TOP AI & DEEP TECH STARTUP Pitch Competition at Web Summit
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: Open Google Form
🏆 Prizes
Winner: access to the Atlassian for Startups package (subject to eligibility)
All finalists: 90% off one year of HubSpot, plus access to HubSpot’s fundraising kit
JURY
Anand Chandrasekaran — Managing Partner @ Celesta Capital
Deep tech VC with $1.1B AUM and 100+ early-stage investments, specializing in semiconductors and AI infrastructure
Ex-Partner at General Catalyst
Experienced operator: co-founder of Crescendo AI, ex-Meta, ex-Yahoo, and former CPO of Airtel and Snapdeal
Ben Joffe — Senior Partner @ SOSV
Global VC firm focused on early-stage deep tech
$1.5B+ AUM
Philip Braddock — Head of Startups @ Atlassian
Leads Atlassian for Startups, the program that has onboarded 5,000+ startups globally since launching in June 2024
Partners with 215+ VCs, accelerators and incubators, including Y Combinator, 20VC and a16z
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
Alex Niehenke — Partner @ Scale Venture Partners
$2.8B AUM VC investing in early-stage vertical AI and SaaS; portfolio includes Motive, Root Insurance (IPO), Scout RFP (acquired by Workday) and Sixfold
20+ years in venture, at Scale since 2012; writes about vertical markets for TechCrunch, Business Insider and Forbes
Gonçalo Gaiolas — CPO @ DeepL
Leads product at DeepL, driving its expansion into voice and next-generation Language AI
Previously CPTO at SoSafe, where he pioneered a new category in human risk management; 10 years at OutSystems helping pioneer low-code
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
400+ 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
Sobremesa Events, the agency curating executive events for B2B leadgen in any city in the world. We are the team behind top events at SF Tech Week and Web Summit — past guests have included senior leaders from Waymo, OpenAI, Zipline, and Khosla Ventures.
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.