Ekolive is an example of a successful family business in the field of science and innovation. (source: Courtesy of Ekolive)
Slovak startups are making a splash in several areas – in combating online hatred, in holographic communication, and even in opening up debate about the ethical and moral aspects of creating artificial personalities and relationships based on algorithms and data.
October 2024
Slovakia is at the tail end of the European Union when it comes to building startups. With 93 startups per million inhabitants, Slovakia is third from the bottom. Only Poland and Romania are worse off in this statistic, based on an analysis by the Czech Prosperity and Financial Health Index.
The spacetech startup, Zaitra, which develops solutions for satellite autonomy, receives an investment of €1.7 million. The startup is already preparing to expand into the US market, where it plans to partner with big players such as NASA, Boeing and Airbus.
September 2024
Slovak startup Fumbi Network, launched in 2018 to simplify investing in cryptocurrencies, wins a prize in the People’s Choice category at the prestigious Global Startup Awards in Istanbul.
The Slovak developer and one of the founding members of the OpenAI research group, Andrej Karpathy, is named in the Time 100 AI ranking. In this ranking, Time magazine gives credit to the top 100 people who it believes are shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Earlier in 2024, Karpathy started his own AI project, Eureka Labs, focusing on the use of AI in education.
Well-known Slovak startup Powerful Medical, led by the brothers Martin and Robert Herman, spins off a new startup from its structures. The company Medannot focuses on connecting artificial intelligence and radiology.
Well-known entrepreneurs and investors Michal Truban and Zdenko Zvada launch Flying Founders, an investment fund focusing on supporting founders of SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. The fund brings a new approach to investing in startups to the Slovak and Czech market. Instead of chasing fast growth and high valuations, they focus on building healthy, profitable companies that can thrive in the long term.
August 2024
Tech startup Tachyum, founded by Radoslav Danilák, creates the last prototype of its low-power consumption microchip, Prodigy, before going into production.
July 2024
Slovak startup Glycanostics is working on a test that can use blood to predict the risk of prostate cancer. If the company’s ambitious plan succeeds, men could avoid painful prostate biopsies.
Students of the Secondary Electrical Engineering School in Bratislava have won several awards and will present their startups at the Web Summit in Portugal in November. Their first startup is called Benly, related to contactless business cards. The second one, Devecol, is an ecological app focused on waste collection.
June 2024
Winners are announced at the nationwide 2024 Slovak University Startup Cup, held in Bratislava on June 25. They include Hopsvon, a mobile application gamifying travel in Slovakia; OWASmooth, providing numerical data smoothing; Caskin Coffee Labs, focusing on the use of by-products from the processing of coffee beans; Lambda Robotics, focusing on the development of fully autonomous large-scale robotic lawn mowers; and Docon, focusing on the development of a filament dryer for 3D printing.
The startup Repetitio, launched by Ivan Štefina, producing reusable packaging for online shops, wins the nationwide Atlas Award.
Slovak startup Sensoneo, active in waste management, is to expand in the Czech Republic, launching a research and development centre in Brno.
Tech startup EcoButt, which has changed its name to Reneso, opens a new recycling line in Žiar nad Hronom. It replaces the previous, manual process of recycling cigarette butts and cigarette fillings.
Žilina-based company elv.ai wins the Car Pitch startup presentation at the premiere event of the 2024 Forbes Business Fest. The company is focused on cultivating internet discussions and combating hatred and misinformation in the online space.
May 2024
Slovak startup Seerlinq, established by Allan Böhm, comes up with an algorithm that turns a smartwatch monitoring the wearer’s heartbeat into a life-saving device.
Daitable, a Slovak startup founded in late 2022 within the STU INQb university technology incubator, helps companies to save energy.
Cequence, a Prešov-based tech startup whose AI-powered solution is used by more than 20,000 users from all over the world, enters into a strategic partnership with neuroscience AI company Numenta from Silicon Valley.
The Slovak startup Airvolute is developing drones that can fly without a human operator. They are controlled by an advanced optical system and artificial intelligence. The first customers are from the US.
