American company Upwork is the 17th unicorn in Lisbon
The first wave of recruitment is starting now and the office will open in the second half of 2026, says the unicorn's CEO. It will start with 100 people.
Upwork is the 17th unicorn to set up in Lisbon. The hub, the American company’s first outside the US, will start in the second half of next year in a space with capacity for 100 people. “We are confident that it is an incredible place to build a team”, said Hayden Brown, CEO and president of Upwork, at a press conference at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
“The first wave of recruitment starts now and the office will open in the second half of 2026. We will probably start with a coworking space where we can begin to bring the team members together”, said Hayden Brown, CEO and president of Upwork, when asked by ECO about the unicorn’s growth plans in the country.
Beyond the initial 100 people and looking beyond 2026, the CEO is not committing to any numbers. “It’s hard to say how we will evolve from here, but there is certainly room for continued investment in a market like Lisbon, where we see real success”, said the president of the company that developed an online platform, a marketplace for services where professionals can offer their services and companies can hire quickly and securely.
“Our focus is on recruiting locally. We really want to have Portuguese people in the office. We want this team to be from Portugal. There will certainly be people who want to come and be part of [this project] from other markets”, she admitted, praising the “incredibly deep talent pool” in the country. “It was a key factor in our decision to open an office here, because we know that there are excellent educational institutions building an incredible pipeline for current and future generations of workers”, she said.
The CEO is confident despite delays in the issuance of work visas. “We are aware that there have been challenges with visas, but we have had a very clear signal from the mayor [Carlos Moedas] and the government that there is a lot of support for companies setting up here”, she said when asked by ECO whether the visa delay could impact growth plans. “The system seems to be improving dramatically every day”, she said, assuring that she is not concerned that “this will be an obstacle”.
“We want to be the innovation capital of the world”
“Today we have the 17th unicorn arriving in Lisbon”, said Carlos Moedas. “This is not about unicorns, but about everything they bring”, stressed the mayor of Lisbon, highlighting the 84 technology companies that have set up in the city and the creation of more than 16,000 jobs since the announcement of the Unicorn Factory project.
The mayor highlighted the distinction awarded to Lisbon in terms of innovation — which resulted in a prize of one million euros, invested in social innovation projects — but now he has another ‘dream’. “We are the European capital of innovation. We want to be the world capital of innovation”, he said.
