• Presented by the European Commission in April 2021, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act has sparked intense debate among policymakers, civil society, and the business community at the European level

• Tech Barcelona joined Allied for Startups in January 2023 to advocate for the voice of Barcelona’s digital and technological ecosystem in Brussels

Barcelona, April 5th, 2023-. Tech Barcelona, the private non-profit association that represents Barcelona’s digital and technological ecosystem, has joined twenty European startup and AI associations to call for balanced regulation in future AI legislation in Europe. The initiative is part of a joint manifesto that seeks to preserve the innovation capacity of European actors in the field of AI.

The Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), presented by the European Commission in April 2021, has sparked intense debate among policymakers, civil society, and the business community. And the rise of certain AI techniques and concepts, such as General Purpose AI (GPAI) and generative AI (such as ChatGPT), has added even more complexity to the discussion. In this context, European startup and AI associations take the opportunity to remind policymakers of the fundamental elements that should be included in the AI Law to preserve the innovation capacity of European actors and ideally, further drive it through:

• A pragmatic and proportional approach to defining high-risk AI systems.
• Sandboxes suitable for startups and other innovative companies to maximize their usefulness.
• A governance model that genuinely involves stakeholders.
• Future-proof requirements and obligations.

Tech Barcelona joins Allied For Startups

Tech Barcelona has joined Allied For Startups to strengthen its presence in Brussels and actively participate in political debates affecting the technology industry worldwide. Allied For Startups is a global network of startup associations based in Brussels, whose mission is to create a better policy environment for startups and entrepreneurs. The organization represents startups and entrepreneurs on policy issues and advocates for policies that support innovation, entrepreneurship, and job creation.

With this alliance, Tech Barcelona aims to increase its participation and collaborate with other startup associations to share best practices and promote policies that support innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe.

 PRO BCN 2023 project has been promoted by the Fundació Barcelona Promoció and coordinated by the Institut Cerdà, Rethink Barcelona and Tech Barcelona, Barcelona Oberta, Turisme de Barcelona, l’Associació d’Empreses de Teatre de Catalunya and the Casal dels Infants

Barcelona, 3 March 2023 – Nearly 100 organisations from Barcelona’s associative network, leading representatives of civil society institutions and candidates in the forthcoming municipal elections in Barcelona, attended the presentation of the conclusions of the PRO BCN project this morning. The work was built on the participation of a large number of the main civil society organisations that wished to collaborate, coordinated by the Cerdà Institute, Rethink Barcelona, Tech Barcelona, Barcelona Oberta, Turisme de Barcelona, ADETCA and Casal dels Infants, based on the press release issued in September 2022, at the start of the project.

The main conclusions of the project include the need for greater public-private collaboration, within a regulatory framework favourable to the consolidation of a competitive and inclusive metropolis, capable of consolidating its urban, economic, technological, commercial, tourist, cultural and inclusive leadership; and a sustainability based on the need to facilitate economic, environmental and social progress, through a permanent dialogue between all the actors involved in its development, which promotes job creation and quality living conditions for all citizens.

The event took place at the Llotja de Mar, in the presence of representatives of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, who were the hosts; Jaume Collboni (PSC), Ernest Maragall (ERC), Daniel Sirera (PPC) and Xavier Trias (Junts), Jordi Martí, number two of Barcelona en Comú, Maria Eugènia Gay, number two of the PSC, and other representatives of relevant organisations and institutions of the country.

PRO BCN was born from the initial impulse of a group of entities that agreed on the need, in view of the upcoming municipal elections, to gather the collective and structured opinion of Barcelona’s civil society on the present and future of the metropolis.

The proposal is available to all citizens and to all candidates for the next municipal elections and has been worked on with the participation of all the representative organisations that have wished to contribute to it, accepting from the outset the impossibility of covering all the issues of interest to the city.

The coordinating entities and their representatives who, together with the Executive Secretary, have constituted the PRO BCN Coordination Committee are as follows:

• Institut Cerdà (Carles Cabrera, Director General)
• Rethink BCN (Fèlix Riera, Director) and Tech Barcelona (Miquel Martí, CEO)
• Barcelona Oberta (Gabriel Jené, President and Nuria Paricio, Directora)
• Turisme de Barcelona (Eduard Torres, President and Gabriel Guilera, Assessor)
• Associació d’Empreses del Teatre de Catalunya, ADETCA (Isabel Vidal, Presidenta)
• Casal dels Infants (Enric Canet, Director de Relacions Ciutadanes)

The leadership of the project has been shared collectively by the Executive Secretary and the promoting/coordinating entities, which have acted exclusively as facilitators of the process of reflection of the participating entities, which are the origin of the opinions reflected in the synthesis documents.

