CMU Portugal program has already given rise to two unicorn startups

The CMU Portugal Program, created in 2006 as a collaboration between the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as part of the International Partnerships initiative, has already led to the creation of 12 successful startups that continue to make their mark on the national and international scene, including Feedzai, Unbabel, Veniam, and Mambu. Together, these companies have attracted tens of millions of euros in international funding and created more than 1,000 highly skilled jobs. 

Feedzai was the first startup created under the CMU Portugal Program. Today, it is considered a unicorn company and is the fourth Portuguese company, and the first based in Portugal, to obtain this title, after raising an additional $200 million in the last investment round, thus reaching a valuation of €1 billion. This new investment, led by international investor KKR, also retains the support and confidence of Sapphire Ventures and Citi Ventures, which invested $50 million in Feedzai in 2017.

Feedzai maintains an excellent collaboration with the CMU Portugal Program, and its founders, Paulo Marques and Pedro Bizarro, were visiting professors at CMU under the Program. In addition to being involved in the Industrial Affiliate Program, the startup is also the proposing institution for the CAMELOT project, which leads collaborative research between Portugal and CMU.

Feedzai is a market leader in the fight against financial crime, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to prevent and detect financial crime and make banking safer. Headquartered in Coimbra, it has a team of over 500 people who have been working remotely due to the pandemic. The company also has offices in Lisbon, Porto, New York, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, and Sydney.

At the beginning of the year, Mambu, another company within the CMU Portugal Program, also became a unicorn. Mambu raised €110 million in a new round of investment by TCV (Technology Crossover Ventures), a company that supports companies such as Revolut, Klarna, and Netflix, becoming the first unicorn company in the CMU Portugal Program. With a valuation of €1.7 billion, it is now an international success story. The company took its first steps under the Carnegie Mellon Portugal program as a result of the work carried out by three students from the Master's in Human Computer Interaction at the Interactive Technologies Institute in Madeira. The three founders, Sofia Nunes (Portugal), Eugene Danilkis (Canada), and Frederik Pfisterer (Germany), created the startup in 2009, developing the "SaaS" (Software as a Service) banking platform, which is now the market leader. The technology company is headquartered in Berlin, has expanded to more than 50 countries, and develops solutions for digitizing banking services that accelerate and simplify the way financial products are built and offered by financial institutions. 

In this latest round of investment, Mambu received support from Tiger Global and Arena Holdings, as well as investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Runa Capital, and Acton Capital Partners. It intends to continue its expansion and invest in markets such as Brazil, Japan, and the United States, and plans to double its team to more than 1,000 employees by 2022.

About FCT's International Partnerships

International Partnerships were launched in 2006 and are a strategic collaboration between Portuguese universities and R&D institutions with three US universities: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Texas at Austin (UTA). This collaboration gave rise to the CMU-Portugal, MIT-Portugal, and UTA-Portugal Programs, which promote the internationalization of national scientific and higher education institutions, fostering innovative projects and the mobility of highly qualified human resources.

The FCT has been primarily responsible for the public funding of these partnerships, as well as for monitoring them, promoting new thematic knowledge networks. For the period 2018-2023, the International Partnerships have become part of the goPORTUGAL initiative, which reinforces and expands the concept of international partnerships.

More information about the startups: Feedzai and Mambu