As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, last year, at the initiative of the Croatian Association for Artificial Intelligence (CroAI), the Republic of Croatia received the first overview of its AI landscape, ie the visualisation of all stakeholders in the domestic artificial intelligence market (AI); from companies and startups to the wider Croatian artificial intelligence ecosystem. As the aforementioned association explained, such research is a necessary precondition to send out a clear message about the current situation regarding AI, but also the potential of the Croatian AI scene, especially since the ecosystem is wide because it includes people and institutions of different profiles and orientations.
This year, the Croatian artificial intelligence ecosystem will be mapped once again, so all local organisations that are in any way involved in the implementation, development, education, research or support of AI initiatives are invited to fill out the application form for AI Landscape on croai.org.
“Last year, we found out how many of us there are and where we’re location, and this year we’ll get the opportunity to learn more about how AI startups in Croatia do business, what challenges they face and what the opportunities on the domestic and global scene for all of us actually are. We’ll get an insight into how much the market has changed in a year and what trend awaits us in the future.
The new mapping of the Croatian artificial intelligence ecosystem is an opportunity for all those who haven’t yet applied or haven’t been able to be identified do so as soon as possible, as we want to include all stakeholders, from small startups hidden in people’s garages to large organisations that have launched initiatives to apply artificial intelligence in their work,” explained Jan Stedul, the General Secretary of CroAI.
Last year, about 70 Croatian AI startups were identified, and the landscape of the Croatian artificial intelligence ecosystem consisted of a total of 170 companies, startups and organisations. The results last year also showed that about 80 percent of these startups were located in the City of Zagreb and the surrounding area, which isn’t surprising. The share of women in the role of founders or co-founders stood at about 14 percent.
For the purpose of this research, they included more than 500 organisations, and the details will be presented on October the 14th, 2021.
“We expect growth across all categories, analyses are still ongoing and exact figures will be presented on October the 14th at the AI2Future conference, but it’s already clear that in the last year alone, the market has developed with the advent of specialised AI incubators, that the course on the basics of artificial Intelligence Elements of AI has achieved great results and that AI initiatives have been launched in a large number of Croatian companies,” said Stedul.
As they had more time and resources to condut their analysis into the Croatian artificial intelligence ecosystem this year, they were joined by Cohres, which is also a CroAI member, which has expertise in investment research, and Stedul says they are helping them significantly in analysing data and the investment potential of the artificial intelligence market.
“The startup market is very dynamic and changeable, so it’s always a challenge to monitor and refresh things, but I believe we managed to do a good job thanks to quality incubators and accelerators that are the greatest help. The entire IT sector, and especially AI, has exploded in the last year, of course the coronavirus pandemic and the need for digitalisation have greatly contributed to this. But while the appearance of COVID-19 has accelerated the process, there’s no doubt that it would have happened anyway. It is easier to list companies that haven’t started implementing artificial intelligence than those that have. If a company still wants to remain competitive on the market, today it is almost impossible without the use of artificial intelligence,” concluded Jan Stedul.
The CroAI association also announced recently that investors are looking for top AI startups that can sign up for the CroAI startup pitch until September the 25th, 2021, which will also be held as part of the AI2FUTURE conference on October the 14th this year.
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