The different proposals presented have the minimum common denominator of pursuing the same objectives, without having pretended that they coincide in the same concepts or criteria. It should be noted that the opinions provided refer specifically to each of the six areas and can only be attributed to the entities listed at the end of the section corresponding to each document.

Support for the project as a whole was provided by the Barcelona Promotion Foundation, represented by Joan Ramon Rovira and Xavier Carbonell, who were in charge of the executive secretary, and by Intermèdia, Communication Agency, represented by Toni Rodríguez, who was in charge of media relations. The following people have also collaborated with the executive secretary: Salvador Alemany, Jordi Cabré, Joaquim Coello and Mateu Hernández.

• The building, located at Via Laietana 26 and owned by Núñez i Navarro, is a reference space where science and health business meet to seek joint solutions from technology, from Barcelona and with international projection.

• The project is supported by ACCIÓ, leading organisations in the Catalan health ecosystem such as the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), the Southern Metropolitan Territorial Management of the ICS (Hospital de Bellvitge) and the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, and Tech Barcelona partners such as Ferrer, Novartis, Vifor Pharma, Boehringer Ingelheim, Uriach, Ediciones Mayo, Cushman & Wakefield, Nestlé, HP, i2cat and Trifermed, among others.

Barcelona, February 23rd, 2023.– Tech Barcelona has inaugurated Pier07, the new Health and Life Sciences Pier of Tech Barcelona. The opening ceremony, attended by some 200 people, was attended by the Honourable Mr. Manel Balcells, Minister of Health; Mr. Albert Castellanos, Secretary of Business and Competitiveness and CEO at ACCIÓ; Mr. Lluís Juncà, General Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and Mr. Xavier Aldeguer, Knowledge Society, Transfer of Knowledge, Technology Transfer and Innovation; accompanied by Miguel Vicente, president at Tech Barcelona and Miquel Martí, CEO at Tech Barcelona, as well as representatives of the health ecosystem and civil society.

Pier07 – a sustainable space of 6,000 m² located at Via Laietana 26 and divided into 8 floors with a total capacity for 500 people – has undergone a complete refurbishment by Núñez i Navarro, as a sign of its commitment to promoting buildings focused on sectors of high added value that allow the revitalisation of the city centre with quality projects and employment.

Pier07 is a systemic space where the different agents of the innovative ecosystem in health and life sciences can meet, locate their offices, organise activities and search for joint solutions to challenges from technology, from Barcelona and with international projection. The project is a space for collaboration between startups, corporations, research centres, innovation areas of hospitals, universities, administration and the health system.

Tech Barcelona has launched Pier07 with the support and participation of ACCIÓ, the agency for business competitiveness of the Department of Business and Knowledge of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In addition, for the conceptualisation of the new Pier07, the association has had the support of recognised organisations in the health sector such as the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), the Gerència Territorial Metropolitana Sud de l’ICS (Hospital de Bellvitge) or the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu (I4KIDS project), and Tech Barcelona partners such as Ferrer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, Uriach, Vifor Pharma, Ediciones Mayo, Cushman & Wakefield, Nestlé, HP, i2cat or Trifermed, among others.

The health investment fund Asabys Partners is the first tenant to open its offices in the building. In addition, Cebiotex, Chasing Science, Adbio Partners, Trifermed and ACCIÓ will move into Tech Barcelona’s own coworking space. More tenants will be confirmed shortly.

During the inauguration, the Catalan Minister of Health, Manel Balcells i Díaz, said that “today we are consolidating something we dreamed would happen. We have a leading sector that generates wealth in an ecosystem of life sciences talent with large research centres, technology centres and Biocat. The system is good and we must ensure that technological solutions solve problems to improve people’s quality of life. With this building we have a space where we can make things happen and implement the technological advances we achieve in the public system”, he explained.

The Secretary for Business and Competitiveness and ACCIÓ’s CEO, Albert Castellanos i Maduell, stressed that “Pier07 is many things: a hub for business and entrepreneurship, a meeting point for the entire health and life sciences sector and a magnet for talent”. Castellanos recalled that this type of hub is “a formula that has been proven to work, which will accelerate the health sector and help to consolidate and further project Barcelona as a dynamic and innovative city”. “It is no coincidence that the first Tech Barcelona space dedicated solely to one sector is specialised in the health sector: a sector of the first magnitude, very permeable to innovation and which generates around 9% of the country’s GDP and for this reason, from the Government, through ACCIÓ, we are very pleased to form part of this project for the country”, he concluded.

