Remote is a global employer-of-record (EOR) and HR platform that lets companies hire, pay and manage full-time employees in 80-plus countries without setting up local entities.
Founded in 2019 by Job van der Voort (ex-GitLab VP of Product) and Marcelo Lebre, Remote operates its own owned infrastructure - country-by-country legal entities and payroll operations - rather than reselling third-party EORs, which is both its core differentiator and its main cost line.
Remote reached unicorn status in 2022 at a $3B valuation following a $300M Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund with participation from Accel, Sequoia, Index, Two Sigma and General Catalyst. The Lisbon office is the de facto global HQ, and a very large share of the company's product, engineering and operations staff work from Portugal.
The legal parent is Remote Technology, Inc., a Delaware C-Corp; a Dutch BV (Remote Europe Holding BV) aggregates European entities; Remote Tech Portugal, Unipessoal Lda. employs Portuguese staff. Competitors include Deel, Rippling, Oyster and Velocity Global.
Remote is the most structurally meta company in the Portuguese unicorn set - it is the EOR that founders use to implement the exact structures they would otherwise have to replicate manually.
Job van der Voort and Marcelo Lebre built Remote in Lisbon from 2019 onwards explicitly around the insight that Portuguese labour costs, talent availability and EU access were structurally underpriced relative to what US-venture-backed companies could afford to pay.
Everything that has happened in Lisbon since - the Web Summit halo, the NHR inflows (pre-2024 changes), the unicorn clustering - made Remote's own TAM larger.
Remote's corporate structure is one level more complex than typical PT unicorns. Remote Technology, Inc. in Delaware is the fundraising parent and the entity investors hold preferred shares in.
A Dutch holding company (Remote Europe Holding BV) sits between the US parent and the European subsidiaries, because Netherlands tax treaties and holding-company rules are the most efficient way to aggregate dividends and IP flows across 40-plus European entities. The Portuguese operating subsidiary - Remote Tech Portugal, Unipessoal Lda. - employs the bulk of the engineering and product staff.
Each other country Remote operates in has its own local entity (a UK Ltd, a Spanish SL, a German GmbH and so on) that actually employs the customers' "EOR'd" employees.
This is the literal manifestation of the Portuguese-founded / Delaware-parent / operating-subsidiary pattern - and Remote sells it to others as a product.
The NHR regime's 2024 overhaul narrowed the personal tax advantage for new inbound residents, but Portugal's corporate-level competitiveness (12.5 percent on first 50,000 EUR of taxable profit for SMEs, SIFIDE II R&D credits, EU market access) is unchanged.
Remote continues to expand headcount in Lisbon and serves as the practical legal/payroll plumbing behind most of the other companies in this list - and behind thousands of US and European startups that hire globally.
Its commercial HQ and most of its staff are in Lisbon, but the legal parent is Remote Technology, Inc., a Delaware C-Corp.
It is an employer of record and global HR platform that lets companies hire employees in 80-plus countries without opening their own local entities.
Remote has not publicly disclosed profitability but has repeatedly stated it has low net burn and is run for long-term sustainability.
The Dutch Europe Holding BV aggregates the company's 40-plus European subsidiaries and uses Netherlands tax treaties and holding-company rules to efficiently manage cross-border flows.
