The opening night of Web Summit 2025 takes place on Monday, November 10, at the MEO Arena in Lisbon.

Speakers include Anton Osika, Co-founder and CEO of Lovable; Maria Sharapova, tennis legend; Khaby Lame, influencer and content creator; Sarah Meron, Chief Corporate Affairs and Brand Officer at IBM; Mark Nelsen, Global Chief Consumer Product Officer at Visa; Connie Loizos, Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch; Gonçalo Matias, Minister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister and of State Reform of Portugal; Carlos Moedas, Mayor of Lisbon; and Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO of Web Summit.

Join us for an unforgettable evening filled with great speakers, games, networking, and more.

Doors open at 5:00 PM, and the Opening Ceremony begins at 6:00 PM. You’ll need to be registered and have collected your wristband and lanyard to enter.

Please be aware that Centre Stage has limited capacity and is likely to fill up early.

We can’t wait to see you there!

Centre Stage

Co-founder & CEO

Anton Osika

Tennis Legend

Maria Sharapova

Influencer & Content Creator

Khaby Lame

Chief Corporate Affairs & Brand Officer

Sarah Meron

Global Head of Product, CMS

Mark Nelsen

Editor-in-Chief

Jennifer Cunningham

Jessica Sibley

Connie Loizos

CEO & Founder

Paddy Cosgrave

Mayor

Carlos Moedas

Minister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister and of State Reform

Gonçalo Matias

Opening Night - Limited capacity

Opening remarks from Web Summit founder and CEO.

Welcome to Web Summit 2025

AI is reshaping the $680 billion sports industry - not just on the field, but in how we connect, compete, and experience the game. Join Maria Sharapova and Sarah Meron as they explore how the same AI powering leading enterprises is transforming sports organizations from the inside out. From optimizing team operations and athlete performance to creating richer fan experiences and building global communities, discover how technology is making sports more personal, precise, and powerful than ever. It's not just about who wins the match - it's about how the entire industry wins with AI.

Smarter plays: How AI is changing the game

One year after Visa officially validated creators as small businesses here at Web Summit, the creator economy continues to accelerate and evolve, and AI is opening new possibilities - but also raising big questions about ownership, originality, and income. Mark Nelsen from Visa joins TikTok phenom Khaby Lame to explore how technology, payments, and new financial tools are reshaping the business of creativity. The session will culminate with the unveiling of Visa’s newest product for creators - a must-see for anyone at the intersection of culture, commerce, and technology.

The new business of creativity

Few companies in history have scaled like this. In just eight months, Lovable went from idea to $100M ARR — faster than OpenAI, Wiz, or Cursor. In this fireside chat, CEO Anton Osika breaks down the idea that sparked it, the bold bets that got them here, and what comes next as Lovable aims to turn 2 million builders into 8 billion.

Building for the 99%: Inside Lovable, the world’s fastest-growing tech company

Get ready to witness a showcase of tomorrow's industry leaders, as innovative startups pitch their disruptive ideas and cutting-edge technologies. 

Noah Palansky

Arbia Smiti

CEO & Co-founder

Maxime Barbier

Co-founder & co-CEO

Dima Shvets

Breakout Startups

Please make your way to the stage, content starting shortly. 

Co-Host

Casey Lau

Opening remarks

From static frames to fully interactive environments, video generation models are advancing at breakneck speed. Join Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela as he shares how real-time world models could revolutionise industries from entertainment to robotics by simulating reality itself.

Founder & CEO

Cristóbal Valenzuela

Global Editorial Director

Katie Drummond

From scenes to simulations: The rise of world models

As polarisation deepens and trust in institutions wanes, how can journalism remain independent and credible? What happens when facts and reality come into conflict with other powerful agendas?  New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger talks with NPR CEO Katherine Maher about promoting truth, combating misinformation, and the state of the free press today.

Chairman & Publisher

A.G. Sulzberger

Katherine Maher

Truth in the age of propaganda and polarisation

With geopolitical and policy uncertainty continuing, the global venture capital landscape in the first half of 2025 remains in a state of flux. The IPO market is showing resilience with over 500 listings raising over $60 billion in capital, but what are the main challenges and opportunities for companies and venture capitalists looking for exits? Join this session to learn what this Midas List investor is betting on for 2026 and beyond.

Managing Partner & Co-Founder

Nigel Morris

Anchor | Correspondent

Susan Li

VC's guide to the market in 2026

Join Cristiano Amon, President & CEO of Qualcomm, as he unveils The Ecosystem of You — a vision for a future where technology revolves around you. Discover how agentic AI and edge-native systems are transforming devices into intelligent collaborators that adapt in real time. Learn how this shift from app-centric to agent-centric experiences is redefining personal, industrial, and connected worlds through AI at the edge.

