Five-time Grand Slam singles champion Maria Sharapova wasn’t upstaged many times in her glittering tennis career – but she wasn’t the name on everyone lips at the opening night of the 2025 Web Summit in Lisbon.
Along with of Anton Osika, CEO of Swedish unicorn Lovable, Sharapova was the headline act at the launch event at a packed MEO Arena.
However, the most memorable performance of the night was provided by Khaby Lame, whose wordless comedy has made him the most-followed creator on TikTok with 161 million followers.
One of the themes of the night was turning creativity into a business but 25-year-old Lame urged content creativity to put passion before profit.
“If you just think about money, you’ll never get rich,” he said. “You’ll get rich by doing what you love.”
He said he became a content creator and influencer because he wanted to make people laugh.
“The business and the money came later,” he explained. “If you do something just for money, you lose the essence.”
Lame, who also has 79 million followers on Instagram, urged the audience to be resilient and keep going when it gets hard. “Don’t compare yourself to others,” he said. “Their limits are not yours.”
Anton Osika, co-founder and CEO of Lovable on the Web Summit stage
Talented Sharapova, who won five grand slams including Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17, is now a CEO, founder, entrepreneur, investor, best-selling author and mum to a three-year-old son.
She joined a panel to discuss how AI is changing the world of tennis and said artificial intelligence can produce analysis in a matter of minutes and extend the career of players by improving recovery times.
Lovable
One of biggest names on the opening night was Anton Osika, CEO of Swedish unicorn Lovable, which became the fastest AI startup in history when it hit $100m revenue in just eight months.
He said the unicorn, which raised $200M earlier this year at a $1.8bn valuation led by Accel, was now approaching eight million users.
The first speaker of the night was Web Summit founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave, who identified China as leading the new technological era.
China is leading technological charge
He told the audience: “In the coming days, you will find the world’s most advanced humanoid robots on the Web Summit floor. They won’t be European, they won’t be American. Instead, they are Chinese.”
Cosgrave said he hoped the 2025 Web Summit would produce a future Revolut, which exhibited 10 years ago when they were a three-person startup.
He said although there had been a decline in the number of Germany tech firms at this year’s Web Summit, he said the new ‘poster child’ Poland had a record representation.
“I think we have never lived in a more exciting moment,” he said.
Khaby Lame on the stage at Web Summit 2025
Carlos Moedas, Mayor of Lisbon, said 16 unicorns now have offices in Lisbon.
In by far the longest speech of the night Gonçalo Matias, Deputy Minister and Minister for State Reform of Portugal, said the government is ‘actively supporting’ Portugal’s bid to be one of the five European gigafactories.
Other speakers included: Sarah Meron, Chief Corporate Affairs and Brand Officer at IBM and Mark Nelsen, Global Chief Consumer Product Officer at Visa.
2025 represents the 10th year of Web Summit in Lisbon and is expected to attract over 70,000 delegates over four days, including a team from BusinessCloud.