Porto, Portugal — 9 October 2026. Generative AI had sharply reduced the cost of building software, but not of defending it. For Southern Europe’s enterprise scale-ups, success increasingly depended on what competitors could not easily copy: proprietary data, network effects, exclusive partnerships, deep integrations and regulatory positioning.
Alea’s Venture Capital team put this issue at the centre of Alea Cortex — The Human and the Machine. On 7th & 8th October 2026, the firm convened the Alea Innovation One portfolio in Porto for its first annual summit.
This reflects a key moment for the business. Innovation One, a €35M closed-end venture capital fund that reached final closing in 2023, deployed approximately €23M across eleven companies in 2024 and 2025. Around €8M remained for deployment through 2026.
Alea has also prepared a successor vehicle focused on artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, novel sensing, secure communications, and cyber and trust — areas where European sovereign capability is most needed.
Why “Cortex”
The cortex performs higher-order work that AI cannot replicate: judgment, cross-domain pattern recognition and conviction under uncertainty. It also captured Alea’s investment thesis. As AI made software easier to build, defensibility had to come from the moat around the model, not the model itself.
The two-day programme combined sessions on AI-first operations, generative AI in engineering and go-to-market, and capital-efficient scaling with closed-door roundtables on AI ops, growth, funding and M&A, and Portugal. Founder working sessions replaced a keynote stage, alongside some activities in Porto.
This was not an AI conference. It was a working forum for portfolio leaders to think in the same room.
The fund behind the room
Alea Innovation One backs AI-powered, data-enabled enterprise software scale-ups with demonstrated product-market fit, recurring revenue and a strategic moat beyond software.
Innovation One’s portfolio includes companies, such as Keeyns – collaborative tax management platform for multinationals, Fraudio – payment fraud and anti-money-laundering, Secjure – information security compliance for SMEs, Checkstep – AI content moderation, Anansi – embedded insurance in last-mile logistics, Choice – full-stack hospitality software, customer service automation, Reckon.ai – unattended retail, Sensorz – wireless observability for private 5G and defence, Kirontech – fraud and waste detection in medical insurance, and Feelit – nano-adhesive sensors for predictive maintenance.
Backed by corporate investors and the Portuguese Development Bank (Banco Português de Fomento), the fund invests from Portugal as a capital-efficient growth platform. Founders benefit from non-dilutive funding, competitive operating costs and technical talent, helping companies scale with less capital than many Northern European peers.
Rui Escaleira, Founding Partner, Alea “The cost of building software has collapsed; the cost of being hard to replace has not. We invest where the moat sits outside the code — in proprietary data, regulated positions and hard-to-replicate integrations. Cortex brings our portfolio together to test that conviction with the people executing it.”
John Lambe, VC Partner, Alea “AI changes what a team of thirty can achieve, but it also raises the bar for what makes a company difficult to copy. Cortex gives founders a working forum to address that challenge with peers solving the same problem.”
Future editions will retain the Cortex format while rotating the sub-theme, positioning Porto as an annual forum for the Southern European technology sector’s defensibility debate.
About Alea Innovation One
Through the Alea Innovation One closed-end venture capital fund, Alea backs AI-powered and data-enabled enterprise software scale-ups with proven product-market fit and a defensible moat beyond software. The team works with founders on structuring, recruitment, non-dilutive funding, ecosystem access and go-to-market. Innovation One reached final closing in 2023 at €35M and has eleven portfolio companies.
The investment is made by Alea Innovation One FCR in the context of the Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência (PRR), via an investment with the support of the Portuguese Bank of Fomento (Banco Português de Fomento), within the scope of its venture capital program, the aim of which is to support the investment in venture capital funds dedicated to investment in companies thereby fostering the establishment and/or capitalization of businesses, primarily in the early stages, and also to promote market entry and the growth/expansion of viable companies through the development of new products/services or markets.