Augusta Labs raises Seed round at €50M valuation
What's the deal? Augusta Labs, a Lisbon-based applied AI lab, has closed its first funding round at a €50M valuation — just two years after its founding in January 2024. The round is led by international venture capital funds and backed by angel investors including founders of Portugal's biggest unicorns: Virgílio BentoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Sword Health, via EX CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →), Diogo MónicaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Anchorage Digital), Paulo RosadoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (OutSystems), and Nuno SebastiãoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Feedzai).
The company was founded by Rodrigo Fernandes and João Cerejeira, both 23. The pair left promising careers — Fernandes worked directly with Sword Health's chief executive officer, Cerejeira was at McKinsey — to launch the venture from an apartment on Rua Augusta in Lisbon, which gave the startup its name.
Why now? Augusta Labs is growing at more than 6x annually and has scaled to over 40 employees. It builds custom AI solutions to optimise operations, workflows, and decision-making for Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms, and government agencies.
The fresh capital will fund international expansion — with a particular focus on the private equity sector — and domestic hiring.
What could go wrong? A €50M valuation for a two-year-old startup with no publicly disclosed revenue figures carries risk. The applied AI space is fiercely competitive, and selling bespoke solutions to large enterprises means long sales cycles and high client expectations. Scaling a services-heavy AI business without eroding margins is notoriously difficult.
The signal: Augusta Labs is classified as "early growth" on Dealroom, yet it has already assembled a remarkably high-profile cap table of Portuguese angel investors — Diogo Mónica, Paulo Rosado, and Nuno Sebastião — each recycling experience and capital from billion-dollar exits back into Lisbon's ecosystem. That pattern of unicorn founders bankrolling the next generation suggests Portugal's AI scene is approaching the kind of self-sustaining flywheel that has historically separated fleeting startup hubs from durable ones.
Read more: Jornal Económico
