Healo at Panathēnea 2026: Infiheal Joins Global Founders and Investors in Athens
Infiheal's Founder and CEO, Srishti Srivastava, and Head of Partnerships, Archie Mutta, had the most incredible time at Panathēnea, Greece's landmark festival at the intersection of technology, startups, and the arts, held at the historic Zappeion in Athens.
A Festival Unlike Any Other
Inspired by the ancient Great Panathenaea, once a celebration of athletic, musical, and intellectual excellence, Panathēnea is a contemporary reimagining built around today's new classics: technology, entrepreneurship, and contemporary art. Set within the neoclassical grandeur of the Zappeion, the festival creates a unique meeting point where Athens' past meets its digital future.
The scale of the 2026 edition was hard to overstate. With over 10,000 participants from around the world, Panathēnea 2026 transformed the Zappeion into a global hub of innovation, art, and technology. The event brought together venture capital firms representing over $400 billion in assets, with more than 70 sessions dedicated to artificial intelligence, defence technology, fintech, and robotics.
From Investors' Day, with voices from Index Ventures, Sequoia, and Atomico in the room, to Founders' Day, where conversations were raw, real, and refreshingly honest, to the Tech Conference featuring speakers like Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs, Markus Villig of Bolt, Laura Modiano of OpenAI, and Troy Estes of NVIDIA, every session pushed the team to think bigger.
A Fireside Chat That Felt Timely
One of the most memorable moments of the festival was watching a fireside chat between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs, focused on the responsible use of AI in public life. The conversation felt both timely and important, especially for a startup whose entire foundation rests on building AI responsibly, within healthcare, one of the most sensitive domains where that responsibility matters most.
The team also heard from Vassilis Koutsoumpas, Digital Policy and AI Advisor at the Office of the Prime Minister of Greece, gaining a closer look at how Greece is thinking about AI governance at the national level.
Conversations That Stayed With the Team
It was equally a pleasure meeting Roxanne Varza, Director of STATION F, Andrew Steele of Activant Capital, and Catherine Bischoff of WalletConnect, all of whom shared perspectives during the panel that stayed with the team long after the conversation ended. Meeting Roxanne in particular felt like a natural extension of Infiheal's own journey through the STATION F and IndiaAI Accelerator ecosystem in Paris.
Why Festivals Like This Matter
Events like Panathēnea open doors to perspectives that would otherwise be hard to encounter. As a healthtech startup building Healo, an AI emotional wellness companion, Infiheal believes that the more the team listens, connects, and reflects across cultures, industries, and lived experiences, the better equipped it becomes to understand how to do more with Healo, for more people, in more contexts.
The team left Athens more curious, more energised, and more committed than ever, with plenty more events, connections, and learning still ahead.
