UPTEC startups among Portugal’s next big innovators

Among the 10 startups to keep an eye on in 2025, three are incubated at UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto. So says an article published by EU-Startups, the largest online magazine about Europe’s startup ecosystem, which highlights Portugal’s most innovative business projects.

Connected is highlighted by the online portal for creating “affordable and hassle-free satellite connectivity, allowing unlimited messaging to people and devices anywhere in the world”. The technology developed by Connected, which aims to develop NB-IoT (low bandwidth for the Internet of Things) connectivity solutions, provides a service with the ability to send and receive small volumes of data such as short messages anywhere on the planet, using space infrastructures, in a service that they want to be global, accessible and standardised. In 2024, the startup founded by Tiago Rebelo, Raquel Magalhães, André Guerra and Hélder Oliveira closed a pre-seed investment round worth two million euros.

Ethiack, founded in 2022 by André Baptista, Jorge Monteiro and Vitor Pinho, launched an innovative platform for continuous cybersecurity pentesting on the world market, which allows companies to identify vulnerabilities in real time in their digital assets: “With the trust of large companies, Ethiack provides real-time information and practical solutions to strengthen cybersecurity,”, EU-startups points out. Last year, the startup completed a seed capital round of four million euros. With this capital, Ethiack intends to launch the next generation of Automatic Continuous Pentesting technology through AI-powered Hackbots and expand into new markets.

Lastly, Storming Universe, founded in 2024 as a spin-off from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) by Anuj Regmi, stands out for its creation of drones that aim to “improve urban connectivity, reduce emissions and support humanitarian missions by providing life-saving resources in remote areas”, says EU-startups magazine. The startup aims to solve one of the main obstacles to democratising access to medical care worldwide, having received an investment of 750,000 dollars to develop a drone system for distributing urgent medicines and transporting blood to areas that are difficult to access, especially in developing countries.

In addition to the UPTEC startups, the article in the online magazine also highlights the national projects DOJO AI, Mobmio, Mozilla.ai, QuantumNova and StarMountain.