Skip to content
NCBNational Capability Benchmark
Navigate with ↑ ↓Enter to openEsc to close

Challenge the benchmark

Choose a score and give the benchmark a specific reason to reconsider it.

When you submit, the form attaches the current score and confidence for the country and capability you chose.

Submissions are public and start as awaiting review. A maintainer can add a response and signature after review.

All deliveries

Portugal, experimentation

Portugal Ventures, a public venture-capital bridge

Portugal Ventures, the public venture-capital company in the Banco Português de Fomento group, reports €233.2 million invested in 256 new companies since 2012 and €283 million under management.

Portugalsince 2012still operatingbears on Venture deals

233,200,000 EUR invested, invested since launch, 2026-08-31. 256 companies, new companies backed since launch, 2026-08-31. Portugal Ventures, institutional performance figures, retrieved 2026-08-31.

The move, and what it needed

A state-backed investor supplies pre-seed, seed and Series A capital, often alongside private investors, using staged minority investments and portfolio support to bridge companies that are too early for ordinary bank finance.

Preconditions

  • A pipeline of founders and research-derived firms large enough to fill investment rounds
  • Investment professionals with authority to make commercial decisions inside a public mandate
  • Follow-on private capital and exit markets so public money can recycle rather than become permanent subsidy

Where else it has been used: Public venture capital travels when it crowds in follow-on investors and accepts portfolio risk transparently; a state fund that only replaces missing private money can preserve firms without building a market.

Limits: These are company-reported cumulative portfolio figures, not venture-capital investment as a share of GDP, additionality, exits, survival, jobs or a counterfactual. The homepage does not give a full reference-year methodology, and the totals can include private co-investment effects as well as Portugal Ventures' own capital.

This record describes what Portugal delivered. It is linked to Venture deals because no comparable dataset measures that capability. It does not affect the score or confidence.

More from Portugal

18 other deliveries from this country.

  • Chave Móvel Digital and Portugal's digital identity layer

    Portugal's digital-government platform reported 4.4 million active Chave Móvel Digital credentials and 141 million authentications by 23 October 2025, with 490 entities using Autenticação.gov.

  • Portugal's CoLAB applied-research network

    Portugal's Agência Nacional de Inovação reported 41 recognized Collaborative Laboratories (CoLABs), and its 2024 innovation report recorded 639 highly qualified staff contracted by CoLABs, 32 percent of them PhDs.

  • Programa Qualifica and Portugal's adult-learning network

    Portugal's ANQEP reported 1,025,569 cumulative Qualifica registrations by December 2023; 90 percent received a training or recognition, validation and certification referral, and 510,113 registrants obtained some certification.

  • Novas Oportunidades, and the qualification-policy interruption

    ANQEP's national review records 1,568,490 adult enrolments in Novas Oportunidades between 2006 and July 2011; after the initiative's peak and a period of disinvestment, Portugal launched Qualifica in 2017 and rebuilt a network of more than 300 Centros Qualifica.

  • Orçamento Participativo Portugal

    Portugal's first national participatory-budget cycle drew almost 80,000 votes and committed €3.18 million to winning projects, which were written into the 2018 state budget.

  • Empresa na Hora and the one-stop company registry

    Portugal's IRN reports 369,447 societies created through Empresa na Hora over its first 20 years; the service is available at more than 200 posts and averages 41 minutes from formation to registration.

  • Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência delivery governance

    Portugal's PRR barometer recorded €21.9 billion across 121 investments and 43 reforms, with €14.43 billion paid to beneficiaries by 27 August 2026.

  • Sistema de Gestão Integrada de Fogos Rurais

    Portugal's integrated rural-fire system reported 85 of 97 national-action projects in progress and 48 percent cumulative execution in 2024; €638 million was spent that year, with 55 percent on prevention, even as 137,651 hectares burned.

  • Simplex and LabX, a standing simplification-and-experimentation loop

    AMA's 2022 activity report records 48 Simplex administrative-simplification measures, 24 PRR and modernisation milestones executed, and 62 innovation, participation and simplification activities across the agency's portfolio.

  • Programa Nacional de Vacinação and seasonal immunisation

    Portugal's DGS reported 86 percent immunisation of eligible infants in the first RSV campaign, 98–99 percent first-year coverage for the universal childhood schedule, and nearly four million seasonal vaccines administered in 2024–2025.

  • STAYAWAY COVID, a contact-tracing app suspended after the emergency

    Portugal launched the voluntary STAYAWAY COVID exposure-notification app on 1 September 2020; the European Commission's case study records more than 3.2 million downloads and says the app was later suspended.

  • e.escola, a national laptop-and-broadband push

    The European Commission's eSchool case study records more than 1.3 million people requesting laptops and broadband through Portugal's e.escola programme and more than one million laptops delivered in its first two years; the Portuguese government suspended the programme in 2011.

  • PLANAPP and REPLAN, a centre-of-government foresight network

    Portugal's PLANAPP operates as a Centre of Government body for evidence-based foresight, planning, monitoring, evaluation and impact analysis; its REPLAN network lists five multisectoral team remits and held its inaugural meeting on 23 November 2022.

  • Agendas Mobilizadoras and green innovation alliances

    Portugal's PRR transparency portal reports 52 Agendas Mobilizadoras and Verdes representing €5,278,338,665.70 of approved investment and €3,051,632,468.10 of approved support as of 17 August 2026.

  • Civil-court clearance and the CEPEJ monitoring series

    The CEPEJ Portugal country fiche records a 96.1% clearance rate for civil and commercial litigious cases at first instance in 2023, alongside 101.1% at second instance and 105.5% at the Supreme Court; first-instance disposition time was 267 days.

  • Lisbon–Madrid high-speed rail concession, formally abandoned

    Portugal's 2011 Council of Ministers formally abandoned the previous Lisbon–Madrid high-speed rail project, replacing its passenger priority with a freight connection through Sines, Lisbon, Setúbal, Poceirão and Madrid.

  • Rede Nacional de Test Beds for company experimentation

    ANI's National Innovation Report records 47 recognised Portuguese test beds and €150 million allocated to the national network for developing and testing new products and services at technology-readiness levels 5 to 9.

  • Zonas Livres Tecnológicas, regulator-supervised experimentation zones

    ANI's National Innovation Report records four Portuguese Zonas Livres Tecnológicas (technological free zones) by the end of 2024, where innovators can test technology-based processes in real or near-real environments under continuous regulator supervision.

Every delivery from Portugal

The same indicator elsewhere

2 deliveries linked to Venture deals in other countries.

  • Yozma, the venture capital catalyst

    Israel put 100 million dollars of public money into ten hybrid venture funds from 1993, with foreign partners and a buy-out option, and by 2002 the country had 131 venture funds with around 10 billion dollars under management.

  • British Patient Capital, a public venture-capital catalyst

    The British Business Bank reported that government-owned British Patient Capital had committed £2.287 billion through 80 fund commitments, 10 co-investments and 18 Future Fund deals by 31 March 2024, with an underlying portfolio of 1,350 companies.

Every delivery under experimentation