Lisbon was buzzing this month, with over 71,000 people pouring into the city for Web Summit 2025. In its tenth year in Lisbon, the event was bigger, louder, and more globally connected than ever. The city saw founders, investors, policy-makers, journalists, creators and the simply innovation-curious come together to discuss the latest in the world of tech.

  The stages felt like a collision of industries and cultures. The opening night brought together TikTok personality Khaby Lame, Maria Sharapova and Lovable’s Anton Osika. Over the last few days it hosted leaders at Meta, Apple, F1, Replit, Runway and others as over 1,500 journalists from the world’s biggest outlets helped cover and shape global narratives from the event.

  It was a fantastic opportunity for the start-up scene to flex its muscles. More than 1,850 investors – the largest group in Web Summit’s history – flew in to hear the most incredible ideas from 2,725 startups representing 108 countries. Unsurprisingly, AI dominated the floor, with nearly one-fifth of all exhibiting companies working in AI and machine learning. Marking a change to many tech shows, 40% of all startups at the event were also women-founded, which says something important about where innovation is heading.

  Perhaps two interesting additions to the event worth noting were the China Summit, sharing the country’s take on global AI acceleration, and the Future of Media Summit, which brought together editors and reporters to unpack how technology is reshaping storytelling, trust and attention.

  As Web Summit’s CEO, Paddy Cosgrave, noted during the Opening Night, the event represented a huge launchpad that could help a tiny team with an idea scale like Revolut. And given the energy in Lisbon it felt entirely possible.

  But for Liberty it was also important we didn’t lose track of the ‘why’ so we partnered with Redbridge Lisbon and the brilliant team at Ponja Nikkei in Chiado to host an event to discuss what makes Portugal such an attractive destination for tech investment. We were joined by representatives from government organisations like Start Up Portugal, AICEP and Start Up Braga as well as a host of VCs, investors, start ups and academics to share our perspectives over a refreshing (albeit strong!) Pisco Sour. If you would like to chat and hear our perspectives please do drop us a line!