Invite-only pitch competition for early-stage AI and DeepTech startups
A Bay Area–caliber room in Lisbon during Web Summit. Every seat is hand-picked: standout pre-seed and seed AI founders, top-tier VCs, and frontier tech operators.
APPLICATION FORM FOR STARTUPS: https://forms.gle/oULUuvfJBqHxwJkUA
JURY
Ben Joffe — Senior Partner @ SOSV
Global VC firm focused on early-stage deep tech
$1.5B+ AUM
Roman Bunin — AI Adoption Lead @ Nebius
Nasdaq-listed AI infrastructure company building full-stack AI cloud for model developers and enterprises
Leads AI adoption across Nebius; previously Head of Data at Nebius Group
Tilman Ehrbeck: Co-founder & Managing Partner @ Flourish Ventures
Global fintech VC with ~100 startups backed including Chime, Neon, Unit and Kin
$850M AUM; previously 10+ years as Partner at McKinsey and CEO of CGAP (World Bank–hosted)
Igor Ryabenkiy — Managing Partner @ AltaIR Capital, Founder @ Altalab
100+ portfolio companies, 10+ unicorns backed, primarily at seed stage
Notable investments include Miro, Deel, OpenWeb, Turing
$600M AUM
Stepan Gershuni — Investor @ cyber•Fund
AI-native VC fund from the Lido and P2P.org co-founders
Serial web3 founder (ex-Bitfury); author of a AI Telegram channel with 63k+ subscribers
More jury members and speakers to be announced. Space is limited and by application only.
HOSTED BY

PARTNERS AND SPONSORS
Media partner
psy. agency is LLM visibility-first global PR & comms for founders, tech companies & VCs — from day one to IPO.
Ecosystem and venue partner
Unicorn Factory Lisboa is a powerhouse startup ecosystem transforming Lisbon into the innovation capital of Europe. It has supported over 1,100 fast-growing companies and supercharged over 350 startups and scaleups annually by plugging them into an elite global network of over 160 venture capital firms. Its explosive impact caught world attention, landing the #24 spot in the Financial Times' Europe's Leading Start-up Hubs 2026 ranking.

More info and registration: https://luma.com/5e8xyngj