AI

The Czech Republic is one of the best European destinations for investments, where talent, level of education and innovativeness create suitable conditions for the growth of technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to the forefront and the Czech Republic is a remarkably strong and significant AI hotspot. Many corporates have their AI research teams and activities in the Czech Republic (IBM, O2, T-Mobile, RedHat and others) and collaborate with world-class researchers at local universities. The most prominent R&D institutions include Czech Technical University in Prague, Charles University in Prague, Brno University of Technology, and Masaryk University in Brno. Czech companies like Resistant.ai and Rossum.ai have attracted significant investments in recent years and may soon be joined by others. CzechInvest is keeping up, as AI is one of the main technologies that the agency supports within its AI Hub, a part of its Technology Incubation (TI) project which is an effective tool for supporting startups. AI is the most prominent field within the TI project, as CzechInvest has received 178 project applications during four calls for proposals. Currently, in November 2024, a total of 48 AI-based projects are incubated in the AI Hub, while different AI projects can also be found in other TI Hubs. This accounts for 30% of all incubated startups across the seven sectors available in TI.

New trends and technical advancements, such as challenges in AI, are actively supported by numerous programmes, national strategies, outstanding research centres and universities. The noteworthy, the most dedicated and experienced regional institutions such as prg.ai, Brno.AI, Moravian-Silesian Innovation Center, BIC Pilsen, but also institutions on state level such as ICT Union, Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic, including CzechInvest, have declared their collaboration to support the Czech AI ecosystem in a formation of Czech National AI Platform (CNAIP) in June 2024. Academics and researchers are successfully coordinated within AI Czechia, an initiative that brings together AI researchers with an objective similar to that of CzechInvest, prg.ai and Brno.ai, i.e., to make the Czech Republic an outstanding location for AI innovation with global reach.

Prague and Brno are the biggest hotspots for AI research in the Czech Republic and the home of more than 80% of all AI companies and researchers. It’s worth taking note of AI Days, an event that offers the opportunity to approach the local AI communities. The first edition of AI Days was held in Brno in 2022 and was rated as a major success. It was thus agreed that future editions will take place in other regions of the country. In 2023, AI Days took place in 4 major Czech AI Hubs (Prague, Brno, Pilsen and Ostrava), making it the biggest nation-wide event in Europe. Full 4 weeks were packed with meetups, hackathons, pitch contests, speeches and showcases of what AI can do. AI Days 2024 were held in the second part of October 2024, joining 20 cities and most of the Czech Republic´s regions in more than 200 AI-oriented events including flagships such as AI4Business, AI4Talent, but also AI Startup Pitch Contests.

At CzechInvest, we strongly believe there is a huge potential in AI that is yet to be discovered.