Sword Health invests in Lisbon. CEO supports Moedas in local elections (but votes for Pizarro in Porto)

“First, I am here as Virgílio’s friend”. This is how the Mayor of Lisbon began to explain his connection to the CEO of Portuguese unicorn Sword Health, who supports Carlos Moedas in his re-election bid in the upcoming local elections.

Confirmation that the entrepreneur, who is the representative of socialist Manuel Pizarro’s candidacy for Porto City Council, is supporting the Social Democratic candidate in the Portuguese capital was given this Tuesday during the inauguration of the company’s new office.

“I think what matters are the people, not the parties. And that is even more true in local elections. At this moment, when there is great political polarisation and extremism is rising to power, it is important that people who are not linked to the party apparatus, like me, who have always been on the outside, show their support and play a more active role”, said the founder and CEO of Sword Health, speaking to journalists.

In Virgílio Bento’s opinion, in local elections, it is possible to support both a PSD and a PS candidate, whereas in legislative elections it is different. However, the final vote he will cast on 12 October is for Manuel Pizarro. ‘If I voted in Lisbon, I would vote for Carlos Moedas’, he told journalists on the sidelines of the opening of the space on Rua Braamcamp, one of the main streets in Lisbon.

Carlos Moedas and Virgílio Bento met almost 20 years ago in Brussels, when the current mayor of Lisbon was European Commissioner for Science and Innovation. Both left Portugal in the 1990s, the former from Beja and the latter from Guarda. They quickly felt a connection through their interest in entrepreneurship.

“I saw Virgílio as an incredible person. I am honoured to have been the European Commissioner who signed the cheque for the first million euros for Sword – and Virgílio never spared any words of gratitude to the European Union”, said the Mayor of Lisbon at the office’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. Looking at the northern businessman, whom he sees as an inspiration, he said: “You never criticised the European Union. You said that the funding changed your life and the life of the company”.

Regarding Sword Health, Carlos Moedas considered that it “really changed the paradigm” because it is an example of the interconnection between the physical (physiotherapy) and the digital (software) and the “fusion between the two worlds”.

Sword Health is the 16th unicorn to formally enter Lisbon. “I spent four years chasing unicorns to get them to set up offices in Lisbon”, said Carlos Moedas. But the fact is that the seven unicorns of Portuguese origin are mainly located in the United States and also in Porto and Oeiras.

Lisbon office was “more expensive than I wanted”

Unicorn Sword Health, which created a technological system for physiotherapy treatments, opened its new office in Lisbon late this morning, but the investment, whose value was not disclosed, was more expensive than the CEO had hoped.

“It was more expensive than I wanted because we wanted the visual aspect of the Lisbon office to be exactly the same as the one in Porto. We wanted to have a good office”, said Virgílio Bento, in conversation with ECO.

The event was also attended by the Secretary of State for Health Management, Francisco Rocha Gonçalves, to whom Virgílio Bento gave his assurance: “We want to collaborate with the NHS. Portugal’s problem is not unique, but rather a global problem of access to healthcare. We would like to have the same impact in Portugal and other countries as we have in the United States.”

For the government official responsible for Health Management, this is an “investment in improving healthcare”.

The New York-based company has more than 100 job openings to strengthen the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), technology, product, operations, among other functions. The plan is for Lisbon to host most of the team dedicated to AI for healthcare in Portugal, which impacts Sword Health’s global activity.

The healthcare technology company will have a hybrid working arrangement in what is the company’s first office in Lisbon, given that until now, the nearly 100 employees in the capital worked from shared spaces (co-working spaces). The new office is 400 square metres.

“We already have around 100 people working in the Lisbon region, and we have noticed that, increasingly, these people were looking for the office and wanted to work from that space. So, we decided to find a larger space, just for us. In this new office, we will welcome any Sword employee who is in Lisbon, nearby or passing through, coming, for example, from the United States”, said Sword Health’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Jorge Meireles.

“We recruit in Portugal, regardless of where people live. We have several open positions, but with the new Lisbon office, we hope to increase our presence in the region. We hope that this office will allow more people to get to know us and seek us out, and we hope that this reinforcement of the team in Lisbon will allow us to collaborate more and more with customers in Portugal”, adds Jorge Meireles.

The Portuguese unicorn has agreements with more than 90% of private insurance companies operating in Portugal and expects to treat approximately 250,000 Portuguese people over the next five years.