To close our Women in Tech campaign, we are proud to feature our final interview with Alicia AsÃn, Engineer, CEO, and Co-founder of Libelium. With nearly two decades of experience turning the Internet of Things from a concept into real-world solutions, she shares how trusted data, IoT, and Gaia-X data spaces can help Europe build resilient, sovereign digital infrastructure. In this interview, she reflects on the importance of turning innovation into impact, enabling secure and interoperable data ecosystems, and ensuring that Europe not only regulates the digital future—but actively shapes and owns it.
Short intro
I am an Engineer, CEO, and Co-founder of Libelium. For nearly two decades, I have been turning the “Internet of Things” from a buzzword into a tool for real-world resilience. At Libelium, we don’t just deploy sensors; we build the nervous system of the Datacracy—a society where decisions are driven by evidence, not intuition. My work is focused on ensuring that Europe doesn’t just regulate the digital future, but actually owns it. I advocate for a “tech for good” approach that is inseparable from Digital Sovereignty, because there is no ethics without control over our own data.
How are you driving impact in Europe’s digital ecosystem this year?
This year, my focus is on moving beyond the “pilot purgatory” that stalls European innovation. Within the Gaia-X framework, we are actively materializing Data Spaces—specifically in the environmental and smart city verticals—to ensure that data is not just “open,” but interoperable, secure, and sovereign. We are integrating our iris360 solutions into Gaia-X compliant architectures. We believe governance shouldn’t be a bureaucratic hurdle, but a competitive advantage. By enabling trusted data exchange, we allow cities and industries to build Digital Twins that are not vendor-locked, but part of a truly federated European ecosystem.
We also are challenging the status quo where European data lives in non-European clouds. My mission is to ensure that the “S” in IoT stands for Sovereignty. We are providing the hardware and software foundations that allow data creators to retain full control over the usage and value of their information throughout its entire lifecycle.
Using IoT and AI, we are helping European companies meet Green Deal targets. However, we do it by treating data as a strategic infrastructure. If data is the new oil, Gaia-X is our refinery, and my role is to ensure that the value stays within our borders to fuel our own industrial autonomy.
“In Europe, we are world champions at writing rules; it’s time we become world champions at building the game. Sovereignty is not a romantic ideal; it is the physical and logical control of our collective intelligence.”
