This year’s event features more than 70,000 participants from 164 countries, over 10,000 startups, and nearly 2,000 investors. Companies such as Intel, Google, Meta, Apple, and Atlassian are also present, while smaller companies showcase solutions in areas such as artificial intelligence, healthcare, education, and financial services.
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Among the main topics on the agenda is the advancement of artificial intelligence and its effects on different sectors. On the panels, executives and experts discuss everything from task automation to the arrival of autonomous agents and virtual actors.
Despite the different perspectives, one concern is shared: how can we harness technology without losing skills and knowledge that depend on human experience?
AI delivers results; human knowledge remains important
During the panel on the future of work, experts discussed how artificial intelligence can change the way people carry out their professional activities.
One of the points raised was the difference between being able to deliver a piece of work with quality and actually mastering the knowledge necessary to produce it.
The discussion considers two professionals with five years of experience: while one uses AI tools to generate work and accepts the results, the other devotes time to questioning premises, seeking alternatives, and solving problems independently.
Even with the same amount of professional experience, the two may exhibit quite different levels of technical knowledge.
The concern is that learning will no longer happen naturally during the execution of tasks. Therefore, companies will need to develop strategies to ensure that employees continue to acquire experience and critical thinking skills, even with the automation of some activities.
Atlassian bets on AI agents and new workflows
Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO and co-founder of Atlassian, spoke about the transformations in the corporate environment.The Australian company is known for developing collaboration and project management platforms, such as Jira, Confluence and Trello, used by teams across different sectors.
For the executive, artificial intelligence should be incorporated into work tools, rather than represent a separate category of products.
“We sell technology platforms. We sell products that help companies with their workflows. AI is a new ingredient in the tech landscape,” he said.
Cannon-Brookes believes autonomous agents will change the way people interact with software. Instead of asking questions and receiving answers, professionals will be able to delegate entire activities to systems, which will carry out different steps to achieve an objective:
You will need to think much more about the final outcome you want to achieve than about the mechanical task you are performing.
Evaluating the results and knowing how to identify possible errors will be as important as using the tools.The executive also championed changes to app interfaces to integrate agents into teams in a more natural way.
Tilly Norwood represents the challenges of AI in entertainment
Artificial intelligence has also entered the debate about the future of creative professions. One of the most talked-about examples at the event was Tilly Norwood, a virtual actress created by production company Particle6, led by actress and entrepreneur Eline Van der Velden.
The character was developed to demonstrate the potential of generative tools in audiovisual production, sparking negative reactions among Hollywood professionals, who fear losing out to artificial actors. Actress Emily Blunt, for example, has even publicly expressed concern about this type of technology.
During her participation in the Web Summit, Van der Velden recounted that she, too, had feared losing her own job when she began following the advances in AI in 2022. It was precisely this insecurity that motivated her to experiment with the tools and create Tilly:
She is a work of art. I think this reflects our own fears back to us, about what we fear will happen.
The creator argues that learning about the technology helps professionals understand how to use it in their own work.For her, the human experience remains essential in guiding the creative process.
Robots show the limits of artificial intelligence in the physical world
As generative models advance in the digital environment, the application of AI in machines that interact with the real world still faces obstacles. The assessment comes from Ahti Heinla, co-founder of Starship Technologies, a company specializing in autonomous delivery robots.
The executive believes that humanoid robots will take longer to become popular than some parts of the market expect. This is because machines operating in physical environments have to deal with unforeseen events that are difficult to anticipate.
When you build a fully digital product, you can predict more comprehensively the variables that may arise. But in the physical world, many more things can go wrong.
To illustrate the challenge, he cited Starship itself, which has already made 11 million deliveries and 200 million street crossings with its robots.According to the executive, this volume of operations shows the time and effort needed to teach machines to handle everyday situations.
The Web Summit Lisboa 2026 continues through Thursday (12), with debates on artificial intelligence, work, business, and entertainment.
The program also devotes space to robotics. As a result, humanoid robots steal the show at Web Summit Lisboa 2026.
