI that works in practice, not just theory.
The real story isn’t the raise, it’s the reason. Pragmatech isn’t chasing headlines, it’s teaching healthcare how to think faster. Antibiotic prescribing has always been equal parts art and guesswork. iAST® replaces the guess with math, the art with insight, and the noise with clarity. That’s how revolutions in medicine actually start, not with slogans, but with software that saves lives one prescription at a time.
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