Prg.ai publishes a large report on research and development of artificial intelligence in Prague
organization Prg.ai issued a report mapping Prague companies dealing with artificial intelligence. It summarizes the findings of research, which took place between January and June 2021 among 130 companies. The representative sample includes small, medium and large product and consulting companies from the Czech Republic, as well as foreign entities with local research and development capacities.
The full report is available here. Prg.ai also on the site kept updated list of local AI scenes. The organization is backed by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, CTU, Charles University and the capital city of Prague. The Moravian alternative is Brno.ai.
The Prg.ai report summarizes as follows:
Machine learning predominates among the technologies that companies use to develop products and services (68 percent). However, thanks to the traditionally strong focus of study fields at Prague universities, natural language processing (43 percent) and machine perception (30 percent) are also highly represented. More so, R&D respondents mostly fund from their own resources (80 percent), a third of resources come from private investors and venture capital funds, and only 9 percent from public funds.
By default, existing AI-oriented companies in Prague were established five years or less ago. The ability of local entrepreneurs to respond to the growing global demand for innovative solutions is evidenced by the fact that 24 of the 130 companies surveyed were established between 2018 and 2020.
In terms of customer structure, more than half – 58 – specialize in the segment of large corporations and the public sector, 24 small and medium-sized companies percentage to the remaining sectors 12 percent target end customers. The most important customer segments include financial services, information and communication technologies, and e-commerce and retail.
The key markets are the Czechia, the European Union and North America. Interesting in terms of the geographical distribution of revenues is the fact that almost a quarter of companies generate 90 percent of their revenues related to AI and machine learning in the Czech Republic, while 30 percent of companies generate the same share of revenues abroad.
Part of the survey was also to get an opinion on what is the key to making Prague a European leader in AI. According to 52 percent of respondents, it is the maintenance of Czech AI talent in the metropolis, 48 percent the need to promote the success of the Prague AI scene abroad, 39 percent by trying to attract foreign talent from the application sphere and 36 percent to improve cooperation between academia and industry.