Carlos Moreira: The La Linea-born businessman with a plan for a cross-border tech hub

La Línea-born Carlos Moreira is the founder of the cybersecurity firm WiseKey and its wise.art subsidiary.
WiseKey is in partnership with FOSSA Systems, which itself is engaged in launching a constellation of 88 orbital satellites.
So far, 13 have been launched and plans are afoot to begin assembling them within the city of La Linea.
To this end, the partners are looking for viable sites for their facilities.
According to Mr Moreira, his company is in talks with a Gibraltarian firm with an eye to storing the data collected by these satellites in high-security storage in the Rock’s tunnels.
He hopes that both communities overcome Brexit’s stumbling blocks and that the virtual ecosystem his company is creating in the area becomes a physical reality within the next five years.
He spoke to Maria Jesus Corrales about his plans.

Q: How is your Fourth Industrial Revolution project for La Línea and Gibraltar developing?
A: This project has two phases. One that is digital, virtual, creating value within the Metaverse, and the other is physical, positioning technology and resources in La Línea, with a facet in Gibraltar.
This dual model is reflected in the memorandums [of understanding] which we signed with [Chief Minister Fabian] Picardo and the mayor of La Línea, Juan Franco.
Up to now, a lot of time, effort and money has been spent on the development of FOSSA.
When I arrived, it was just a concept.
We invested in [FOSSA], we gave them the necessary resources to finish their satellite, installed WiseKey microprocessors in the satellite to provide security and launched 13, which are in orbit and are beginning to find daily use.
We are now talking to agricultural businesses which can use [the satellites’] data.

Q: What’s the next step?
A: The objective is to launch 88 satellites.
With not many companies having satellites in orbit, and that becoming a strategic issue, these firms have increased in value and FOSSA’s valuation has redoubled.
FOSSA is now valued at 100m euros and is backed by an industrial partner; the objective is to make it grow.
Furthermore, an ecosystem is being created around it and the next step is to produce those satellites in La Línea, having an assembly plant.
We are looking at the available industrial sites.

Q: And in Gibraltar?
A: In Gibraltar, I have held talks with the company, Continent8, and we are discussing the possibility of creating a shared facility.
These satellites produce a lot of data which has to be stored in high-security locations and, instead of building the storage facilities, which would be very expensive, they already exist [in Gibraltar].
We have agreed that once the satellites begin to be assembled in La Línea and we continue launching them, the data received by the antenna in La Línea will be copied and stored in the bunker in Gibraltar.
This step will be a concrete example of the synergies we visualised from the beginning.
There are things that can be done in La Línea, and things in Gibraltar that cannot be done in La Línea,
such as the bunkers and the use of blockchain.

Q: How is WiseKey developing blockchain?
A: We have entered into partnership with various blockchain companies in Gibraltar, we cooperated with Cryptoverse Island, which is working on NFTs, and we have firms offering courses in cybersecurity, educating the youth of La Línea and Gibraltar.
The ecosystem, the enthusiasm and the infrastructures are being created for a skilled workforce in the region and the creation of new synergies.

Q: How long before we see the assembly plant in La Línea and the data-processing centre in Gibraltar?
A: The assembly plant in La Línea is contingent on having the proper permits and the purchase of the industrial sites, which already exist and have been used by other ventures.
The virtual project, the creation of the Metaverse, integrating the businesses, the databanks… something like 12-18 months and the physical project will take longer because it involves workspaces, permits.
But I have always said that five years would see everything working and things would develop from there.

Q: You have important plans for the area, are you worried about Brexit?
A: I think that, in the Metaverse, there is no Brexit, nor barriers or borders.
It is a virtual marketplace under the Metaverse’s rules, there is no Brexit there.
But expanding La Línea and Gibraltar’s economic sphere is vital for the future.
It is a dynamic very similar to the one which exists between Geneva and France.
The Swiss have increased the economic power of that border zone over 30 years.
Here it is the same. I think that Gibraltar has to help La Línea, because you cannot have the future world-leader in global finance next to a city that Netflix calls the world’s hub for narcotics.
I think that the will to take negotiations forward is there.
Now, when La Línea can develop a detailed plan where its land can be used to create these industries, it must streamline itself to be attractive to investors.