Miguel Vicente, president of Tech Barcelona, explains that the new Pier07 responds to the same philosophy with which Pier01 in Port Vell was built in 2016 and Pier03 in Reina Isabel II in 2018: spaces to bring together talent and projects, develop solutions, make visible and showcase the innovative dynamics of the ecosystem. Vicente says that “from Tech Barcelona we generate these spaces to promote the creation and growth of new companies, as well as the interaction with other agents of the ecosystem”. But unlike other buildings of the association, built with transversal models where companies from all sectors are gathered, Pier 07 is the first space with a sectoral approach: health.

Miquel Martí, CEO of Tech Barcelona, explains how health and life sciences have become a strategic sector for the country. “Currently, we have a mature ecosystem capable of mobilising from research and development to science parks, universities, hospitals, corporations and even the public system. Creating a new Pier, Pier07, with a focus on the health sector and integrated into the Urban Tech Campus project, is a logical step in the association’s strategy to bring technology and solutions with the Barcelona brand to where people live. Apart from having a magnificent space, the content has to be the protagonist. We hope that not only the organisations located at the Pier07, but also all the stakeholders of the health system and other related industries, will take advantage of our spaces to collaborate transversally in the search for solutions to the main challenges to improve people’s health”.

The building, by Nuñez i Navarro

The new Pier07 has a multifunctional auditorium, a terrace for communal use, a Tech Barcelona coworking space and private office space. The building, an original historic building dating from 1936, has been completely refurbished by Núñez i Navarro in accordance with the most advanced sustainability standards, and is LEED, WELL and WiredScore certified. The refurbishment of the building, located at Via Laietana 26, promotes the enhancement of one of the city’s historic art galleries, which is currently undergoing a complete transformation.

Urban Tech Campus: integration of innovation and technology in the city of Barcelona

Since it was founded in 2013, Tech Barcelona has worked to position the city as an entrepreneurial, technological and digital hub of reference in southern Europe. The association has become the backbone of the ecosystem, the benchmark environment for connecting startups, corporations, investors, institutions, universities and administrations.

The association currently represents more than 1,200 companies (60% are startups) from all sectors and technologies. Pier01, created in 2016, is the start of the Urban Tech Campus, Tech Barcelona’s project to develop buildings in the city centre that integrate innovation and bring technology to citizens.

The maturity of the Healthcare & Life Sciences ecosystem in Catalonia

The health and life sciences ecosystem in Catalonia represents more than 9% of GDP and continues to grow. According to the latest BioRegion 2022 report prepared by Biocat, startups and scaleups have attracted 445 million euros in investment, almost double that of the previous year: 77% has been raised by venture capital funds and 12% by competitive grants. The Biocat study also points out that foreign investment, mainly from Europe, Asia and the United States, in projects created and developed in Catalonia is also very significant: 95% of the capital raised has come from international investors.

Health and life sciences are a strategic sector in our country, with a mature ecosystem that mobilises everything from research in universities, science parks and leading hospitals to national and international corporations. Start-ups are playing an increasingly important role in this ecosystem. According to the BioRegió 2022 Report published by Biocat, health startups and scaleups have raised 445 million euros in investment in 2022, record figures that nearly double those of the previous year.

A large part of the success comes from the firm commitment of venture capital, both national and – above all – foreign, to projects that are born and developed in Catalonia. In fact, investment funds raised 77% of the capital, followed by competitive grants from the EIC Accelerator and the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial as the second source of funding (12%). The biggest beneficiaries were medical technologies with 193 million euros raised, and biotech companies with 185 million euros.

This is also a strategic sector for Tech Barcelona. The Urban Tech Campus, a project developed to involve innovation with the city and its citizens, has its new extension at Pier07 (Via Laietana 26), the new reference space where science and business will meet to seek joint solutions from technology, from Barcelona and with international projection.

Download the full report.

ACCIÓ’s latest report on Barcelona’s digital and technological ecosystem confirms its upward trend: the number of startups has grown by 6.3% to 2,022, making the city the fifth best ecosystem in the European Union for creating a startup, behind only Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and Amsterdam. At Tech Barcelona we work every day to promote the growth of this ecosystem through the creation of synergies between all the actors, the dissemination of knowledge and participation in the development of public policies.

The driver of this growth is technology. Specifically, 76% of start-ups are working with technologies linked to Industry 4.0, which includes artificial intelligence, big data, cloud, IoT and sensors, automation, connectivity, blockchain, robotics and virtual or augmented reality.

In terms of investment volume, the figures also improve by 4.3% compared to the previous year, with €1,653M raised in 2022. If the results are maintained, ACCIÓ foresees the birth of new unicorns, among which we could find companies such as Colvin, Paack, Yaba, Wallapop, Typeform, RedPoints or Impress, among others.