In Lisbon, Paddy Cosgrave says that the “golden girl of the new Europe” is Poland

Co-founder of Web Summit opened the event in Portugal but praised Poland, China and Brazil, particularly Pix.

The start of Web Summit counted, as usual, on Carlos Moedas. The Mayor of Lisbon took the opportunity to announce that he will launch the 17th unicorn of the capital next Thursday.

A unicorn is a company valued at over a billion dollars. And Lisbon must be “the city where social justice meets innovation, and innovation meets culture and art”.

For Carlos Moedas, “culture is the secret source of innovation”, reiterating that in the digital world the only difference is “human nature through culture”.

Portugal is a “global center”

The Deputy Minister and State Reform, Gonçalo Matias, stated, also at the opening of the Web Summit, that he intends to “make Portugal in a global center of innovation”creating a “favorable regulatory environment” for investment.

“The digital revolution offers a historic opportunity to create new industries, new jobs and new prosperity”, said the government official, in Lisbon.

Gonçalo Matias also mentioned the Portuguese Large Language Model (LLM), stating that he wanted to “give each student an artificial intelligence (AI) tutor, who listens, guides and inspires learning”.

The minister said that the Portuguese state must be “smartermore agile and more human”, with the help of AI – which should simplify public administration, bring citizens closer to services and reinforce transparency. “Technology should empower citizens and strengthen democracy”, he commented.

Poland is “golden girl”

But the co-founder of Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave, praised another country: he said that the Poland is becoming the “golden boy of a new Europe”.

“Unfortunately, for the first year, the number of German startups at the Web Summit has decreased, but the number of neighboring startups is at a record level,” said the event’s executive president.

Paddy Cosgrave stated that Poland is a “motivated, ambitious and organized” country, adding that “parts of Western Europe stagnate”, unlike Poland and Eastern Europe, which “accelerate”.

The person responsible for the event also said that the Europe and the US are losing ground in the technological revolution: cited examples of advances in China by him Pix, “extremely resilient and revolutionary” instant payment system, created by the Central Bank of Brazil – and which could “put already established payment systems and fintechs at risk” globally, he warned. Pix is ​​already the most used payment method in Brazil.