Portugal promoted as an investment destination in the United States
The Secretary of State for Digitalisation, Bernardo Correia, concluded a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area in California on 20 March, during which he promoted Portugal as an investment destination in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data centres.
The five-day trip took place in the same week that the Government approved the National Data Centre Plan, whose purpose is to position Portugal as a European ‘hub’ for data centres and ensure both digital sovereignty and the attraction of foreign investment.
Portugal has the talent
In statements to Lusa, the Secretary of State said that Portugal has the talent and the conditions to attract investments in AI, research centres, and data centres, both from venture capital funds and from large software companies and infrastructure giants.
“We have great startups, scale-ups and unicorns, and we have to draw attention to the quality of our ecosystem, to the quality of our talent and to the capacity that our ecosystem has to create value and generate wealth,” said Bernardo Correia.
“We are also here to ensure that Portugal is well positioned for what is currently the greatest investment attraction opportunity of the century, which is the construction of data centres,” he stressed.
“We are talking about absolutely astronomical sums, and Portugal is well positioned to capture this investment,” he emphasised.
Visit agenda
The visit’s agenda, within the execution of the National Digital Strategy, concludes with an event at Stanford University dedicated to sustainability in the digital transition, following visits to the Plug and Play incubator, meetings with venture capital funds, and meetings with digital infrastructure companies.
“We were also looking at how we can leverage Portugal as an investment destination for Artificial Intelligence infrastructure and talk to investors in this area,” the government official indicated.
Interest in Silicon Valley
The Secretary of State observed that there is a renewed interest in hardware and physical AI in Silicon Valley and said that advanced robotics and quantum sensing are the “crest of the wave” of technological evolution that should be brought to Portugal.
“We need to know how to be at the forefront of technology in Portugal and in Europe, and not just be chasing after the technologies that others are already leading,” he argued.
The mission sought to understand the best global practices in incubating and accelerating Artificial Intelligence and ‘deep tech’ startups, “to ensure that Portugal is well represented here and well positioned for international investment.”
Part of this strategy involves the Plug and Play incubator, which partners with Startup Portugal to support the internationalisation and scaling of Portuguese startups in the United States.
Finding ways to collaborate
But the Government wants to find other ways to collaborate, explained Bernardo Correia, to “better connect” startups from Portugal and California.
“The startup ecosystem in the San Francisco area is the best in the world, the most advanced on the planet, and there is a lot of information exchange here on how we can do better with our own ecosystem in Portugal,” he emphasised, ensuring that the visit opened doors and should result in concrete partnerships in the future.
Reference link: https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2026-03-23/portugal-promoted-as-an-investment-destination-in-the-united-states/994917
For more details, please refer to: https://adlinvestment.com/en/about/