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In March 2021, Feedzai, a company that uses AI to fight financial fraud, announced a series D funding round of $200 million, raising its valuation above the billion-dollar threshold. It became Portugal’s fourth tech startup to achieve this milestone, placing the country above Spain and Italy in the unicorn ranking. That fact is no surprise to those who are part of the local tech community. “It’s a unique tech hub in Europe with geographical similarities to San Francisco and the global ambition of Israel,” says Miguel Santo Amaro, CEO of Coverflex. Lisbon is an increasingly attractive hub for foreign tech entrepreneurs due to the quality of its engineering talent, English language proficiency and formidable entrepreneurial culture. “Here we have to think international from day one, due to the small size of the country,” says Andre Jordão, CEO of Barkyn.
Coverflex
Coverflex is pioneering a new concept: compensation-as-a-service. “The old rigid, one-size-fits-all approach no longer works,” says CEO Miguel Santo Amaro. “Employees want smarter, transparent and flexible compensation models.” For a monthly subscription that starts at €6 per employee, the startup provides its clients – including companies such as PwC, Bolt, Emma and Unbabel – a tool to easily personalise and manage employee compensation packages covering benefits like health insurance and meal allowances. One of its products, Coverflex childcare, also allows companies to issue childcare vouchers for their employees. The company, founded in 2019 by Amaro, Luis Rocha, Nuno Pinto and Rui Carvalho, has recently raised a pre-seed round of €5 million. “From our previous experiences in startups and traditional companies, we came across the same problems each time when managing employee compensation,” says Amaro. “Compensation is broken for both companies and employees. We decided that we had to fix it.” coverflex.com
Barkyn
“We’re not in the business of dog food. We’re in the business of reshaping and rethinking what pet care should look like,” says André Jordão, CEO of Barkyn. Founded in 2017 by Jordão and Ricardo Macedo, Barkyn provides a subscription service that delivers healthy pet food, personalised treats and online appointments with a dedicated veterinarian to over 56,000 families in Portugal, Spain and Italy. For every plan sold, they donate a meal to a shelter dog. “Every dog deserves to have the best meal in their bowl,” Jordão says. “I own two large dogs called Lupi and Misty, and I wanted to solve the issues I had taking care of them. I didn't have any advice for the right food and care.” Barkyn has raised €10 million. barkyn.com
ABtrace
ABtrace applies machine learning to electronic health records to automate the management of long-term diseases. “We scan the entire patient record to identify the multiple reasons why a patient might require monitoring tests, and support clinicians deliver these in a single appointment,” says the CEO Umar Naeem Ahmad, who is also an NHS doctor. “The same platform is being used to identify early signals that a patient might be developing a disease such as cancer, and support the clinician to initiate an earlier diagnosis.” The startup, which is currently being used by GPs in the UK, was co-founded by Ahmad in 2018 with Helder Soares, Cristina Correia and Kerim Suruliz. abtrace.co
Kitch
Kitch helps restaurants deliver their own food. Founded in 2019 by two ex-Uber executives, Rui Bento and Nuno Rodrigues, the startup currently provides its digital ordering platform to more than 100 restaurants for a monthly subscription of €49. “Most restaurants and food businesses wanting to capture the delivery opportunity often have to choose between the steep costs of selling through delivery marketplace apps and the complexity of setting up and running their own delivery operations,” says Bento. kitch.io
iLoF
“New treatments are developed based on the idea that the same medication will work equally for everyone,” says Luis Valente, CEO of iLoF. “For many heterogeneous, complex diseases, that’s really not the case.” The startup uses photonics and AI to screen a few microlitres of blood for biomarkers such as proteins or peptides in less than ten seconds. Founded in 2019, the startup has raised €3.1m. ilof.tech
Apres
Apres explains how and why AI-based business decisions are made, for instance, when calculating a company’s churn rate or deriving a credit risk. “Credit models provide a risk score and agents delivering a loan are expected to trust the model,” says Matthew Waite, CEO of Apres. “We would provide an explanation of the company's credit model results.” Founded in 2019 by Waite, Subbu Balakrishnan and Mihovil Kovacevic, the company has raised $1.6m. apres.io
YData
In their previous jobs, data scientists Gonçalo Ribeiro and Fabiana Clemente noticed that the majority of AI projects failed because of a lack of good-quality data. “Eighty per cent of the day-to-day work that is being done by data scientists is spent on cleaning the data sets,” says Ribeiro. “That is highly inefficient and induces various biases within the data.” Their startup, YData, offers tools to discover new data sources, synthesise data, and improve its quality. ydata.ai
EMOTAI
Neurotech startup EMOTAI has developed a headband that tracks physiological data such as stress and provides guided exercises to improve performance. “We invited participants to test our training and the results were great,” says CEO Carolina Amorim. “People considered their tasks to be 40 per cent easier to accomplish after one week of doing our training.” They have also conducted four studies with professional esports teams and are currently studying wellness in remote working. emotai.tech
Didimo
Didimo uses AI and computer vision to create life-like 3D digital avatars based on photos or selfies in less than 90 seconds. Launched in 2016 by computer scientist Veronica Orvalho, the startup’s corporate clients use the technology to create characters for apps, games and retail experiences. The software is based on Orvalho’s previous academic research on how virtual avatars can be used to engage with people with autism. didimo.co
Kencko
Smart food startup Kencko helps people get their five-a-day. For a monthly subscription, it delivers a box stocked with compostable packets of fruit and vegetable powder that you can mix with water to make a smoothie. The service also includes a personalised nutrition coach. Launched in 2016 by Tomás Froes and former head of growth at Spotify, Ricardo Vice Santos, Kencko currently employs more than 70 people in Lisbon and New York. kencko.com
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