President & CEO

Cristiano Amon

Human-centered design in the age of AI

Today’s creators aren’t just gaining followers, they’re building empires. Join these Gen Z leaders as they reflect on finding success in your 20s, building multifaceted digital enterprises, and discuss how to leverage clicks and views into lasting entrepreneurial success.

Grace Beverley

Entrepreneur, Creator & Cultural Architect

Josh Richards

Next-gen boardroom

We are living through a profound era of change - where technology, work, and human creativity are converging in new ways. In this keynote, Brad Smith explores how AI is no longer a distant concept and why this moment is an opportunity to responsibly accelerate its diffusion - ensuring benefits reach every part of the world and shaping a future where innovation helps us achieve extraordinary things together.

President & Vice Chair

Brad Smith

No ordinary time

Our brains are shifting from the biological to programmable, one that can be engineered, augmented, and fused with artificial intelligence. Join Science Founder & CEO Max Hodak as he explains how brain-computer interfaces are rewriting the rules of cognition.

Founder & CEO 

Max Hodak

Founder

Alex Kantrowitz

Hacking the brain

In an era of AI disruption, political pressure, and shifting audience trust, media CEOs face a fast-changing and unpredictable landscape. How are they rethinking business models while protecting editorial integrity? Hear from these media CEO’s on sustaining credible journalism, earning public trust, and defending newsroom independence.

Christian Broughton

Media Reporter

Katie Robertson

Who runs the news now?

95% of Americans don't want a race to AGI and superintelligence. Instead, they want reliable AI tools that cure diseases and boost productivity. Professor Max Tegmark lays out how we can build "95% AI" to unlock incredible benefits - from provably bug-free code to unbiased news - without unacceptable risk.

Professor

Max Tegmark

The 95% AI

Founder & Owner

Mariana Barbosa

Discover the formula for digital marketing success with Alex Schultz, the marketing mastermind who propelled Meta to 2 billion users. Backed by 20+ years of expertise and Sam Altman's endorsement, Schultz's new book "Click Here: The Art and Science of Digital Marketing and Advertising" reveals key principles and best practices to achieve growth through digital marketing. Join this exclusive session to get a glimpse into the book and to learn strategies to elevate your business.

Alex Schultz

Media Correspondent

Sara Fischer

The inside scoop: Digital marketing insights from Meta's CMO

The climate crisis is reshaping industries as profoundly as the Industrial Revolution once did. Join innovators from Twelve, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Octopus Energy to explore the technologies driving a new era of transformation.

Co-founder & Chief Science Officer 

Etosha Cave

Joe Paluska

Greg Jackson

Executive Editor

Amy Nordrum

The climate crisis = our industrial revolution

It’s no secret that founders and investors can generate immense wealth by building the right companies and backing the right ideas. But what if they committed to impact as boldly as they committed to growth? Meet Founders Pledge, a global community of entrepreneurs who’ve committed to giving a portion of their proceeds to charity.

Co-founder Pledge Ventures, CXO

Niki Buys

The community of founders pledging billions for good

As new leaders of two iconic brands, David Faugno and Laurent Mekies will explore how ambition, culture, and trust shape their vision for the future. From empowering teams at the edge to treating technology and security as competitive assets, they’ll share lessons in leadership and culture that prove speed alone isn’t enough; trust is what turns ambition into lasting advantage.

David Faugno

Team Principal & CEO

Laurent Mekies

Speed meets trust: The next era of competitive advantage

The future of business strategy isn’t decided in boardrooms—it’s shaped in real time on social media, where each post, like, and comment signals the next big opportunity.
Join Hootsuite CEO Irina Novoselsky and Bluesky COO Rose Wang as they show how enterprise leaders are using social intelligence to stay ahead in an unpredictable market.

Irina Novoselsky

Rose Wang

Tech and Policy Reporter

Ashley Gold

The power of social intelligence

Grammarly was one of the first companies to teach an entire generation how to use AI. And now it's reinventing itself for the next era, rebranding as Superhuman and introducing a platform that brings AI wherever people work. Join Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra for an inside look at the company’s evolution from a single product to a productivity suite, and his perspective on building AI technology that fits naturally into how we already work.

Shishir Mehrotra

Jim Edwards

Superpowered, not superseded: The human rhythm of AI

Industrial AI is transforming the world at a pace we’ve never seen before: Products reach the market faster. Operations adapt in real time. Decisions that once took weeks are now made in moments. And yet, all this progress strains the very systems that support it. Join Siemens’ Peter Koerte and NVIDIA’s Rev Lebaredian to discover how AI infrastructure can evolve as fast as AI itself—and enable AI-powered progress to scale.