Q: What does Carlos Moreira look for in an investment prospect?
A: All things have an order and synergy between them.
Before a project produces results, you have to gather similar minds, positive thinkers, to support the enterprise. [You have to] find the right-minded people to add to your project.
I want to leave something concrete in La Línea, something that has never been done before and, coming from that city, it would be an honour to leave behind something valuable and that adds value to [the city’s] future.
I have done this in other places, such as Trust Valley in Switzerland, which now boasts 200 firms in less than three years.
That is what I want to do in La Línea and Gibraltar, create the ecosystem to attract research, 4th Industrial Revolution tracking, data storage.
These centres already exist in Singapore and Colombia and will attract investors.
We have to be competitive, but that mindset must be instilled in La Línea and the area as a foundation for the future.

Q: The area has a serious skills shortage that needs solving.
A: That is where Julián [Fernández] comes in, because he is a beacon for other 20-year-olds.In Gibraltar, I was talking to various young super-advanced cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and they all told me the same thing.
“If we had a hub here, we would have our businesses here.”
That is what needs to be boosted, so that youth don’t have to go to Madrid to form a business and succeed, so that they can do so locally.
The advantage of dynamic digital centres is the ability to reduce complexity of getting a result.

Q: The gaming giant, MGM Resorts, has announced that it will run casinos in the Metaverse. Is WiseKey looking at the gaming sector?
A: Gaming is the fastest entry point into the Metaverse, companies that want a footprint in the Metaverse will do so via gaming.
That is one of the greatest possibilities for Gibraltar, because there are so many gaming companies sited there.
It is easier to enter the Metaverse through an iGaming ecosystem than it is to move people from the analogue world to the virtual.
We can position ourselves to vouch for the people who enter those platforms, those who have a verifiable ID.

Q: Why are you so interested in the NFT art market?
A: It is one of the aspects of the 4th Industrial Revolution that is evolving fastest because, thanks to the Metaverse, we can see all the artistic heritage that is locked away in museums, galleries and private collections.
For that, you need to ‘mint’ an NFT, a digital certificate that translates the physical object into the Metaverse and whoever buys the NFT becomes the proprietor of the digital version.

Q: A guarantee.
A: Yes, because you can only make one [NFT] of an artwork.
Furthermore, NFT buyers tend to have cryptocurrency holdings and use those ‘coins’ to buy the NFT, which adds the NFT’s value to their accounts.
It’s a huge market which is slowly growing.
But the important thing, for us, is having security systems within the technology so that nobody can copy it, and our technology allows for very detailed investigations into an NFT’s provenance.
We made an NFT, with the Casa de Alba, of Columbus’s chart of the newly-discovered America.
We made an NFT with the physical map and are promoting it in Madrid.
It is being sold in the auction houses and will be rented to museums.

Q: So, it is a new form of cultural diffusion.
A: A lot of our heritage is in the hands of private collectors, locked away.
I was in the Vatican and they have so many artworks which could be shared and turned into a type of refinancing.
That is the tendency for museums, which can refinance their historic collections and share them with the general public.

Q: There is a bubble in NFTs in the art world, I understand that these digital works need the highest security.
A: That’s certain, that is why there are developments to mirror the procedures in cybersecurity firms.
It is the same verification process as opening a bank account; you have to provide information about your funds and their provenance.
That is essential, but not everybody wants to do it that way, because there are two philosophies.
One is the American, the “Mass-market creation first, solve the problems later” approach.
Our model, on the other hand, is closer to the Swiss.
Produce less, but concentrate on high-end product and only with certification as to the individual, the artwork, the artist and the provenance of the funds.
This ‘onboarding’ process is slower and more costly, but we are doing it to prove that our technology solves that issue.
We are not an NFT company, we do cybersecurity, but this application [of our technology] allows for all the elements of an NFT company to come together.
But if wise.art keeps growing as it is doing now, it will have to branch off into its own separate identity because it is a viral company and its expansion could not be nurtured within WiseKey.