Cuatrecasas Acelera selects seven startups from 121 candidates for its 11th edition

Cuatrecasas Acelera is the firm's open innovation program, helping entrepreneurial projects that seek to validate their legal and business strategies. Seven startups have been selected to participate in the 11th edition. The program starts today in Barcelona with the first of two bootcamps.

Out of 121 candidates, the evaluation committee—made up of over 75 Cuatrecasas professionals and 18 representatives from other corporations—has selected the seven startups (six Spanish and one Portuguese) that will receive advice from the firm’s lawyers who specialize in the respective areas related to each project. In this new edition, the selected initiatives belong to the deeptech, energy, fintech and healthtech sectors.

The evaluation committee assessed the participating startups against criteria such as the degree of innovation and distinctness, scalability and growth potential, business model viability, the capacity of each project to create value, and the composition of the promoter team and how it fits into the accelerator program.

This year there was a 15% increase in applications compared to the previous edition. In addition, 17% of the startups that applied were from Portugal, a figure that highlights the program’s international reach a decade on from its inception.

This year, the evaluation committee was made up of some of the firm’s distinguished lawyers, including Alejandro Auset, Vasco Bivar de Azevedo, Gemma Colomer, Idoya Fernández, Juan Carlos Hernanz, Félix Plasencia, Sónia Queiróz Vaz, Miguel Sánchez Monjo and Joana Silveira Botelho. External experts also joined to share their views. They included Laurent Arens van de Perre, investment director at BStartup Banco Sabadell; Jordi Bort, managing director at Llopart Cava; Ester Cardús, a sixth-generation member of Llopart Cava; Grisha Domakowski, director of commercialization and communication at Parc Científic de Barcelona; Albert Ferré, CEO of Global LegalTech Hub; Daniel Franco, business innovation manager at Airbus Defence and Space; Nuria Manils, manager of Barcelona Finance Hub by Aticco; Mireia Mir, managing director of INDPULS; Arantxa Quintana, director of innovation in open business at Unicaja; Carlos Solana, director of innovation and technology transfer at Grupo Mediapro; and Jana Vives Ribera, chief marketing and innovation officer at Vallformosa.

Francesc Muñoz, CIO of Cuatrecasas, commented: “Innovative startups are facing an increasing number of regulatory, corporate and business challenges that can affect their growth. Our aim with Cuatrecasas Acelera is to help them anticipate these challenges from a strategic perspective, providing them with legal and sector-specific knowledge from our lawyers so that they can grow with more certainty and confidence.”

Over the next five months, the selected startups will participate in a personalized advisory program that will combine individualized legal guidance and two in-person bootcamps. The first bootcamp takes place today in Barcelona, and the second is scheduled for December 1 in Madrid. Each project will receive support from Cuatrecasas’s legal mentors, who will address their specific corporate needs and the regulatory challenges associated with their technology to strengthen the development and growth of their business models. In this edition, the mentors will be Alejandro Auset, Gemma Colomer, Íñigo Egea, Juan Carlos Hernanz, Sónia Queiróz Vaz, Cristina Romariz, Juan Antonio Ruiz and Miguel Sánchez Monjo.

The projects will have the chance to connect with leading players in the ecosystem (e.g., corporations and investment funds) to broaden their network of institutional and strategic relationships. Key external professionals from the field of innovation and complementary strategic sectors will also be part of the program. They will provide a practical perspective on the main legal challenges associated with the business models.

Selected startups

AGRIN’PULSE (Energy, Spain): Developed AG-X, an electric, autonomous agricultural robot designed for high-value crops such as fruit trees, vineyards, olive trees and nut trees. The solution enables regular agricultural tasks to be automated using conventional tools alongside robotics, perception, autonomous navigation and artificial intelligence (“AI”) to reduce (i) dependency on manual labor; (ii) operational costs; and (iii) the environmental impact of operations.

AUTHENTIC TEAMZ (Deeptech, Portugal): Offers a platform that helps companies understand how people can work better together. Through psychometric evaluations and AI, it measures each person’s work personality, team roles, and degree of interpersonal compatibility. The platform detects points of friction, risks of burnout and staff turnover, and proposes practical solutions so leaders can improve collaboration, protect wellbeing and retain talent.

EONSEA (Deeptech, Spain): Specializes in developing marine robotics and AI for inspecting, monitoring and managing submerged infrastructures and assets. It combines autonomous marine vehicles, data acquisition systems, and a software platform based on artificial vision (Leanis inspection system) to digitalize underwater operations, reduce costs and risks, and transform data into useful information for decision-making.

FIDEX (Fintech, Spain): Specializes in digital assets, advising and managing large estates, business owners and family offices in line with private banking standards. It designs liquid investment portfolios built on stable digital asset and decentralized finance strategies, with a focus on preserving wealth and generating recurring returns.

GPTADVISOR (Fintech, Spain): Specializes in generative AI for wealth and asset management. Its solutions help banks, asset managers, and investment institutions optimize processes, improve customer service and create new digital experiences, focusing on security, traceability and regulatory compliance. Its solutions are currently used by more than 25 financial institutions in Europe and Latin America.

NOBRAC (Energy, Spain): Applies satellite imagery, AI and advanced analytics to measure, monitor and remotely certify carbon credits and environmental projects. Its technology enables carbon and biomass quantification, verification of deforestation processes, and monitoring of methane and CO₂ emissions, generating traceable evidence for regulatory and certification processes.

POLAR NANOPHARMA (Healthtech, Spain): Develops innovative oncological nanomedicines based on ultracompact polymeric nanocapsules. Its modular drug delivery platform enables the encapsulation of various therapeutic agents to improve their stability, biodistribution, and delivery to tumors, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of treatments and reducing their systemic toxicity.