Member of the Managing Board, CTO and CSO

Peter Koerte

VP, Omniverse and Simulation Technology

Rev Lebaredian

Building the backbone of intelligent industry

Andrew Macdonald, Chief Operating Officer, Uber and Craig Trudell from Bloomberg News, explore how autonomous vehicles are transforming urban travel and Uber’s role in bringing safe and efficient robotaxi networks to cities across the globe.

President & COO

Andrew Macdonald

Global Automotive Editor

Craig Trudell

The road to robotaxis

How is the EU turning its vision of digital sovereignty into opportunities for startups and innovators? In this fireside chat, Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen shares how Europe is strengthening its tech leadership through strategic investments in startups, AI, and supercomputing; and how EU policies are being designed to simplify growth, attract talent, and scale innovation.

EVP Technological Sovereignty, Security, & Democracy

Henna Virkkunen

Senior EU Policy Reporter

Cynthia Kroet

Europe’s tech sovereignty: Powering startups and innovation

Co-CEO

Rónán Dowling-Cullen

André Miranda

CTO & co-founder

Pranava Adduri

Patrick Guiney

Please make your way to the stage, content starting shortly.


Agentic AI isn’t just changing how we work, it’s changing who decides what gets done. In this conversation, Manus AI co-founder Tao Zhang explores how autonomous systems will reshape industries, redefine productivity, and challenge our assumptions about control, responsibility, and creativity.

Co-founder & CPO

Tao Zhang

Editor-at-large at National Interest; Host of The Bottom Line at Al Jazeera English

Steve Clemons

When AI starts to decide

TikTok isn’t just shaping culture; it’s reinventing how people search, discover, and make decisions. With over a billion users exploring everything from travel to skincare, the platform has become a new gateway for discovery. Khartoon Weiss, VP, GM, NA & Global, Global Business Solutions at TikTok, will explore how the company is redefining search and unlocking new ways for creators to connect with their communities worldwide.

VP, GM, NA & Global, Global Business Solutions

Khartoon Weiss

TikTok: The culture that moves the world

The Internet didn’t have to be like this. Author, Cory Doctorow, and Rabble, a long-term advocate for decentralized technology, will explore how and why “enshittification” happened, including the role of US trade reps who used the threat of tariffs to bully the EU and protect the spread of US tech monopolies. With "liberation day" upon us, the rest of the world is now free to build a post-American, de-enshittified internet.

Author

Cory Doctorow

Founder 

Rabble .

A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet

Where to from here as the great AI race continues? Join this session as Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel, unveils the key findings from Accel’s annual AI report. What AI sectors and regions are billions of VC dollars following into, what does the new landscape of AI native applications look like, what is the projected return-on-investment as AI continues to capture a massive share of the global economy? All these questions and more will be covered in this discussion

Partner

Philippe Botteri

Senior Technology Correspondent

Arjun Kharpal

The great AI race

AI is already influencing headlines, summaries, and story flow, often invisibly. What happens when machines shape editorial judgment? Hear from Dow Jones CEO on whether journalism can survive the age of automation.

Almar Latour

Trust, truth and technology in the media

How can Europe carve out a competitive edge in the global tech race? This chat brings together leaders from Tencent and Fyxer AI to explore the lessons of scaling across continents, the role of AI in shaping new markets, and what it will take for Europe’s startups to stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s biggest innovators.

Chief Investment & Strategy Officer, EMEA

Ling Ge

Co-founder

Archie Hollingsworth

Building Europe's global tech edge

Healthcare systems are complex – but change is coming. Join CEO Tom Hale to learn how ŌURA is integrating wearable tech and AI to address systemic gaps and create a smarter, more proactive and preventative approach to care.

Tom Hale

Tech Editor

Amy O'Brien

Prevent, personalise, perform: The ŌURA healthcare playbook

Europe's VC market is bracing for impact. With tariff turmoil and geopolitical tensions, many investors are hitting pause as they assess the mounting macroeconomic challenges. What role does VC have in surmounting these challenges and how can the industry help to support Europe's long-term strength?

General Partner

Rainer Märkle

Managing Partner

Cristina Fonseca

Financial Correspondent

Maria Aspan

Can VC save European innovation?

Most enterprises have dabbled in GenAI, but scaling it safely and effectively is another story. Join Decagon and Jasper's CEOs, and Atlassian President as they break down what it really takes to build AI systems that deliver value, integrate into workflows, and earn trust at the enterprise level.

Meet our 2025 speakers

They've attended as partners

They came as small startups

They've attended as media

What our attendees are saying

They came as investors