Rising popularity of AI implementation in business has been seen all around the world. This trend has not bypassed Poland, making it a centre of excellence in the entire Central and Eastern part of Europe.
Among Polish companies, there are ones that introduced AI as early as in the late 90’s. However, technology was more widely introduced in business only after 2010. Since then, more and more companies, which provide AI solutions and services, started to pop up. This number has been growing rapidly year-by-year since 2015, so there is a visible AI boom in Poland. The survey conducted in 2018 by Digital Poland Foundation has shown that the half of Polish AI companies have introduced AI solutions over the last two years.
AI businesses in Poland operate mainly in large metropolitan areas. These include:
Warsaw
the Tri-city area / Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot
Kraków
Poznań
Wrocław
Katowice urban area
These six metropolitan areas, each with over half a million inhabitants, are home to more than 85% of currently operating in Poland
The only exception is Łódź, which despite being the third largest Polish city does not have a visible representation among AI companies.
Majority of companies with have their headquarters located in Poland are servicing multiple clients from foreign countries across Europe and Northern America. As a result more that a third of Poland-based AI companies have an office or other type of representation outside of the country.
Among companies included in the Digital Poland / Map of the Polish AI report, over a third can already be defined as AI-only companies. That means that over 70% of their revenues from services or products that are purely based on AI.
Polish AI-companies are the most active in two industries – big data, data analytics and business intelligence as well as in sales, marketing and advertising. The third most popular sector is finance and insurance. Additionally more and more companies are creating AI-based services for the IoT and Industry 4.0.
Size-wise Polish AI companies are growing. Over a fifth employ more than 50 employees. However, smaller companies with less than 10 employees make for roughly 40% of the businesses.