"We did no work with Russia, and the idea the Russians significantly interfered with the Trump campaign is inconceivable and absurd," said Alexander Nix, in an interview on the main stage at Web Summit, Europe’s largest tech event, taking place in Lisbon this week.

The company – which also helped the ‘Leave’ campaign in the UK, in the runup to the Brexit referendum – would never work with a state actor or other third party in US elections, its CEO said.

As for Russia influencing the US election result, he stressed that Cambridge Analytica had taken years to build up its data assets and to develop its models, so neither Russia or any other country could replicate that level of technology, knowledge and understanding in a matter of months.

According to Nix, Cambridge began working on electoral campaigns in 1994, and has so far worked on some 200 "for prime minister or president" around the world. In 30 of those, he said, the company did everything from surveys and strategy to data analysis and media management.

In elections in which the company has taken on everything, he said, the success rate was 100%; in others it was over 50%.

Cambridge Analytica only works for “mainstream” parties, he stressed, citing the consideration of “the impact that a certain campaign will have on the rest of the group’s work” – given that political campaigns make up one quarter of its work.

Asked whether the data that the company has on voters – the type of car they own, what magazines they read, what breakfast cereals they eat – could represent a danger, Nix noted that people voluntarily hand over potentially much more damaging personal to social networks.

Web Summit, which has been taking place at Lisbon’s Altice Arena since Monday, ended on Thursday.

According to organisers, in this second year in Lisbon it attracted 59,115 people from 170 countries, including more than 1,200 speakers, 2,000 startups, 1,400 investors and 2,500 journalists.