Martín Varsavsky

First projects

While at Columbia, Varsavsky founded Urban Capital Corporation with Len Kahn, focused on residential and commercial real state redevelopment in Tribeca and SoHo.^[6] In 1986 he co-founded Medicorp Sciences in Montreal alongside Argentine scientist Claudio Cuello and Nobel laureate César Milstein; the company developed early commercial HIV and PSA diagnostic tests.^[7]

In 1991, Varsavsky founded the telecommunications company Viatel in Colorado, which operated a call-back service, as an alternative traditional long-distance operators. Viatel later became an alternative telecommunications service provider in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. In 1997 Varsavsky resigned his official positions and sold his Viatel shares.^[6]

Jazztel and Ya.com

In July 1995, Varsavsky moved to Madrid, Spain. From 1999 to 2011 he taught courses on entrepreneurship at IE Business School (formerly Instituto de Empresa) in Spain. In 1997, Varsavsky founded Jazztel, an alternative telecommunications access provider in the Iberian Peninsula. Headquartered in Madrid and with its own infrastructure, the company became a telecommunications operator offering bandwidth for residential and commercial customers, competing with Telefónica. Jazztel went public on the London Stock Exchange in December 1999.^[6] The company was acquired by Orange (France Telecom) in 2015 for approximately €3.4 billion.^[4]

In 1999, he created Ya.com Internet Factory,^[8] a Spanish internet services/DSL provider that also included the Spanish language online travel agency Viajar.com. Ya.com was owned by Jazztel (70%), Varsavsky (10%) and the company's' staff (20%).^[9] It was sold in 2000 to T-Online International, Deutsche Telekom's Internet subsidiary for approximately 650 million euros.^[10] In 2000, Varsavsky created EINSTEINet AG, an application service provider (ASP) in Germany. Einsteinet was a company built on the premise that most applications were going to migrate from people's PCs to the internet. EINSTEINet did not materialize, the company was sold and represented losses for Varsavsky for 35 million euros.^[6][7]

Fon, Eolia and Prelude Fertility

He launched the company Fon in Madrid at the end of 2005, which provides international WiFi services using user-generated infrastructure. Fon is backed by equity investors Google, Skype, Microsoft, Index Ventures Qualcomm Ventures, and Deutsche Telekom. In 2019, Varsavsky sold all of his shares in the company.^[11]

In 2007, Varsavsky co-founded Eolia Renovables with Miguel Salis. Eolia became one of Spain's largest renewable-energy companies, operating large-scale wind and solar farms,^[12] and was sold for approximately €1.1 billion.^[4] In March 2014, he joined the board of directors of the German publishing house Axel Springer;^[13] he served in this capacity as an outside director until his resignation in 2025.^[14]

In 2016, he founded Prelude Fertility after securing $200 million in private equity funding from Lee Equity. The company, which combines techniques such as egg and sperm cryopreservation, in vitro fertilization, and embryo transfer, offers a monthly payment plan to make these procedures more accessible to young, fertile women who wish to delay motherhood. The firm acquired the Reproductive Biology Associates clinic and My Egg Bank to begin operations.^[15]

Overture Life, Barter Energy and autonomous mobility projects

In 2017, Varsavsky founded Overture Life, focused on automating the embryology lab. Overture is backed by Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff and Allen & Company.^[16] In 2018, Varsavsky co-founded Goggo Network with Yasmine Fage, a company operating autonomous-vehicle and delivery-robot fleets in Europe.^[17] Goggo raised a €44 million Series A in December 2019 from SoftBank Group and Axel Springer Digital Ventures, and partnered with Mobileye to deploy Level 4 autonomous vehicles in Spanish and French cities.^[18][19]

In 2021, Martin founded Levere Holdings, a publicly traded (NASDAQ: LVRA) Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) seeking to invest and merge with a business that will play a key role in the future of mobility in EMEA, focusing on the development of mobility services, connected vehicles, electric vehicles and autonomous driving.^[20]

In March 2020, at the request of the Community of Madrid, the entrepreneur coordinated the development of CoronaMadrid, an app designed to assess symptoms and relieve pressure on emergency services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies like Telefónica, Google, and Ferrovial collaborated on the project.^[21] A year later, he co-founded Barter Energy, an energy company specializing in the development of solar communities and electric mobility in Spain. In May 2025, the energy retailer Visalia acquired the entire company.^[22]

Gameto and Certuma

In 2022, Varsavsky co-founded Gameto alongside Dina Radenkovic. The biotechnology company utilizes cell therapy derived from induced pluripotent stem cells to address infertility through a treatment known as Fertilo. After securing $40 million in cumulative funding, the firm launched its preclinical studies in Madrid.^[23] By 2025, Fertilo had reached Phase 3 clinical trials under FDA oversight and raised $127 million in venture capital from investors including Future Ventures, Insight Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, and RA Capital, among others.^[24]

In 2026, he founded Certuma, a company dedicated to developing artificial intelligence for medical diagnostics. Based in Austin with an initial investment of $10 million, the project is currently seeking FDA approval.^[25] That same year, he launched Fast.doctor, a platform that integrates AI with direct supervision from licensed physicians. Although designed for the U.S. market, the platform began its initial operations in Argentina.^[26]