After evaluating more than a thousand Spanish companies, Jacobo Vera has acquired a business whose clients include the British Library, CERN and the US Department of Energy.
Arcadio Investments, the search fund created to facilitate the generational transition of a Spanish SME, has acquired the software company LIBNOVA — the global leader in digital preservation, with a presence in twenty countries across five continents. The search fund, backed by Arada Capital Partners, completed the acquisition after evaluating more than a thousand Spanish companies across multiple sectors.
Jacobo Vera, founder and CEO of Arcadio Investments, has assumed the role of CEO. Guillermo Martínez, co-founder of LIBNOVA, remains as a shareholder alongside Arada Capital Partners and other American and European investors, and continues to be involved in this new phase.
Founded in 2009, LIBNOVA's mission is to safeguard digital content proactively and systematically, ensuring its accessibility, usability and authenticity over time. With more than seventy clients, the company generates 65% of its revenue internationally, with the United States contributing over 40% of the total.
Its client base includes the British Library, Stanford University, Princeton University, Oxford University and Cambridge University, alongside organisations such as Bayer, CERN and the US Department of Energy. In 2021 LIBNOVA was selected for the Archiver project, funded by the European Union and led by CERN, to develop a solution for preserving large-scale research data sets.
We had been studying the digital preservation industry for some time, and the market fundamentals are very positive. The combination of institutional clients with long replacement cycles, a genuinely international revenue base and a technically defensible product is unusual in a company of this size.
Following the investment, Jacobo Vera has initiated a growth plan focused on strengthening the team, further developing the product and expanding the international presence.
Arada Capital Partners currently has a portfolio of seventeen search funds operating across five geographies — Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and the United Kingdom — and two portfolio companies: IESMAT, a Spanish leader in applied technological solutions, and LIBNOVA.