Success in the De-Tech Competition

16/12/2025

Within the framework of the DE-TECH – Deep Tech European Venture Builder Demo Day and Competition 2025, held on December 10 and 11 in Istanbul, the ACOPIA team received one of the four winning awards. Led by Information Processing and Telecommunications Center (IPTC) researcher José Luis Blanco-Murillo, head of the GAPS group, the researcher presented the proposal before a specialized jury made up of 10 international investors.

The ACOPIA team had already won the ActúaUPM 2024 competitions for Best Startup and Best Ideas. On this occasion, it achieved one of the awards for Best Business Pitch. This recognition highlights the team’s ability to transform research results into solutions with real market potential, in line with the technological leadership objectives of the IPTC-UPM center.

UPM Leadership

The DE-TECH consortium is coordinated by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and includes the participation of Estonian Business School, Istanbul Technical University, and Leibniz University Hannover, as well as industrial partners such as Technoport and Effectia, with the collaboration of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The program included 30 hours of specialized training.

UPM teams received two of the four awards in the pitch competition, reinforcing UPM’s role as a leading institution in the creation of a European deep tech entrepreneurship ecosystem, facilitating the transfer of technology from laboratories to society.

Boosting Deep Tech Entrepreneurship

The competition is part of an intensive acceleration program that combines training, mentoring, and financial support for projects based on deep technologies developed within the university environment. The award obtained will help accelerate the next steps of technological maturation and business model validation, opening new opportunities for collaboration with investors and innovation ecosystem stakeholders.

José Luis Blanco Murillo: GS / ORCID / LinkedIn

GAPS Group: https://www.gaps.ssr.upm.es/

For more information:

Deep Tech European Venture Builder Demo Day and Competition 2025

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iptc-upm/

For more information: www.iptc.upm.es