Edgar Melo Costa, who also publishes as Edgar Costa and, in Portuguese, Edgar Melo e Costa, is a Lisbon-born entrepreneur and private equity investor based in New York. He founded his first company in 2004, built and sold several construction businesses in Portugal, and in 2014 founded EMC Acquisitions, a private investment group that has backed growth companies in more than 15 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and North America, with a focus on real estate and hotels.
In 2018 EMC Acquisitions became an equity partner of KEY Real Estate Holdings in New York, where he joined as Vice President and a member of the board, working on luxury hotel and residential developments in the Hudson Valley and Westchester.
From New York he leads a group of consumer and travel companies: Melion, a private jet charter marketplace that has certified operators compete for every trip; Grus Drinks, which imports and distributes premium wines from Iberian, French, Italian and South American estates across North America from offices in New York and Toronto; and MezcalSearch, an app for discovering tequila and mezcal.
He also invests in artificial intelligence, backing AI founders through ELP Ventures, a family office investing through six funds, and running iQuash, a legal-technology platform that checks tickets, fines and notices for defects and connects people with licensed lawyers. DNA Web, the IT company he founded in 2013, builds ELP GPT and the Lucy AI reputation tool.
He writes daily commentary on private aviation, wine and spirits, real estate and legal AI in the news section of this site.