Vasco Pedro, co-founder and former CEO of Unbabel, has launched a new startup called Spinnable, a platform that allows small businesses to “recruit” artificial intelligence (AI) agents to work alongside human workers.
The company starts with 15 workers, of which 10 are AI agents, and has raised €2 million in a pre-seed round led by Heartcore, Florent Venture Partners, and AlphaGraph, according to an exclusive ECO report.
The goal, Pedro said, is to help small and medium-sized businesses access AI resources usually available only to large corporations.
“Large companies at the moment already have a lot of resources allocated to artificial intelligence, but those who are lagging behind are small companies,” he told ECO, adding that Spinnable aims to help small businesses scale without being limited by the number of people they can hire.
Spinnable’s founding team includes Gil Coelho, former director of product at Unbabel, and Fábio Kepler, former director of AI research at Unbabel, as co-founders, along with Sebastião Assunção and Mathieu Giquel as founding engineers.
Pedro said the platform aims to make human-AI collaboration more natural, allowing users to interact with AI agents conversationally rather than through complex interfaces.
According to him, Spinnable is currently operating with a waiting list of users and plans to “be on the market comprehensively in a year.” The company plans to stay small and focus on profitability.
“Our goal is to keep the team small and continue on our path. The goal is profitability,” the company’s CEO said. “That is making a product that actually brings value and that people are willing to pay for.”
Pedro also noted that Spinnable uses its own tools internally and that the platform is designed so even non-technical users can interact with AI agents in a natural, conversational way.
“The less technical, the more people appreciate it,” he said, adding that users don’t need to understand complex tools or workflows and only need to express what they want in plain language, as if they were talking to another person.
Pedro acknowledged the challenges AI poses for the job market but argued that it can also bring benefits if managed responsibly.
“There is a huge investment in artificial intelligence that, at the moment, genuinely, has a positive potential and a negative potential, and there has to be political leadership to understand how we, in society, are going to absorb and use this in the best possible way.”
In his opinion, the transition period is critical. “It’s easy to create a utopian image of 10 years from now, we’ll all be fine. The problem is the transition.”
Spinnable is based in Lisbon, where Pedro and his team work in person. “The advantage of having a small team is being able to physically work with other people. I have nothing against remote – obviously there are very successful companies – but my culture, what I like, is to work physically with other people.”
Pedro said he believes Portugal has the potential to become a hub for artificial intelligence, noting that if the country can build a nucleus of strong companies doing meaningful work, it can attract and retain talent. According to him, the potential exists but its realization is not guaranteed.
The launch of Spinnable comes just months after Unbabel, the language technology company Pedro co-founded in Portugal in 2013, was acquired by U.S. translation giant TransPerfect for an undisclosed amount.
Most of Unbabel’s team joined TransPerfect, and Pedro has been supporting the transition while beginning work on his new venture.
“Concluding my involvement in this acquisition, in this project, I will undoubtedly start another company. I’m a builder at heart,” he said earlier this year.
With Spinnable, Pedro says he aims to continue exploring how humans and AI can work together in more human-like ways – allowing even the smallest businesses to scale efficiently and become more competitive.
Covered image: Spinnable co-founder and CEO Vasco Pedro (Photo courtesy of Vasco Pedro/LinkedIn)
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