Startup Emily.AI wins eighth edition of Cuatrecasas Acelera

Cuatrecasas Acelera—the technology-based startup accelerator program for innovative legal challenges launched by the firm in 2016—has closed its eighth edition today with the Demo Day hosted in hybrid format from the Barcelona office auditorium. Emily.AI was announced the winner after the heads of the six participating startups presented their projects and ran a demo of their proposals before an expert panel made up of some key representatives of the international entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This Demo Day closes a four-month program during which Cuatrecasas provided the legal support and Gellify the business support. The six participants from the fintech, healthtech, energy and deeptech sectors—five Spanish projects and one Portuguese project—also received access to clients and financing. They have all worked and progressed hand in hand with over 50 professionals that were part of this edition’s innovation committee and a team of the firm’s lawyers, made up of Álvaro Bourkaib, Ariadna Casanueva, Elena Cuatrecasas, Iñigo Egea, Juan Carlos Hernanz, Miguel Sánchez Monjo, and Sónia Queiroz, acted as legal mentors.

Francesc Muñoz, CIO at Cuatrecasas, stated: "The accelerated startups in this eighth edition continue to demonstrate the growing level of maturity of their business models, with increasingly interesting legal challenges for Cuatrecasas. So the next edition will be even greater!”

During the session, the heads of participating startups Emily.AI, Polyrewards, SIA, Splink, Therminer and Tokencity, presented their projects’ progress before a select jury made up of Rafael Fontana, senior partner at Cuatrecasas; Francesc Muñoz, CIO at Cuatrecasas; Vasco Bivar and Diana Rivera, partners at Cuatrecasas; Cai Felip, CEO of Union Avatars, winner of the seventh Cuatrecasas Acelera; Patricia Pastor, founding partner of NextTier; and Carles Grau, CEO of GIC.

To reach the final decision, the panel considered key factors such as the value proposition of the projects, their business viability and scalability, the team involved in their creation and development, as well as how each startup evolved throughout the program. The outcome resulted in Emily.AI being awarded the highest recognition as the winning startup of the eighth Cuatrecasas Acelera Program.

Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Emily.AI focuses on customizing oxygen therapy for chronic respiratory patients and on quickly preventing complications. Rafael Fontana presented the award to Daniel Oliva, the healthtech’s CEO, who thanked this strong support for his project: “This recognition means so much because of all that was involved in the program; these past months have been intense. We are a microenterprise and being able to work with a law firm of this caliber has been really useful for us.”

During the event, a round table was held in which Cuatrecasas partner Omar Puertas, Cuatrecasas ECM project manager Elsa Gómez, and Bigle Legal CEO and cofounder Alejandro Esteve de Miguel presented the main generative AI projects implemented by Cuatrecasas over the course of last year and analyzed the challenges and trends that the application of AI poses for 2024.

Alba Molina, innovation project manager at Cuatrecasas, said: “Our knowledge of all areas of the law enables us to accompany each of the startups comprehensively, designing legal strategies for them to protect their assets, validate their business models and anticipate market requirements. The program makes this cross-cutting advisory service accessible to very strong startups.”

After eight years, the Cuatrecasas Acelera Program has closed a new cycle upholding its interest in discovering and anticipating new business models that may arise, adding value to the development of the most innovative proposals and strengthening the firm’s position in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The startup accelerator program for the legaltech sector and startups with high legal complexity designed by law firm Cuatrecasas identifies the best talent from among European projects with great potential. The four-month program promotes these startups by providing them with legal, business and technological support, and access to clients and financing.

The winning projects from previous years were: Union Avatars, a software startup that creates realistic avatars in the metaverse for any platform (seventh edition); Bia Power, an energy startup that optimizes electric vehicle charging, and the healthtech Match Trial that speeds up the inclusion of cancer patients in clinical trials (sixth edition); Menhir Financial, a platform using machine learning to help banks, funds and asset managers (fifth edition); TOQIO, a banking and financing startup (fourth edition); BlockTac, a certification app based on blockchain technology (third edition); FuVeX, a startup implementing drones for companies and institutions (third edition); Validated ID, an electronic signature platform (second edition); and TheLogicValue, a fintech platform (first edition).

In addition, the Cuatrecasas Fast Track Program selects more mature legaltech or technological startups and develops a use case with them to give companies an opportunity to learn about these startups and validate the feasibility of their initiatives in a real professional environment.