PORTUGAL

Global Companies Find Portugal Offers a ‘Central Place In the World’ for Business Services

If you were a North American company leader and could pick a European business services location that’s literally the closest to home, did you know Portugal would be your first landing spot across the Atlantic?

Even though it’s closest to North America in miles, Portugal is also a direct bridge to the 500 million people across European markets, not to mention the 260 million people in Portuguese-speaking markets in Mozambique, Angola and Brazil. Moreover, the low-risk country’s number of subsea telecommunications cables (14 and counting) ensures its leading role as a digital connectivity gateway.

Why is Portugal the friend-shoring choice for so many growing companies? It’s a question best answered by two leaders in their respective fields.

Beyond Gravity
After a number of posts around the world, Mário Vidal recently returned to Portugal to serve as managing director of Beyond Gravity Portugal, part of Switzerland’s largest aerospace company with 14 locations in seven countries, including two new facilities in Decatur, Alabama, and Linköping, Sweden. Among his responsibilities is overseeing the establishment and ramp-up of the company’s Innovation & Digital Hub in Lisbon, where he earned an economics degree from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Describe where around the world you have worked in the past several years, and what Portugal feels like now compared to when you previously were in the country.

Mário Vidal: Over the past several years, my career has taken me to various international markets — including Spain, the UK and the last 10 years in Switzerland, where Beyond Gravity is headquartered — in global hubs in industrial engineering and aerospace. Each location brought unique opportunities to lead transformation projects, develop strategies and manage cross-functional teams. Returning to Portugal after 20 years now to lead Beyond Gravity’s Innovation & Digital Hub in Lisbon has been both exciting and rewarding. The country I’ve come back to feels more vibrant and dynamic than ever, with a thriving technology ecosystem, a remarkable pool of engineering and digital talent, and an entrepreneurial spirit that is fueling innovation. As a Portuguese [native], it’s inspiring to see how much the local market has evolved, and I’m thrilled to contribute to this momentum as we expand Beyond Gravity’s presence here.

Mário Vidal, Managing Director, Beyond Gravity Portugal

As you experience the everyday environment for doing business in Lisbon, describe how various facets of that environment compare to other places you have worked in recent years.

Mário Vidal: Lisbon offers a unique environment for doing business, combining a dynamic technology ecosystem with access to a highly skilled yet affordable talent pool. Compared to other locations we’ve worked in, Lisbon stands out for its vibrant startup scene and the wealth of young professionals eager to innovate. [Mapping Portugal’s Startup Landscape 2024 report, released in November 2024, found the number of startups in Portugal grew by 16% over the past year, bringing the total to 4,719.] The city was selected as the European Capital of Innovation 2023 for many reasons. Its strong technical university landscape ensures a steady pipeline of talent, while its infrastructure and connectivity provide a solid foundation for growth. Also, a stable geopolitical environment creates stability and a platform for foreign investment. These elements create an optimal environment for fostering innovation and collaboration, making Lisbon a clear choice for Beyond Gravity’s expansion.

In March 2023, Beyond Gravity announced the establishment of a new Innovation & Digital Hub in Lisbon, Portugal, which was officially opened in November 2023. Since then, we have realized various milestones and grown rapidly in Portugal. Beyond Gravity Portugal’s new permanent facilities were inaugurated in early October 2024. Located in the center of Lisbon (Entrecampos), the Innovation & Digital Hub currently houses more than 100 employees. The team is expected to reach 200 people by 2025, thus becoming the largest space engineering and innovation company operating in Portugal and significantly enhancing Beyond Gravity’s operational capacity.

Walk us through the company’s site selection process for the hub in Lisbon.

Mário Vidal: Our site selection process for the Lisbon hub was a collaborative effort by a cross-functional team at Beyond Gravity that evaluated various locations in Southern Europe, including Portugal and Spain. Lisbon quickly stood out as the ideal choice, offering the conditions I described above. Choosing Lisbon supports Beyond Gravity’s expected growth by strengthening our international network, addressing the high demand for talent we currently struggle to find at other locations, and enhancing our competitiveness. Additionally, Lisbon plays a key role in driving digital transformation and enabling seamless cross-site collaboration, which are critical to our long-term success.

What are the specific skills Beyond Gravity seeks?

Mário Vidal: The team we’re creating in Lisbon is contributing to the centers of competence across Space Engineering, Finance, IT, Quality and Supply Chain to drive the digital transformation and business growth of Beyond Gravity globally and supporting Beyond Gravity’s growth on a global scale. Thus, we are looking for collaborators with a degree on these topics.

Projects like Hera, the European Space Agency’s planetary defense mission against asteroid strikes, and others on Beyond Gravity’s client list seem like they would be very attractive for recruiting local and global talent to such exciting, future-focused work. True?

Mário Vidal: Absolutely. Projects like Hera and other high-profile missions on Beyond Gravity’s client list are incredibly compelling for attracting talent, both locally and globally. The fascination of space exploration resonates deeply, inspiring engineers and specialists to contribute to something truly extraordinary. Beyond Gravity’s purpose — to advance humankind — is at the heart of what we do. These missions are not just about technology; they’re about pushing the boundaries of what’s technically feasible and playing a role in shaping the future. This sense of purpose and the opportunity to work on groundbreaking projects are key factors in drawing top talent eager to innovate and make an impact.

