Mr Ion Padilla

CEO & Co-founder

Speaker Profile

Empowering new horizons

In 2016, Ion jumped into the entrepreneurial void and co-founded Wegaw in Lausanne, Switzerland. Initially, this startup offered ways to improve logistical operations through near real-time space data to alpine tourism destinations and ski resorts. The insights that Ion’s team produced worked so well, that in 2021 Wegaw pivoted completely to an entirely different industry – hydropower energy – with the aim to solve a much more pertinent array of sustainability challenges, such as energy security and climate resilience.

At the end of 2021, Wegaw closed its first seed round with substantial backing from numerous remarkable investors and today, this intrepid team of ambitious individuals is successfully collaborating with energy industry stakeholders, including governments and national agencies, research organisations, hydropower leaders and transformation innovators across the world.

Today, Wegaw is a climate-tech startup on a mission to completely transform “how we understand and operate geospatial data for new commercial horizons”, and is currently delivering invaluable solutions that are optimizing renewable energy production and trading capabilities across. Currently, the client portfolio includes energy companies and operators in Andorra, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland and Spain, and is set to demonstrate the invaluable transferability of its geospatial fusion technology for the solar PV industry.

Some of Ion’s most recent public event speaking engagements

Ion’s latest articles

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Background and experience

Having completed his studies in computer engineering and science, artificial intelligence and software development at Mondragon Unibertsitatea in the Basque Country and at The University of Northampton (UK), Ion was selected to work at CERN in Geneva in 2012 where he collaborated in several projects involving the LHC (hadron collider) radio-protection and the Medialab group to help teach people about the origins of the universe through various multimedia interfaces.

Ion then changed course in his professional development and became a very successful strategic consultant at Hewlett Packard’s Innovation Centers team, where he helped C-suite decision makers at organisations such as Swiss, the United Nations, Lufthansa, Syngenta, Louis Vuitton, Nestlé, Swisscom, Carrefour, Pictet and Deloitte, to identify new opportunities and improve their performance through cutting-edge technologies.