Joana is the co-founder and COO of Sensei. Founded in 2017, it is Europe’s leading technology scale-up in autonomous retail.
With its proprietary computer vision and artificial intelligence technology, Sensei was a pioneer in opening the first autonomous store in Europe in Lisbon in 2021. In 2025, together with SONAE MC, it inaugurated the world’s largest autonomous store, Continente Bom Dia in Leiria. Previously, it had opened the first autonomous supermarket in Latin America in Brazil with Grupo Muffato and, in Italy, the first autonomous stores with the Italian convenience retail brand CONAD.
Sensei operates autonomous points of sale in Portugal, France, Italy, and Brazil. It has a team of over 70 people and includes investors from the U.S., Germany, Spain, Latin America, and Portugal—some of whom are backed by major European retail players. The company raised around €21M in venture capital, closing its Series A funding round in 2024 with €15M.
During her academic journey, Joana worked and studied in Portugal, the USA, Italy, and Germany. She attended Instituto Superior Técnico, where she pursued doctoral studies (DFA) under the MIT Portugal program (a partnership between IST and MIT), and completed a postgraduate program in Management and Sustainability at Harvard University in the USA. Before founding Sensei, she was a founding partner of the software house META, and since 2019, she has been a member of the Executive Committee and Vice-President of the Portuguese Industrial Association (AIP-CCI).
She was awarded the Women Entrepreneurship Award by Católica Lisbon Business School/ Center for Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 2019, as well as the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2021 (João Vasconcelos Award by Startup Lisboa).