Lisbon AI Conference 2025: I Was There, So You Don’t Have To
By Someone Who Survived the Buzz, the Panels, and the Post-Event Sangria Chats
Let’s get straight: the Lisbon AI Conference 2025 wasn’t just another LinkedIn-friendly mingle-fest with lukewarm wine and buzzwords like “synergy” flying around like mosquitoes in August. This was packed—over 200 attendees crammed into a surprisingly vibrant venue in Lisboa - the AI Hub from Unicorn Factory. About half the crowd didn’t speak Portuguese natively, and if you threw a USB stick, you’d probably hit either a startup founder, a policy wonk, or someone quietly fine-tuning their pitch deck between sessions.
Hosted by Startup Network Europe (they’re the Airbnb of tech events by now) and AIhub by Unicorn Factory Lisboa (Portugal’s answer to Station F), the evening was fast, nerdy, and unexpectedly spicy. You felt it in the air: AI isn’t coming—it’s already here, debugging your life, indexing your data, and maybe, just maybe, writing your future resignation letter.
It was hosted by the iconic Adam Fulham.
Scene 1: Mingling With the Machines (6.00pm - 6.20pm)
Networking kicked off like any good Lisbon happy hour—with way too many people saying “AI is the new electricity.” But hey, it was buzzing. Founders were everywhere. Some bootstrapped, some VC-coddled, and others who clearly just wanted to be seen. Corporate folks circled the crowd like curious sharks. Investors hovered with that glazed-over look that says, “Please, no more pitch decks unless it involves LLMs doing my taxes.”
Scene 2: Panels With Punch (6.30pm - 8.00pm)
Panel 1 – AI & Tech Leaders: “Let’s Actually Build Something”
This panel felt like opening ChatGPT while your laptop is on fire. Leid Zejnilovic kicked it off with the big picture: how AI is not just tech but culture-shifting infrastructure. Think less “Silicon Valley disruption” and more “European digital transformation—slow but smart.”
Helena Rosário Da Costa chimed in with a sobering reality check on policy: the EU AI Act isn’t just real; it’s really going to slap startups in the face if they’re not prepared. Cassiano Surek gave it the engineer’s spin, detailing the need for robust AI infrastructure while subtly implying that half the room should probably learn how cloud scaling works before raising another round.
But Vittor Andrade gave the panel its edge. His insights on edtech and AI deployment in actual high-scale environments (like Descomplica in Brazil) reminded everyone that AI is not just theoretical—it’s teaching, testing, and learning alongside real humans today.
Panel 2 – Data Leaders: “The Math Is Real, So Are the Consequences”
Now this was the panel where things got uncomfortably honest. Fabien Cros, ex-Google, now at Ducker Carlisle, tore into industrial AI use cases with a surgical focus. If your data pipeline is trash, your AI is trash. (Okay, paraphrasing, but not by much.)
Panel 2 and a full house
Tetiana Torovets offered wisdom on productizing data science, a niche that’s becoming weirdly perfect for ML. Her take: Data is political, messy, and more human than we want to admit.
Enter Andrezza Oikawa, who brought the legal fire. Data privacy isn’t a feature, it’s a right. Her message? Most AI startups are two subpoenas away from an existential crisis.
And Helena Moniz closed the panel like a philosopher: Ethics isn’t a post-launch patch. It has to be baked into your stack from day one. Think Kant, but with version control.
Scene 3: Startup Fireworks (7.30pm – 8.00pm)
The lightning talks were speed-dating for the tech-minded.
João Nuno Ferreira kicked off the “AI Factories” initiative—Portugal’s bet on making national R&D sexy again. It’s nerdy, ambitious, and surprisingly well-funded.
João Nuno Ferreira presenting the AI Factory Services
Gleb Braverman (HackerPulse) gave a confident, even cocky pitch about AI-powered developer productivity tools. He basically wants to make GitHub Copilot look lazy.
Noxus showcased AI for cybersecurity. Smart. Aggressive. And clearly not built for comfort.
Scene 4: Post-Event Real Talk (8.00pm onwards)
As the formalities faded and the wine started flowing, the honest conversations began. People weren’t just there to look smart—they were sharing hiring woes, MVP nightmares, and “can we even afford GPUs anymore?” rants. One German founder asked me if Lisbon was “the new Berlin.” I asked him if Berlin had better weather, better coffee, and a better attitude about product-market fit.
Final Take
Lisbon AI Conference 2025 didn’t change the world, but it absolutely mirrored it. The hype was high, but the insights were real. This was the place to go if you want a snapshot of where AI is in Europe—not the press release version, but the startup trenches, the corporate boardrooms, and the regulatory warzones.
I was there, so you don’t have to be. But maybe you should be next time. Just bring a pitch, a filter, and an extra battery pack.
Trust me, you’ll need it.