With the Euskadi Avanza awards, EL CORREO, Banco Sabadell and the Basque Government recognise the decisive contribution of entrepreneurs to the Basque Country. In this eighth edition, the winners are IMQ, one of our leading companies; Emiliano López Atxurra, a passionate about the industry with a European vocation; AJL Ophtlamic, a business initiative born from expert ophthalmologists; and Multiverse Computing, a novel project exploring the potential of quantum technology.
SME of the Year Award AJL Ophthalmic
Healthcare innovation in the 'eyes' of the experts
Sergio Llamas
Innovation, firm development with feet firmly on the ground and a clear understanding of the needs of users. These are the three concepts that mark the evolution of AJL Ophthalmic, the business initiative that a group of ophthalmologists created in 1992 as a distributor of lenses, and which was immediately launched into its own production from Álava that reaches the entire globe.
Although increasingly in the background, the company maintains its distribution role in Spain; a consolidated way to continue financing their developments and promoting research. Its objective is to solve the problems that experts have been detecting in almost all areas of vision, from valves to combat glaucoma to interventions on the optic nerve to restore vision to fire victims, or even membranes that help heal the wounds that dogs can suffer in their corneas.
"Our goal for the future is to continue opening up to markets. We already have 85 distributors around the world that allow us to get from Mexico to Afghanistan," says AJL's CEO, Pedro J. Salazar. He was given the task of developing this company that in its 33 years has made several giant leaps. Even so, Salazar defends that they have advanced with an intentional "slowness" that has helped them to maintain their stability at all times. "We have not been excessively expansionist. Others might have grown faster, but here we have climbed each step well consolidated," he reflects.
Its focus on research has also allowed AJL to explore different markets to maintain a constant evolution in a healthcare field very marked by high costs and the number of controls and certifications necessary to be able to develop its advances. Meanwhile, its trajectory has not stopped, setting new milestones such as the incorporation in 2007 of a business line focused on anaesthesia and the air tract, to the acquisition in 2013 of the US company Addition Technology Incorporation (ATI) to market intracorneal rings.
Also noteworthy is the inauguration almost 15 years ago of its 3,000 square metre facilities in Álava with specific areas for R+D+i. "In this market we all know each other, from the large multinationals to the smallest companies, and in the sector they already know that we can develop many ideas with American doctors, European and anywhere in the world. They know us and come to us," Salazar summarises.
The obsession with industry, even if it goes against the tide
Manu Álvarez
If one day someone calls for a demonstration in favor of the industry, it is more than likely that he will be in the head and holding the banner. Now that everyone is talking about the 'Draghi report' and the need to invest in Europe to narrow the technological and industrial gap that has opened up on the continent, it seems easy. Doing so for decades, even when some voices were committed to influencing and putting the weight on the service sector, has more merit. Emiliano López Atxurra, the current president of Petronor, the company that is the main contributor to the public coffers in the Basque Country, shares his passion for industry with a European vocation. These are the two axes that have traced his training and also his professional dedication in recent decades.
A graduate in Law from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he completed a master's degree in international studies at the prestigious Institute of Political Studies in Paris, participated in the creation of some consulting companies and landed fully in the energy sector as a member of the board of directors of the company Gas Natural. In 2015 he assumed the presidency of the Basque company Petronor to replace the current CEO of the Repsol group, Josu Jon Imaz, and from that responsibility he has led not only some of the most important industrial investments of the moment in the Basque Country, but also the transformation process of a sector, the energy sector, which is bound to be a protagonist of decarbonisation.
Convinced that we must move firmly towards the decarbonisation of mobility and also of industrial activities, López Atxurra has also been critical of a transition process that, due to excessive ambition and accelerated speed, could be lethal for European industry. In this context, he has always called for public officials to commit to technological neutrality. That is, by establishing a point of arrival without prefixing which path to take when there are several alternatives. Hence, the bets of the Basque company he presides over have now focused on looking for sustainable alternatives to oil, such as hydrogen and synthetic fuels, a commitment that could lead to the investment of hundreds of millions of euros in the next decade.
