Wroc?aw - Polish Silicone Valley in Artificial Intelligence

Wroc?aw with a population of 640 thousand is the fourth biggest city in Poland. It hosts 17% of all Polish AI start-ups and is surpassed only by the capital city of Warsaw with 23%. These start-ups rapidly develop solutions to be used in innovative businesses, medicine, logistics, industry and everyday life. According to the Startup Poland Foundation's report “The Polish Tech Scene. 5 Years”, Wroc?aw is also distinguished by the highest concentration of technology businesses in Poland.

The survey conducted this year by Wroc?aw Urban Development Agency (ARAW) showed that out of 74 Wroc?aw IT companies 46 develop AI solutions and 21 intend to do so in the next three years. Over half of them already deliver AI products and almost 80% plan to invest more in this field.

They are mostly locally based SMEs providing a very wide portfolio of services in many industries. For example, NeuroSYS has developed software to identify, detect and classify microbial colonies on Petri dishes and Spyrosoft has developed a model to predict passengers traffic in public transport and travel time between specific stops.

85% of local IT entrepreneurs are satisfied with their investments in Wroc?aw and plan to continue them here, while 79% intend to enlarge their AI offer. The key factors for choosing Wroc?aw is good access to qualified staff, high quality of business infrastructure and availability of numerous academic studies and courses.

Wroc?aw is a very significant point on AI map of Poland thanks to many factors, but mainly very high academic standards. Good example is Wroc?aw University of Science and Technology, one of five Polish universities with AI studies?– emphasises Ewa Kondej from ARAW. Wroc?aw hosts in total 30 academic education establishments. On average two out of three IT companies cooperate or intend to cooperate with them, mainly by organising training courses for students. The number of technology graduates has been increasing year by year, new AI studies are being opened too.

Local AI companies employ usually about eight persons and almost all of them want to increase this number in one year. Their only problem is insufficiency of highly qualified specialists. Mid-levels and seniors are sought most often, even though their recruitment is usually difficult. Inhouse training is certainly time consuming and expensive.

Silver Tower Centre with Luxoft offices

ARAW’s survey disclosed that no Polish AI companies operating in Wroc?aw are based in other cities. On the contrary, these companies are expanding to other country regions. Moreover,?a few hundred foreign IT companies are also present in Wroc?aw. They were attracted by availability of local specialists and office spaces created in the recent development boom. Among them there are global market players such as Google, IBM, Nokia, Luxoft, Showpad and Cloudical. They perceive Wroc?aw as modern business hub well communicated with Europe and the rest of the World.

Attracting and serving foreign investors is the task of Wroc?aw Urban Development Agency, which has developed a special strategy for that. Each investor is assigned a dedicated assistant from the very beginning of investing process. ARAW prepares various kinds of data, information and presentations, and organises meetings with representatives of local authorities, business, science, property managers and HR. It offers its assistance in the whole process from a business decision to final settlement in Wroc?aw.

Author: Marek Gizmajer

Sources:?biznes.newseria.pl, tuwroclaw.com, wroclaw.pl