April 2024
Peter Kočalka, founder of the startup Bee Hive Monitoring, has been developing and selling bee monitoring facilities. The startup sells its products especially in Slovakia, Austria and Germany.
The startup Sensible Biotechnologies is working on a costeffective and scalable platform to produce high-quality mRNA that will enable the development of next generation mRNA therapeutics and vaccines.
The startup SmartBooks, the only platform in Slovakia bringing game-based learning to all subjects and grades, thereby aiming to transform traditional education into an engaging and motivating form, wins the Innovative Company or Startup Category in the 2023 Innovation of Žilina Region competition.
The Slovakia-based space technology startup Space scAvengers represents a breakthrough in spacecraft autonomy and intelligence. It focuses on the development of so-called multi-agent autonomous systems.
Startup FantasyGF.ai, from Spišská Belá and Kežmarok in northern Slovakia, enables lonely men, while using advanced AI algorithms, to create a virtual girlfriend with whom they can communicate, share their thoughts or simply just spend time. The idea sparks controversy by opening up a debate about the ethical and moral aspects of creating artificial personalities and relationships based on algorithms and data.
March 2024
Lucia Lalka founded the Slovak startup Eduvision in 2021. It presents revolutionary approaches to the traditional education system through personalised curricula and artificial intelligence technologies, aiming to fill the gaps in the current education system by focusing on society-wide topics and the individual needs of students. One of their successes, reported in March in media, was the development of “Our Brand”, a digital game that introduces employees to the company’s values, mission and strategy in a playful and interactive way.
Gardeon from Turčiansky Ďur, western Slovakia, a supplier of garages and garden houses, makes it onto the Financial Times’ list of Europe’s 1,000 fastest-growing companies as the only Slovak company. It places 510th.
Slovakia is ranked seventh from bottom in terms of the number of newly founded startups in 2023, based on the Global Innovation Index tracking all OECD countries. The index gives Slovakia an unflattering ranking, as only 1.3 startups per 100,000 inhabitants were created in the country in 2023.
February 2024
The Košice-based startup Matsuko is currently the sole company with an US patent for holographic communication that requires only a phone. It could now have a great competitive advantage in the US market.
A group of Slovak students design their own five-axis printer that uses a SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm) robotic arm. The unique 3D printer MeltFlex can print even the most complex objects.
The Košice-based startup Ekolive is an example of a successful family business in the field of science and innovation. It has developed a biofertilizer, produced by a unique patented bioleaching method, changing the game in sustainable and regenerative agriculture.
January 2024
Erik Hudák is a Slovak entrepreneur who created a successful company from a simple invoicing app. He sold the Billdu platform, formerly miniFaktura, to a Belgian giant for an 8-figure sum, making Billdu one of the most successful startups in Slovakia.
The Nitra-based Ecol Trade’s system, which uses maggots to clean plastic packaging and foil from food waste remnants, is being used in Kaufland stores across Slovakia, allowing the chain to recover up to 94 percent of its own waste on average.
November 2023
The pilot project of Zhiva, a Slovak startup that helps people to enjoy healthier lives by encouraging good choices and better habits, is one of the first attempts to use artificial intelligence as a tool for lifestyle change in Slovakia.
As the second fastest growing startup in Canada, Certn acquires the Slovak tech startup Trustmatic, which exposes identity fraud. The Slovak company has developed a full identity verification and fraud detection platform designed to also help entrepreneurs increase customer conversion and comply with know-your-customer (KYC) regulations. The value of the transaction is not disclosed.
Trebišov-based startup Swida Innovative, despite not having a single van or any drivers, rises rapidly among the biggest players in logistics. It has based its business on digitalisation, with the goal of connecting firms seeking transportation and shippers with small vans to transport a company’s goods.
The Slovak startup Rezztek, in which the successful hockey player Zdeno Chára has also invested, has developed a high performance grip for ice hockey sticks. Also thanks to Chára, the company recently managed to obtain a licence from the NHL for its product.
