Digital Samba Free Shines at Web Summit 2025 in Lisbon

Last week in Lisbon, Web Summit once again turned the Altice Arena and FIL venue into the centre of the tech world and this time, our new product Digital Samba Free was right in the middle of it.

From 10–13 November 2025, Web Summit brought together 71,386 attendees from 157 countries, 2,725 startups from 108 countries, 1,857 investors and 869 speakers, with AI and machine learning dominating the startup landscape. Against that backdrop, our three-person team consisting of Robert Strobl (CEO), Nina Benkotic (Business Development Director) and Dušan Savić (Product Owner), spent an intense few days demoing our flagship B2B product Digital Samba Embedded, a video conferencing API, but also introducing Digital Samba Free, our new privacy-first video calling end-user service built in and for Europe.

Table of contents

1. Web Summit 2025: scale, energy and big themes
2. A one-day stand, a full day of conversations
3. Launch party: Digital Samba Free goes live
4. Web Summit through the lens of Digital Samba Free
5. Looking back – and ahead

Web Summit 2025: scale, energy and big themes

This year’s Web Summit wasn’t just large and well attended; it also felt accelerated. Organisers reported record numbers of investors and a show floor where nearly one-fifth of all exhibiting startups were focused on AI and different use cases of the new technology. Alongside AI, recurring themes included digital sovereignty, the future of media, creator economics and sustainable growth.

Opening Night on Monday evening already captured this mood. Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave reminded the audience just how fast the landscape is shifting and bringing changes with it:

“Ten years ago, it already felt like the world was changing fast, but it’s nothing compared to how fast the world is changing today.”

He added there is the broader shift in global tech power due to the growing dominance of Chinese or Brasilian startups, which are great examples for this multipolar tech world:

“This year, more than any year before, it’s clear that the era of Western tech dominance is fading.”

For a company like Digital Samba, committed to European infrastructure, EU-only hosting and privacy by design, this conversation about new centres of gravity in tech could not have been more relevant.

A one-day stand, a full day of conversations

Digital Samba had a dedicated stand on the first day, making it interesting and intense from the moment the doors opened.

Our stand quickly turned into a small hub for:

• Live demos of Digital Samba Embedded on laptops and mobiles,
  
  
• Ad-hoc conversations with founders, developers, educators and public-sector teams,
  
  
• Deeper discussions about GDPR, EU data-sovereignty and the risks of relying on US-based collaboration tools,
  
  
• And last but not least, the launch of our new end-user product Digital Samba Free.
  
  

Visitors were drawn in by a simple promise: Pre-built, white label, easy to integrate video conferencing API hosted in Europe.

Many attendees told us they were actively looking for alternatives to mainstream meeting tools, either because of compliance pressure (healthcare, education, public administration, financial services) or because they were simply looking for a video meeting option that can be embedded into their website or application.

Nina led countless partner and customer conversations, Dušan walked people through the product’s design choices and roadmap, and Robert anchored the bigger story – why European tech and respect for user privacy and security matter in everyday tools like video calls.

Launch party: Digital Samba Free goes live

The highlight of our Web Summit week was the launch party for Digital Samba Free, streamed live from our stand.

We introduced Digital Samba Free as:

• A free video-calling service for individuals and small teams
  
  
• Built and hosted entirely in Europe
  
  
• Designed to work instantly in the browser – no downloads and no credit cards
  
  
• Run with no tracking, no profiling and no advertising
  

The crowd around the stand was a mix of long-time friends of Digital Samba, new contacts met via the Web Summit app, and people who had simply seen the words “free European alternative to Zoom and Teams” on the stand and decided to stop.

The energy during the launch was exactly what we had hoped for:

• Lots of live questions about encryption, infrastructure and legal frameworks
  
  
• Strong interest from companies, non-profits and small agencies looking for a simple, dignified way to run meetings
  
  
• Immediate first-time users signing up to test video calls from their own devices while still at the stand

For us, the launch confirmed two things:

1. There is real demand for a European, privacy-first alternative in everyday video communication.
2. People instantly understand the value of “no tracking, no surveillance” when they see it in action.

Web Summit through the lens of Digital Samba Free

The broader programme of Web Summit 2025 underlined why products like Digital Samba Free are timely.

On the creator and media side, tennis legend Maria Sharapova spoke about how AI tools are reshaping athlete preparation and recovery, helping to optimise training and performance with real-time data. On the culture side, creator Khaby Lame brought a human counterweight to the AI hype, reminding the audience that authenticity still matters:

“This is the moment to start doing original content because AI is not everything in the world.”

And throughout the event, sessions on sovereign AI, regulation, payments, trusted infrastructure and the future of media all circled the same core questions:

• Who controls the rails our digital lives run on?
  
  
• How do we keep human agency in an AI-driven world?
  
  
• Can Europe set a different standard for privacy, safety and openness within AI regulations and frameworks?

These are the questions we ask ourselves daily and that make our new product, Digital Samba Free, sit directly in that conversation. It is a small but concrete step towards a world where European users don’t have to trade their data for basic tools like video calls.

Looking back – and ahead

Leaving Lisbon, we came home with:

• A long list of new contacts and ongoing conversations from across Europe and beyond,
  
  
• Practical feedback on what end users want from a privacy-first calling tool,
  
  
• A strong sense that the time is right for European alternatives that are not just competitive on features, but principled by design, 
• A confirmation that there is a growing demand for embedded video products that keep valuable users and traffic in one’s own ecosystem, without sending them to external platforms like Zoom or Teams. 

Web Summit’s own numbers tell the story: over 71,000 attendees translated into something more tangible: real conversations, real users trying Digital Samba Free on the spot, and a clear signal that we’re solving a problem people actually feel.

Digital Samba Free is now live and available to everyone at digitalsamba.com – no sign-up, no tracking, just a click to start a meeting. Web Summit 2025 was the perfect place to introduce it to the world.

This was our third Web Summit and our second time in Lisbon – but with the launch of Digital Samba Free, it felt like a new beginning. And judging by the response at our stand, we’re not the only ones who think Europe is ready for something different.