Among the Portugal projects Colt Technology Services is involved in is the SINES data center campus, described by developer Start Campus as “one of the largest hyperscale data center ecosystems in Europe, acting as a gateway between Europe, Africa and the Americas.”

Photo courtesy of Start Campus

Colt Technology Services
UK-based telecommunications technology company Colt Technology Services, which annually sponsors a fundraising bike ride from London to Paris, knows how to settle in for a long-term commitment. The company invested the equivalent of more than $120 million in Portugal’s digital infrastructure and data center ecosystem from 2001 to 2023, and the pace of investment is only picking up steam since the company chose to establish the first of three competence centers in the country. Among the projects Colt is involved in is the SINES DC project, a 1.2-GW data center campus being developed by Start Campus in Sines on Portugal’s coast. Carlos Jesus is vice president for Global Service Delivery and country manager at Colt Technology Services.

Have you ever ridden in the Colt bike ride between London and Paris?

Carlos Jesus: Unfortunately not. I prefer to say, I’m waiting for the Colt Bike ride to reach Portugal, so maybe Lisbon – Madrid could be a nice option. I need to start lobbying for this.

Describe the company’s location history and growth in Portugal.

Carlos Jesus: Colt started operations in Lisbon in 2001 as the 29th Colt city, deploying metropolitan fiber network and innovating in the market by providing ethernet connectivity between building and international services via our Long Distance Network. Our first customer signature was in November 2001. Since then, the Colt network expanded to Porto in 2005, connected eight business parks across Portugal, over 800 enterprise buildings, 15 key data centers, and reached 830+ kilometers of metropolitan network fiber in Portugal, and 1,765 kilometers of Long Distance Network connecting Lisbon and Porto to Madrid and Bilbao.

In 2016, Colt created in Portugal the first center of competence — Premium Network Services — with specialized engineers supporting our top customers across the globe. Since then, due to the success underpinned by talent abundance in Portugal, we’ve expanded our operations in Portugal, almost multiplying by three times our people in multiple areas such as operations & engineering, finance, human resources, sales support and more recently software development in our strategic services as an SD-WAN and OnDemand/NaaS platform.

How far as Portugal come in both the digital talent and hard digital infrastructure categories, and what is Colt doing to improve both?

Carlos Jesus: Over the years, Portugal developed significantly the hard infrastructures. On the connectivity side, very early the regulator made it easier to share duct infrastructures and enable massive fiber deployments, which enable strong competition. Portugal has historically a strong position from a subsea space, but it felt like it was “the best kept secret” and only more recently we’ve seen a big boom, with major recent new subsea investments, many of them driven by hyperscalers, which is driving significant data center investments as well. Portugal can be an important digital infrastructure hub in the world!

Other investments are agreed, in terms of airport connectivity expansions as well as international high-speed train, which will boost even further our potential.

On the talent side, we see Portugal as very strong due to very good universities across the country. For example, in the software development areas, there are not only the great technical skills and ease with speaking English, but the cultural soft skills with focus on quality, problem solving and agility — all very strong [attributes], and reason for the growth in this area. I also believe Portugal’s cost of living, weather, security and seashore have been critical factors to attract foreign young talent and Colt Portugal also has been benefiting from this, as we have great native-speaking German, French, Italian and Spanish talent supporting Colt customers from Portugal.

Carlos Jesus, Vice President for Global Service Delivery and Country Manager, Colt Technology Services

Regarding Colt, we are the only true digital infrastructure player which combines the local metropolitan area networks (MANs) with our own fiber, with the global connectivity to the over 230 connected cities with 50+ MANs. We also connect over 1, 100 data centers in the world. In Portugal we continue investing to enhance further and further our digital infrastructure. In 2024, we invested around €1 million in connecting some new data centers as well as building the Tier1 IP PoP for IP transit I mentioned before. In the past, we became the first provider to deploy 800Gbps wave technology in the L-band across a terrestrial network in a partnership with Ciena. This was in the Lisbon – Madrid Long Distance Network segment, because we see Portugal’s potential as a global digital infrastructure hub. With our network, we are enabling high connectivity from Europe into Portugal and going to the several subsea cables. Also we are enabling backhaul capacity from the Portuguese landing stations to the main European hubs. On the people side, within Colt Portugal, our team of software engineers are working hard in enabling Colt award winning services like SD-WAN and OnDemand as our Network as a Service platform.

What else should our global corporate readers know about your team’s experience doing business in Portugal?

Carlos Jesus: We’ve seen very strong government enthusiasm in creating in Portugal a favorable ecosystem for startups and innovation. Despite being a small country, it is not shy and is continuously looking at how to boost this ecosystem. We’ve hosted a Web Summit for many years, in addition to looking to host other worldwide big events, which brings Portugal to a central place in the world.

This Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of AICEP Portugal Global. For more information, please contact Carlos Moura at carlos.moura@portugalglobal.pt.