His sensitivity to innovation and technological development also led him to preside over the technology corporation Tecnalia between 2016 and 2020 and since 2021 he has been a member of the board of directors of the Repsol group.
Company of the Year Award IMQ
A social initiative that became something unique
M. Álvarez
That idea that he is one of the three indestructible pillars on which Biscayan society is based, along with Athletic and the Virgen de Begoña, is not something gratuitous or far from reality. IMQ, the Igualatorio Médico Quirúrgico, may seem to be the main exponent of private and elite medicine in our society but, in reality, the reasons that forged its birth were different, just the opposite of that stereotype: to guarantee quality health care to humble families, at a time when public health had not yet been structured, when private assistance was really expensive and many citizens were not covered by the sectoral mutual societies that had been created until then. Even in order to have access to the services of what we know today as IMQ, the maximum monthly salary that its associates could receive was limited, so that it was precisely the workers who were the main beneficiaries of health care.
The term 'Igualatorio', the vocation of 'equalising' the medical care to which all citizens could access, was precisely the basis of the philosophy that inspired the initiative of two local doctors, Vicente San Sebastián and Enrique Ocharan. Not only was it the first private healthcare organisation in Spain, but they were eight years ahead of the creation of the national health system. The evolution of both systems, the private and the public, has led them to coexist in our society as two complementary formulas to pursue the improvement of health and life expectancy in this society.
Today, almost 91 years after its foundation, IMQ is a more complex and sophisticated group than its founders could envision, a true holding company that includes an insurance company with several branches of action and companies dedicated to the management of clinics, homes for the elderly, surveillance services and advice on occupational health. Despite this, it maintains the vocation of preserving differential elements with other similar companies with which it competes in the market, such as the management of its own clinics and, above all, the maintenance of family doctor care that act as the true capillary network of the organization.
Since October 2023, the group has SegurCaixa-Adeslas as its majority shareholder, has 2,700 direct employees and around 390,000 customers in its insurance company.
Nobel Prize Multiverse Computing
Creating a language for the industry of the future
S. Llamas
The spirit of the Gipuzkoa-based company Multiverse Computing seems to inhabit a theoretical world, but its evolution is already based on a physical plane in which it has established itself as the largest quantum software company in the European Union.
Its co-founder and CEO, Enrique Lizaso, explains that his team develops "quantum computing solutions applied to real industry problems in sectors such as finance, manufacturing, energy, defence, chemicals, aerospace...". The company manages to apply quantum algorithms through tools that also allow them to work on current computers, so they will not only make it possible to take advantage of the power of the chips of the future, but they already serve to "optimize processes using quantum principles in conventional systems".
Thus, its CompactifAI software is capable of compressing artificial intelligence models such as GPT, Llama or Mistral. "Through this compression we managed to reduce the size of these models by 95%, thus achieving a drastic reduction in energy consumption and making these AI models much more affordable," he summarises.
The project was born in 2019 thanks to the vision of an interdisciplinary group – initially focused on the financial sector – that saw the potential of transferring quantum theory to current computing. They highlight the favourable environment that welcomes the company, thanks to "solid institutional support" in which BIC Gipuzkoa has played a decisive role, and an advanced scientific and technological ecosystem.
"Since our creation in 2019 we have experienced exponential growth, going from a small team to more than 150 employees of up to 35 nationalities," they detail. Strategic hiring and the attraction of researchers has allowed them to bring together "talent" capable of developing cutting-edge solutions that optimise the solution to specific problems in the industry "such as the improvement of supply chains and industrial processes or advanced simulation in chemistry, materials or energy".
To put the numbers to spare, the company has 72 patent applications for its quantum algorithms and artificial intelligence to be applied in sectors such as finance or manufacturing. These licenses reinforce their position as technology leaders "and ensure the exclusivity" of their solutions. "AI and quantum computing are already redefining the present of companies," says Lizaso.