More than 100 people attended Tech Spirit Women 2026 to reflect on the future of technology through the voices of women leaders.

The technology industry continues to grow, but the presence of women is not keeping pace: today, women represent just 33% of technology professionals and hold only 21% of senior leadership positions. The gap is even more evident when it comes to funding: only 1% of venture capital goes to startups founded exclusively by women, and 5% to startups with mixed-gender teams.

As Maria Galindo, Secretary for Digital Policies of the Government of Catalonia, and Fernando Escobar, Deputy Director of the State Secretariat for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, pointed out, public administration has an important role to play, but change also requires the commitment of the private sector. They discussed creating more funds focused on female entrepreneurs, developing new financing vehicles, and working towards more gender-balanced leadership teams.

But the conversation also went beyond that: what kind of digital society do we want to build? As Laia Corbella explained in one of her first interviews as CEO of Mobile World Capital Barcelona, we are shaping a society in which there will be professions and roles that do not even exist yet. And yet, we continue to carry structures from another era. In the same conversation, entrepreneur and investor Natalia Olson-Urdangarin highlighted the enormous potential of Barcelona and Catalonia to build a world-class technology ecosystem. An ambition that requires collaboration, stronger European connections and, above all, investing in the talent and companies we already have here.

Former US diplomat Nikki Finnemann added some of the challenges ahead: accelerating execution, having specialised funds to support companies through their growth stages, and getting Catalonia’s business community — including family-owned companies — to play a more active role in technology. There is capital and there are opportunities, so all that remains is to bet on ourselves.

And there was much more. Cintia Pérez Gutiérrez, leading Additive Manufacturing at HP, shared her perspective from the advanced manufacturing sector. María Hita introduced us to the work of Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech and how quantum computing is being developed from Barcelona. Carlota Suriol, from EAE Business School; Sara Vallribera, from GFT Technologies; and Juliana Araújo, from Skyscanner, discussed the rise of agentic AI. We heard from Gemma Beltran, from CaixaBank DayOne, and Montse Aranda May, from CaixaBank Tech, about building and growing a technology company within a large financial organisation. Laura Fernández Lord, from Fundación Princesa de Girona, and Arancha Martínez Fernández, founder of it-willbe.org, focused on the human dimension of innovation: technology must serve people. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Tech Spirit without a conversation about funding: Maite Malet (Asabys), Eli Abad (Wa4Steam), Marta Campillo (Abac) and Rocío Flor (Acció) brought figures and proposals to the table to address the investment gap faced by women entrepreneurs.

See you next year to keep moving forward, keep building together and, hopefully, celebrate that these figures continue to change.