Portuguese unicorn Tekever buys Cocoon Experience
The Portuguese design and user experience company had already been collaborating for several years on civil and defence projects with the drone manufacturer.
Drone manufacturer Tekever has just completed the purchase of Cocoon Experience, a company that operates in the areas of user experience and service design. The value of the operation has not been revealed.
“Cocoon Experience’s entry into the Tekever universe confirms our commitment not only to creating the most innovative products and technologies, but also to ensuring that our users remain at the centre of the development process. After years of a very prosperous relationship with Cocoon Experience, we are taking this partnership a step further in the name of a common goal: helping our customers transform themselves to really take advantage of the exponential rate of technological evolution,” says Ricardo Mendes, CEO of Tekever, quoted in a statement.
The two national companies had already been collaborating for several years on civil and defence projects. Now, Cocoon’s team, “made up of behavioural scientists, design strategists and UX specialists”, will work exclusively with Tekever. It will “help scale and accelerate the product development and fast-growing customer base” of the national unicorn.
“For years, we have collaborated closely with Tekever, sharing the same vision of how design can leverage technological sophistication. This union represents an excellent opportunity for us to apply our human-centric approach in truly impactful and critical contexts, contributing to solutions that improve safety and operational efficiency on a global scale”, says Anabela Fernandes, managing partner of Cocoon Experience, quoted in a statement.
This user-centred approach “has proved fundamental in some of its most demanding operations — including frontline missions in Ukraine”, Tekever said in a statement. “In these high-risk scenarios, putting the user at the centre of the design process has directly improved operational effectiveness, enabling faster decision-making and greater adaptability in complex, real-time environments”, it says.
The national drone manufacturer recently achieved unicorn status, having announced investment plans in the UK (470 million euros) and France (100 million).
Of the company’s current workforce of around 1,000 people of 20 nationalities, 70% are located in Portugal, with a factory in Ponte de Sor and an engineering centre in Caldas da Rainha. “We have many hundreds of people in Portugal, it’s our biggest base. We work a lot with the entire industry in Portugal. Last year alone — in 2025 it will be more — we bought around 12 million euros in Portugal, I think. And over the next three years — not five, as is the plan we’re presenting to England — including 2025, we’re going to buy around 100 million euros in Portugal, if not more, from Portuguese industry”, said Ricardo Mendes in May, in an interview with ECO.
