Saturno Labs, the company of a former Estudiantes player that improved Amazon's Alexa

In 2016, Madrid native Natalia Rodríguez left her job to care for a family member. During her many hours keeping him company in the hospital, she came up with an idea: immersive audio that would allow patients to go on excursions in the countryside or the sea without leaving their bed . The project is called Lulú and became a reality a few weeks ago. It is the most recent project from Saturno Labs, a start-up specialising in artificial intelligence that she founded in 2019. In between, the company has developed initiatives for Amazon, the ONCE Foundation or professional sports clubs, among other companies in sectors such as health, social or legal. In 2024, its turnover will be around one and a half million, and this year they expect it to reach between three and five million depending on how several proposals they have in hand turn out.

Rodríguez, now 34 years old, began her career in professional sports. She played basketball for teams such as Estudiantes. She then began her training as a telecommunications engineer at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Combining this with her sports career was difficult and, finally, she left the courts. She then took a double master's degree in signal processing, machine learning and big data. She worked in university research groups, started her own business - in 2014 she created Mujeres que corren , together with Cristina Mitre - and entered the private sector, until she decided to take the plunge again with Saturno Labs. She did so with an apparently simple idea. "Building products and businesses with technology based on people's problems," stresses the person who is now studying a doctorate in Health Sciences and in 2023 won the National Innovation Award.

One of the company's first steps was a voice services project for Amazon. Since then, Saturno Labs has been operating as a private research group in artificial intelligence. Its team, made up of thirty people, develops technology that allows it to offer solutions to the challenges that its clients pose to them. “ We don't have a specific product . But we do have many pieces that, like Lego, can be put together in different ways to adapt to very specific projects,” says Rodríguez from the Woman Leaders Retreat event in Marbella. It's like a tailor who makes made-to-measure suits. Today it is one of the main voice providers for Amazon and offers numerous functionalities to Alexa, such as a touchscreen assistant that allows comprehensive monitoring of the elderly who live alone at home thanks to periodic check-ups, and proposes a conversation like the one they would have with doctors and psychologists. It includes functionalities for leisure, family or even what they call “yayotinder” so that users can make video calls with people with the same profile.

The entrepreneur has also developed another tool for patients with different diseases, such as cancer. Or like the aforementioned Lulú, which can already be used in the Madrid HM de Sanchinarro and she hopes can be used in the future in public health.

Health is one of the main business sectors for Saturno Labs, but it also works on systems that track legal information or analyse metrics for basketball and football professionals. They have now managed to make their way into the field of public administration with initiatives such as Cibeles+, a project for the Madrid City Council that facilitates citizen access to urban planning information quickly and easily. “Our technology is versatile and can address very different problems,” concludes Rodríguez. In 2025, they want to consolidate their international presence in Mexico and the United States.