Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon sees sold out event welcome 71,528

Conference saw thousands of early-stage start-ups exhibit

The world's largest tech conference according to TIME, Web Summit, has revealed its sold out event welcomed 71,528 attendees.

Among the more than 70,000 delegates, 3,050 companies exhibited. 44% of companies were women, which is the highest representation to date.

Exhibitors included IBM, Adobe, Meta, Huawei, SAP, DELL, Qualcomm, VISA, American Express, and KPMG, as well as travel and hospitality start-ups.

Number make up saw 1,066 investors attend on top of the 953 speakers that made up the conference programme across sixteen stages.

Event highlights include Pharrell Williams, The GRAMMY award-winning, Academy Award-nominated musician, filmmaker and philanthropist, and Louis Vuitton menswear Creative Director who spoke on stage with Visa CMO Frank Cooper III about commerce and creativity.

Microsoft's president Brad Smith, Bumble's CEO Lidiane Jones, Hugging Face's co-founder and chief science officer Thomas Wolf, and World Wide Web's founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee also took to stage.

The Night Summit saw conversations continue after the conference with gatherings at 100 bars across the city over two nights.