The Basque Government’s open innovation platform, BIND, has announced the six startups that will take part in the third edition of the BIND GovTech initiative to develop innovation projects together with seven Basque public entities. After three successful editions, the initiative has already delivered a total of 25 innovation projects since its launch in 2023, with the aim of advancing the digitalisation of public services in the Basque Country.
To participate in this third BIND GovTech call, a total of 93 applications were received from startups around the world, offering solutions based on technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Big Data, software and robotics, to address the five challenges identified by the public entities. These challenges relate to the areas of cybersecurity, user experience, and the centralisation and processing of information and events.
After evaluating the applications and projects submitted, seven public entities selected the six startups with which they will collaborate over the coming year to develop new innovation projects. The public entities involved in these seven projects are Ihobe, the public agency for environmental management; SPRI, the Basque Business Development Agency; Hazi, the foundation for the development of the agri-food and forestry sectors; Bilbao Ekintza, Bilbao’s public agency for employment support and business promotion; Ejie, the IT services company of the Basque Government; Elika, the foundation for improving food safety in the Basque Country; and Eustat, the Basque Statistics Office.
BIND GovTech is one of the three initiatives of BIND, the open innovation platform developed by the Basque Government’s Department of Industry, Energy Transition and Sustainability and the SPRI Group, which connects startups with more than 100 leading companies, SMEs and public entities in the Basque Country. Its objectives are to accelerate startup development within the Basque industrial ecosystem, promote the digital transformation of the region, and position Euskadi’s ecosystem as a hub for advanced entrepreneurship.
The six selected startups will develop innovation projects together with seven public entities, with the aim of improving process efficiency through new technologies. The startups are:
These startups already took part in an acceleration programme in November aimed at acquiring the skills needed to work with the public sector. The seven innovation projects developed will be presented at the BIND Demo Day on 2 July 2026, a public event that brings together more than 400 attendees from the Basque entrepreneurship ecosystem and showcases the latest technological solutions accelerated by the Basque Government’s platform.
BIND GovTech connects Basque public entities with startups to develop open innovation projects and increase the efficiency of their processes. In its third edition, in addition to the open innovation programme, two further participation modalities have been introduced, depending on each entity’s experience in open innovation and level of maturity in collaborating with startups and scaleups.
Alongside the traditional route, which offers public entities technological solutions from startups to address specific challenges they identify, two additional options have been launched. On the one hand, the GovTech PRO route provides greater autonomy to entities that have already participated in previous editions and therefore play an active role in identifying startups, with support from the BIND GovTech team. On the other hand, the GovTech Scale collaboration pathway aims to integrate, consolidate and scale open innovation within Parke and Sprilur, entities with extensive experience in collaborating with and developing projects alongside startups.
This year, a total of nine public entities have taken part in the BIND GovTech initiative, depending on their needs and level of experience in open innovation. Specifically, Bilbao Ekintza, Ejie, Elika, Ihobe and SPRI have participated in the traditional BIND GovTech route, identifying the five challenges of this year’s third call; Hazi and Eustat are part of GovTech PRO; while Parke and Sprilur are participating in the Scale pathway.
After three successful editions, BIND GovTech continues to evolve and grow to respond to the needs of Basque public entities according to their level of experience in open innovation. This approach aims to achieve greater flexibility and efficiency in the development of new technologies in the public sector, enabling not only the management of different working speeds among entities, but also adaptation to varying levels of maturity.
BIND is the public–private open innovation platform for smart industry created by the Department of Industry, Energy Transition and Sustainability through the SPRI Group. BIND comprises three initiatives—BIND Corporate, BIND SME and BIND GovTech—designed to connect companies, SMEs and public entities in the Basque Country with disruptive startups from around the world to develop innovation projects. Since its launch in 2016, more than 250 startups and scaleups have been accelerated and over 350 projects developed, generating more than €9.6 million in revenue. The platform has also positioned itself as a benchmark in the sector for its support of industrial digitalisation and the region’s business fabric.
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