Cuatrecasas Acelera closes selection process for startups participating in ninth edition

Now in its ninth edition, the Cuatrecasas Acelera open innovation program, which has helped over 50 startups to validate their legal strategy and improve their compliance, has selected six projects from the energy, fintech, foodtech, healthtech, legaltech and proptech sectors. This year, 100 applications were received from Spain, Portugal and Latin America with projects offering disruptive solutions in a wide range of industries.

“Nowadays, startups face highly complex legal issues, particularly due to the fast development of regulations seeking to regulate new technologies. Startups must meet these regulations, but also understand how they can affect their business models and income. Our objective at Cuatrecasas Acelera is to provide them with the knowledge and legal certainty required to attract their clients and promote their growth,” said Francesc Muñoz, CIO at Cuatrecasas.

The startups selected in the new edition will meet tomorrow, October 15, at the first bootcamp in Barcelona. On November 28, they will meet again in Madrid to participate in the second bootcamp scheduled for this year. During the four months of the program, the entrepreneurs can boost and improve their respective projects in terms of business and technology with the help of their legal mentors. They will also have the opportunity to meet some of the participants from previous editions and expand their network of contacts in the ecosystem.

During the event, in addition to participating in investment and negotiation simulation sessions, the participating startups will assess and define the legal strategies that will boost their growth, identifying the regulatory aspects required for the disruptive technologies applied in their projects. They will also learn to give them traction through presentations by the firm’s expert lawyers in the main areas of business law and legal training sessions in tax and employment law.

Cuatrecasas Acelera also includes the collaboration of leading representatives in the international venture capital sector, CEOs of reputed international companies and experts in the startup segment, who will enable the participants to deepen their understanding of relevant matters such as cybersecurity, compliance, growth hacking, UX/UI design, fundraising and finance, communication and sales, and corporate culture.

“The startups must be prepared to transmit legal certainty to their clients. Legal uncertainty can be a significant obstacle to clients’ growth and trust. At Cuatrecasas Acelera, we focus on providing the entrepreneurs with the tools required to face these challenges and turn them into business opportunities,” said Alba Molina, senior innovation project manager at Cuatrecasas.

The team of legal mentors that will provide the specialized and tailored advice according to each startup’s sector is made up of the following Cuatrecasas partners and lawyers: Julio Brasa, expert in public law; Juan Carlos Hernanz and Félix Plasencia, experts in public law, energy and infrastructure; Miguel Sánchez, expert in finance law and fintech; Ariadna Casanueva, expert in pharmaceutical regulatory law and digital health; and Paula Álvarez, expert in intellectual property, technology and digital media.

Selected projects:

Cicerai (legaltech): founded by former artificial intelligence experts at Google, this AI-native platform with automation tools accelerates document research, preparation, comparison and compliance management, reducing the time spent on document review by up to 60% and thus speeding up legal research.

Eara (fintech): this financial representation tool enables traditional and alternative projects for the retail and professional public to be combined in the same place, thanks to the merging of traditional finance with digital asset technology.

Hydros Power (energy): this platform contributes to decarbonization through storage systems and a green hydrogen supply that provide an efficient and scalable transition toward clean energy, with a particular emphasis on distribution.

Nimble (healthtech): this is the first microwave-based (MWI) medical device for the continuous, non-invasive, non-ionizing monitoring of patients with implanted stents; its MWI technology can diagnose the state of the stent and its potential problems, regardless of the type and location.

Orygen (proptech): this project provides sustainable and profitable solutions for rural land using AI models that analyze the land and propose suitable projects; it is also a pioneer in the use of land as a service (LaaS), which connects landowners with CO₂, logging and renewable energy companies, meeting both parties’ needs.

Poseidona (foodtech): this project provides high-quality protein ingredients that are affordable and truly sustainable, produced from marine algae by-products, so that manufacturers can create tastier food products while also caring for the ocean and planet.

Cuatrecasas Fast Track

Cuatrecasas Fast Track keeps an open call all year to enable new projects to join a program aimed at testing international scale-up technologies so that, in collaboration with Cuatrecasas, participants can design, co-create and develop pilot tests in relation to the business challenges currently faced by law firms. Focusing on generative AI, all applicants responding to one of the four following challenges will be considered: maximizing collective knowledge in the firm, fostering productivity and efficiency in the legal sector through automation systems, developing solutions that enable digitalization of the relationship, and improving collaboration with the client to encourage customer engagement.