Mena.ai Wins the START RISE AI Challenge

Mena.ai Wins the START RISE AI Challenge

On 29 May 2026, at the AI Innovation Factory in Lisbon, Mena.ai was named the national winner of the START RISE AI Challenge. We were one of nine finalists, picked from selection rounds held in Porto, Faro, and Lisbon, and each team had five minutes on stage to make its case to a jury of technologists, operators, and academics.

We make software for psychologists. Standing on that stage with a first-place plaque between us and the people who run Start Campus and Porto Business School is not where a clinical-notes product usually ends up. We're glad it did.

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What the START RISE AI Challenge is

START RISE is an AI-startup competition run by Start Campus and Porto Business School, in partnership with Microsoft for Startups. Its goal is narrow and useful: find Portuguese AI companies with the potential to scale globally, and give them the infrastructure, capital, and education to actually do it.

The 2026 edition ran selection rounds across the country before bringing nine finalists to Lisbon for the national final. The judging panel mixed technology, business, and academic backgrounds, and each finalist got the same five minutes to present.

"This program confirmed the maturity of the Portuguese AI ecosystem," said Robert Dunn, CEO of Start Campus. Opening the company's Sines data center to the winner, he added, gives these teams "what they need most at this stage: scaling capacity."

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What we pitched

Mena.ai is an all-in-one clinical management platform for psychologists, built around an AI clinical assistant.

The problem we pitched is the one every therapist knows: each hour with a patient drags two to three hours of work behind it — notes, reports, scheduling, invoicing. That work doesn't help anyone get better. It just sits between the clinician and the next session.

Mena collapses it. Scheduling, clinical notes, billing, and clinical decision support live in one place. The AI assistant drafts notes, reads the structure of a session, and pulls together what a patient has tracked between appointments — so the clinician walks in prepared and walks out without a backlog. The AI proposes; the clinician decides. That line matters to us, and it matters under the EU AI Act.

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What winning gives us

The first-place prize is built to remove the things that usually slow an early company down:

• Dedicated space in Start Campus's data center in Sines — compute and infrastructure to scale on.
• Microsoft for Startups benefits, including Azure credits starting at $100,000.
• A place in the Oxbridge AI Challenge in London, in Q4 2026.
• 30% tuition scholarships for each co-founder toward Porto Business School's International MBA or its Master in Innovation Strategy and Entrepreneurship.

"This isn't a symbolic offer," said José Esteves, Dean of Porto Business School, of the scholarship package. "It's recognition that turning quality AI solutions into sustainable businesses requires education in management, strategy, and execution."

For a company whose entire job is handling sensitive clinical data securely and at scale, infrastructure and compute aren't a nice-to-have. They're the constraint. This prize loosens it.

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The companies we shared the stage with

The final was strong, and the other finalists weren't solving small problems:

• SNAP (2nd place) — remote field-service assistance for wind-turbine maintenance and inspection, which also took €10,000 from Schneider Electric.
• ResiliSite AI (3rd place) — climate and geographic risk assessment for critical infrastructure.
• SpectrAll (honorable mention) — regulatory-compliance automation for operators of EU critical infrastructure.

Also in the final: DUA IA, Invisible CFO, Witflow, Kureus, and Aleph Strategy. Energy, finance, compliance, infrastructure — and mental health. It's a good sign that the country's AI bets aren't all pointed at the same three markets.

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What this changes for the psychologists who use Mena

A prize is a moment; the point is what it lets us build. "Scaling capacity" is exactly the phrase — more compute and infrastructure means we can bring clinical intelligence to more clinicians without cutting corners on security, and ship the parts of the product still on the roadmap faster.

If you're a psychologist who would rather spend the hour after a session with your next patient than with paperwork, that's the whole point of Mena. The recognition is nice. Giving you that hour back is the work.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the START RISE AI Challenge?

It's an AI-startup competition run by Start Campus and Porto Business School, in partnership with Microsoft for Startups, to identify Portuguese AI companies that can scale globally. The 2026 national final was held in Lisbon on 29 May with nine finalists.

What does Mena.ai do?

Mena.ai is an all-in-one clinical management platform for psychologists. It brings scheduling, clinical notes, billing, and an AI clinical assistant into a single platform, cutting the administrative work that surrounds every session.

What did Mena.ai win?

Dedicated space in Start Campus's Sines data center, Microsoft for Startups benefits including Azure credits starting at $100,000, a place in the Oxbridge AI Challenge in London in Q4 2026, and Porto Business School scholarships for both co-founders.

Who organized the competition?

Start Campus and Porto Business School organized START RISE, in partnership with Microsoft for Startups, with the final hosted at the AI Innovation Factory in Lisbon.

Where can I try Mena.ai?

At mena-ai.pt, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required.

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For more on what we're building at the intersection of mental health and AI, follow us on LinkedIn.