Sergio Ayala, Co-Founder | AISC x TRAZA

How do you raise $2.1 million for an AI startup before its first birthday? Sergio Ayala Miñano, a Universidad Carlos III alumnus, is coming home to tell us. Sergio is the co-founder of Traza, the Spanish startup that closed a $2.1M pre-seed round led by Base10 Partners in April 2026. It's a figure very few startups reach in their first round, and it was achieved by someone who not long ago was sitting in the same classrooms as you. So what did Traza do to spark that kind of interest? It tackled a huge problem that almost nobody pays attention to: in many large companies, procurement still runs on emails, phone calls, invoices and spreadsheets. Traza has built an AI-native platform that automates procurement and supply chain operations for large manufacturers and construction companies. And here's where it gets interesting: we're not talking about a chatbot or a pretty dashboard. Traza's agents work on their own: they reach out to suppliers, generate requests for quotes, track orders and process invoices. In the talk, we'll dive deep into the technical side: how to design agents that can reason across multiple steps, use tools and maintain contextual memory, and what it takes to make them work in real companies, not just in a demo. Sergio will also share his journey from UC3M to building a company in the United States, after going through the Exponential Fellowship and companies like StackAI and Enzo Ventures. If you're interested in AI, autonomous agents, or starting your own company someday, this talk is for you. Don't miss it!