The EmprendeXXI Awards recently celebrated their 19th edition, recognizing some of the startups with the greatest potential for growth and impact in Spain and Portugal. Backed by CaixaBank through DayOne and co-awarded by Enisa in Spain and Banco BPI in Portugal, these awards have solidified themselves as a leading initiative to support technological and innovative entrepreneurship.
The 2026 edition targeted technology-based and innovative companies formed since January 1, 2022, based in Spain or Portugal. Its aim was to identify projects capable of improving people’s lives, transforming key economic sectors, and delivering sustainable solutions to the challenges of the future.
Eight Startups Awarded in the “Challenges of Tomorrow”
In this edition, the national awards were organized around the Challenges of Tomorrow, grouped into three major areas: Human & Wellbeing, Business Transformation, and Living Planet. The winning startups were Batea Oncology, Second Hundred, REWOOX, Voltic, Veganic, Aridditive, GPT Advisor, and ATOM H2.
In the health and well-being arena, Batea Oncology was recognized for its innovation in treating glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive brain tumors. Second Hundred, for its part, proposes a system to perform blood analyses from home via an automated device, designed to facilitate health monitoring without travel.
Education, tourism, and energy efficiency have also taken the spotlight. REWOOX was awarded for its immersive training experiences based on virtual reality and artificial intelligence, while Voltic stood out for a plug-and-play solution that enables hotels to reduce energy consumption by up to 30% without major renovations.
In business transformation, the awards recognized Veganic, which develops sustainable biosolutions for crop nutrition and protection; Aridditive, focused on 3D printing for more efficient and lower-impact construction; and GPT Advisor, applying generative AI to the wealth management sector to improve the productivity of financial advisors.
Within the environmental axis, ATOM H2 was distinguished for a solution that combines solid-state lithium and hydrogen batteries to store surplus renewable energy and replace diesel generators as backup power systems.
In addition to the eight main prizes, the 2026 edition introduced cross-cutting recognitions. The Social Impact Runner-Up went to Polar Nanopharma, while the Disruptive Innovation Runner-Up was awarded to AjaxDNA. The Alumni Trajectory Award was also given to Idoven, a Madrid-based company in the DayOne AlumniXXI community, for its growth and global impact.
A Showcase of Today’s Tech Entrepreneurship
The 19th edition of the EmprendeXXI Awards reflects a clear trend: the most competitive entrepreneurship is no longer limited to creating digital products, but aims to solve complex problems across sectors such as health, energy, tourism, agro-food, construction, finance, and education.
The winning projects show how innovation is steering toward solutions with measurable impact: improving diagnostics and treatments, reducing energy consumption, accelerating the ecological transition, making industry more efficient, or applying artificial intelligence to high-value business processes.
Taken together, the 2026 EmprendeXXI Awards reaffirm their role as a launchpad for technology startups with growth potential, international ambitions, and solutions aligned with the major economic, social, and environmental challenges of the coming years.
