South Summit Madrid 2026, from 3 to 5 June at La Nave
AI Goes From Tool To Infrastructure: South Summit Analyzes Its Impact On Health, Education, Mobility And Robotics
· The second day of South Summit Madrid 2026 brought together international leaders in innovation to analyse how the convergence between Artificial Intelligence, robotics, mobility, health, education and digital infrastructures is transforming key sectors for the future of Europe.
· Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, co-founder and CEO of Alan, stressed that "thanks to AI, medicine is no longer reactive, it does not wait for a problem. Today we can anticipate, identify risks before they get worse and accompany people."
· Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, will preside over the closing ceremony tomorrow where the winning startups of the Startup Competition will be announced.
· #SouthSummit26 has the institutional support of the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, the Community of Madrid and the Madrid City Council, as well as Mutua Madrileña, Google for Startups, BBVA Spark, Wayra – Telefónica Innovation and BStartup of Banco Sabadell.
· Download all the information and photos of South Summit here.
Madrid, June 4, 2026 – South Summit Madrid 2026, co-organized by IE University, today brought together some of the leading international leaders in Artificial Intelligence, robotics, mobility, health, education and digital infrastructures to analyze how technological convergence is transforming strategic sectors and redefining the future of Europe.
Health was the first sector discussed during this second day, with the keynote 'From Chatbots to "Agentic" Health', focused on the impact of Artificial Intelligence in the field of health and the evolution from conversational assistants to models capable of acting autonomously. Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, co-founder and CEO of Alan, as well as co-founder and member of the board of directors of Mistral AI, has pointed out that "for decades, healthcare has been fundamentally reactive: we acted when the problem appeared. Thanks to AI, today we can anticipate, identify risks before they worsen and accompany people in a much more proactive and personalized way."
The transformation of mobility has also been high on today's agenda with the session 'Reinventing Mobility: From Vehicles to Ecosystems' It was attended by Enrique Gavilanes, Director of Strategy and Corporate Development at Mutua Madrileña, Raúl Marín, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Cabify, and Manuel Pérez Casado, Sales Director of Changan Spain. During the talk, topics such as the advance of the autonomous car, technological disruption, regulatory challenges, fleet management and the new service models available to users were addressed. "In a context in which mobility is evolving from the traditional ownership model to an ecosystem of interconnected services, the Mutua Group becomes a benchmark, supporting innovation and collaborating with the actors that are redefining the sector," said Gavilanes. The three have also agreed that autonomous driving will arrive in Spain, although at a slower pace than in China due to excessive regulation.
Artificial Intelligence applied to education has been the protagonist in 'Future of Learning: AI-Enabled & Deeply Human', a conversation on how technology can personalise learning without losing the human dimension of teaching. Joleen Liang, co-founder and International CEO of Squirrel AI, and Juan José Güemes, vice president of IE University, analyzed the role of AI in the evolution of educational models and in the training of the talent of the future. "Teachers must evolve into a role more similar to that of mentors, supervisors, psychologists and coaches, providing what AI cannot replace," Liang said. Güemes, for his part, stressed that "for decades, the challenge of entrepreneurship was not in the idea, but in the execution: it took capital, technical talent and time to turn an intuition into a product. Artificial Intelligence is closing that gap between idea and execution at an unprecedented speed. And when execution ceases to be the bottleneck, the competitive advantage – and the heart of what we must teach – shifts to the criterion: knowing which problem deserves to be solved and having the ambition to solve it".
Robotics and its role as a new technological infrastructure were the focus of the session 'The Body of Intelligence: Robotics as Infrastructure', in which Mar Masulli, co-founder and CEO of BitMetrics; Ignacio Azorín, general director of Digital Strategy of the Community of Madrid, and Talia Rafaeli, managing partner of Kompas VC. All three have agreed that there is a lot of potential, but there are still technical, regulatory, and economic hurdles before mass adoption is a reality. "The important thing is not the humanoids; The important thing is the software behind it. Media attention is focused on the physical aspect of robots, when the real advance is in the intelligence that controls them," Masulli said.
The day concluded with 'The AI-Native Infrastructure: Building the Next Digital Stack', a conversation between Christian Bach, founder and investor in Netlify, PTL and TalentStar; Milos Colic, partner of XOOPLE, and Martin Sajon, co-founder and CEO of /q99. The three have analysed how new technological architectures are redefining software development, computing and digital services. "We're moving from static digital experiences to conversational experiences. All of this will eventually merge into a kind of personal agent that will act as an intermediary between us and the digital world," Bach said. Colic, for his part, said that "we need to design policies designed for agents, not against agents. If the goal is to empower these systems rather than control them, we will be able to extract much more value."
Closing and announcement of the winners of #SouthSummit26
The meeting will end tomorrow with the presence of the Minister of Economy, Finance and Employment of the Community of Madrid, Rocío Albert, who will be in charge of closing the fifteenth edition.
Before her speech, Anna Hartvigsen, co-founder of Female Invest, will address the cultural change that investing is experiencing: from a field perceived for years as complex and restricted to becoming an increasingly daily, accessible and present tool in personal decision-making.
During the closing, María Benjumea, president and founder of South Summit, will reveal the name of the winning startup of the Startup Competition and the award-winning projects in the categories of startup 'Most Disruptive', 'Most Sustainable', 'Most Scalable' and startup with the 'Best Team'.
#SouthSummit26 has the institutional support of the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, the Community of Madrid and the Madrid City Council, as well as Mutua Madrileña, Google for Startups, BBVA Spark, Wayra – Telefónica Innovation and BStartup of Banco Sabadell.
For South Summit Madrid 2026 press accreditations
If you want to attend South Summit Madrid 2026 as an accredited media, send us your name, surname, medium, e-mail, telephone, date of birth, DNI/Passport number and country of origin to: pablo.gomez@trescom.es ; ignacio.crespo@trescom.es
About South Summit
South Summit is the global platform that brings together all the actors in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem to promote the development of business opportunities among all of them. Its main meeting is South Summit Madrid, co-organized by IE University, which will hold its next edition between June 3 and 5 at La Nave. Throughout its fourteen previous editions, South Summit has brought together more than 42,500 startups, while the Startup Competition has resulted in more than 1,500 finalist startups, with a survival rate of 85% and more than 20,500 million dollars in investment raised.
After passing through Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina, South Summit held its fifth edition in Brazil, also co-organized by IE University, in March 2026. This latest edition brought together more than 24,000 attendees from 70 countries, as well as more than 800 global leaders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, 7,000 corporations, 3,000 startups and more than 1,000 investors with an investment portfolio of 250,000 million euros.
For more information: https://www.southsummit.io/e/madrid/
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