A 'spin-off' of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center analyzes data as the human brain does

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is one of the most advanced research institutions in Catalonia, with MareNostrum, one of Europe's most powerful supercomputers, as a key infrastructure for knowledge generation. Beyond offering its infrastructure to scientists, the BSC has begun to find a way to transfer all the advances it produces to industry, one of the pending subjects of the research system.

The spin-offs that have emerged from the BSC are becoming more and more numerous and starting their journey towards business dynamics. One of them is Qbeast Analytics, a startup that has developed a technology capable of storing a large amount of data in a simple way, similar to how our brain consumes it, that is, more human, explains its founder and CEO, Cesare Cugnasco.

The company organizes all available information into groups, according to their characteristics, and selects a small, statistically representative sample to analyze the whole and draw conclusions. This system can be applied to any type of data and allows them to be evaluated interactively and 100 times faster.

For example, a supermarket chain wants to know what purchases Barcelonans make and their age according to the products they acquire. To obtain these profiles, which must be extracted from a very large population, Qbeast can collect all the information and classify it in an understandable way, without getting lost among dossiers with too many pages.

Developing the technology that makes this possible is a complex process and, precisely, it has been possible thanks to the infrastructure that the BSC provides to the scientific community. Cugnasco spent years working at this research center, where he was able to develop his innovative data storage system and patent it. The founder of Qbeast emphasizes that it had to be tested with thousands of computers and, without the supercomputer, it would not have been easy or cheap: "Either you are Google or it's very complicated."

Half a million euro round

Founded last year, Qbeast has just closed a half-million-euro round, with Inveready as the main investor. BStartup, Banco Sabadell's startup investment program, has also participated in the round. With the resources obtained, the company led by Cugnasco wants to reach a workforce of 20 employees by the end of the year.

In the medium term, the emerging company is working on the development of a prototype of its technology, which will allow customers to test it. When they have it ready, they will go for their second round, which should allow them to multiply their structure tenfold and grow to 200 employees, with the aim of responding to the great market demand that exists around big data analysis. Currently, they have already tested it with large companies such as Telefónica, CaixaBank, and Fiat, within the framework of a European program.