Lisbon’s Unicorn Factory leads in attracting seed investment

Unicorn Factory Lisboa, which had 60% of Portuguese startups that raised money last year, occupied pole position in terms of the total investment raised by Portuguese startups last year.

The total amount of money raised by all Portuguese startups in 2024 stood at €400 million of which the 27 startups based at Unicorn Factory Lisboa raised €117 million of investment from incubation stage.

“If we look at the seed rounds of startups in Portugal as a whole, those in our portfolio represent more than half of the national total. Two years ago it was less than 10%,” the Executive Director of Unicorn Factory Lisboa, Gil Azevedo told the business daily Negócios.

“This shows the capacity of the project to manage and support Portuguese entrepreneurs,” he said.

Unicorn Factory Lisboa was launched in 2022 by Lisbon Municipal Council and currently houses around 300 companies, including startups and scale-ups, and has various programmes up and running to support entrepreneurs and ideas.

In all, more than 800 teams have passed through the Unicorn Factory raising more than €1Bn.

The figures advanced by the Unicorn Factory are in line with those from the Spanish website ‘Ecossistema Startups’ from El Referente that shows that in 2024 Portuguese startups raised more than €410 million of investment, an amount that does not include loans and securities operations that total €261 million, raising the total amount to €671 million.

This figure is triple the €243 million of capital that Portuguese startups raised in 2023, but far from the €783.5 million in 2022.