The Madrid City Council announced, a few days ago, the eight winners of DesafIA Madrid, the open-innovation program that seeks to identify technological solutions capable of addressing real challenges posed by companies and various municipal services. MyStreetBook, Brisa, Annorak Intelligence Group, Komorebi, Wise Build, Baobab AI, MuniDigital and Nommon have been selected to develop the new pilots.
In total, this second edition has received 184 applications, of which 40 startups and small technology companies were shortlisted, five per challenge, that presented their solutions to the program promoters and experts in innovation and artificial intelligence, before the final selection.
The Madrid City Council’s Councillor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ángel Niño, stated that, “with the selection of these eight projects, DesafIA Madrid advances its objective of turning the capital into a reference space for testing artificial intelligence solutions applied to concrete challenges.”
“Through this program, we strengthen collaboration between government, companies and startups, with a model aimed at generating public, economic and social value through the use of technology,” he added.
The Winning Startups and the Selected Challenges
They are as follows:
- Cabify will tackle the challenge of improving intelligent urban trip planning, alongside MyStreetBook, to facilitate more efficient and sustainable mobility with new solutions. This is a solution that uses artificial intelligence to create and recommend real-time, personalized itineraries based on each user’s profile and needs. The tool shifts from a generic time estimate to an experience more aligned with the traveler’s actual behavior, taking into account variables such as schedules, fares, transportation, accessibility, preferences, and the probability of a successful connection.
- Grupo EULEN will address the challenge of predicting occupancy and capacity in public spaces, alongside Brisa. This is a solution based on the company’s own foundational time-series model, capable of harmonizing dispersed or incomplete data and predicting its evolution to help decide where and how to act in areas such as energy, maintenance, cleaning, or security. The system learns how each space behaves depending on factors like the hour, weather, holidays, events, or recent history, in order to anticipate future occupancy.
- IBM will address the challenge of transforming citizen demand signals into operational decisions, alongside Annorak Intelligence Group. This is an agentic AI MVP that converts information from multiple channels, such as the 010 service, the Línea Madrid app, the web portal, the registration offices, or internal systems, into traceable and prioritized decisions. The pilot will be applied to road and sidewalk maintenance, with human oversight throughout the process.
- L’Oréal Groupe will address the challenge of improving the performance of a production line, alongside Komorebi. This is a hybrid system that combines machine learning and flow analysis to anticipate stoppages on the production line. The solution enables sending prescriptive alerts to the operator 10 minutes before stoppages occur and to act on 20% of stoppages without a root cause being identified.
- The Housing Policy Area will tackle the challenge of identifying and mapping free spaces between buildings in Madrid, alongside Wise Build. This is an AI copilot that converts registry notes into vector-cartoGRAPHY of the inter-building space. The solution extracts information from properties, reconstructs relationships between subdivisions and boundaries, generates geometries and cross-checks them with historical orthophotos, cadastre and prior municipal cartography—producing a GIS product that technicians can review and edit via a web application.
- The SAMUR-Protection Civil Directorate will address the challenge of optimizing the daily organization of its teams, alongside Baobab. This is an AI Decision Engine that generates operationally and mathematically optimal shift plans. The tool assigns teams to priority bases and allows re-planning when operating conditions change, with criteria linked to work days, rest periods, professional profiles, fairness and the composition of the emergency response units.
- The Villaverde District will tackle the challenge of managing and monitoring public-space occupancy, alongside MuniDigital. This is InspectIA, a solution that automates the supervision of public space with artificial intelligence. The tool captures evidence with legal validity, detects potential regulatory breaches and generates technically assisted reports to facilitate the work of inspectors.
- The General Subdirectorate of Infrastructure and Sports Facilities will address the challenge of improving the feasibility analysis of new sports facilities, alongside Nommon. This is InSite, an AI and big-data solution to analyze the catchment areas of sports centers and recommend new locations based on feasibility and social benefit. The tool combines mobility data with points of interest to support more informed planning.
This new edition of DesafIA Madrid consolidates the program’s open-innovation model, which allows large companies and the municipal administration to test technological solutions in concrete scenarios, with real needs and the potential to impact the city.
