AI Chamber places Prague at the heart of European AI diplomacy, bringing together ministers and the region's top companies at the CEE AI Summit.

On Thursday 3 September, Martinic Palace in Prague, Czechia,  hosted the CEE AI Summit 2026, attended by more than 250 figures from politics, business and research across Central and Eastern Europe. Ministers and government delegations from Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary accepted the invitation, alongside European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva, Director of the EU AI Office Lucilla Sioli, Members of the European Parliament, and founders and executives of leading European AI companies, startups and unicorns. The summit was jointly organised by AI Chamber, a Poland-founded regional organisation representing AI companies across Central and Eastern Europe, and the Czech National AI Platform (CNAIP), under the patronage of the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade. 

The summit opened with a closed-door ministerial meeting chaired by the Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček. There, ministers adopted the Prague Declaration on Artificial Intelligence, in which signatory countries commit to cooperating on shared computing infrastructure, including support for AI gigafactories, to exchanging experience in deploying AI in public administration, healthcare, industry, and education, and to coordinating their positions on European digital policy.

The main programme opened with keynote speeches by Karel Havlíček, Ekaterina Zaharieva, and Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski on the role of CEE countries in Europe’s pursuit of technological sovereignty in AI.

What the region lacks – and what it can build on

Six panel discussions examined where Central and Eastern Europe lags behind in AI and where its strengths lie. Topics included the premature sale of startups abroad, building the region’s own computing infrastructure, simplifying European legislation, and the region’s appeal to talent from other parts of the world.

Alongside Ekaterina Zaharieva and Lucilla Sioli, speakers included MEP and rapporteur for the Cloud and AI Development Act Diego Solier, Hungarian Minister of Science and Technology Zoltán Tanács, Polish Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Dariusz Standerski, Rector of the Czech Technical University in Prague Michal Pěchouček, Czech Government Envoy for AI Lukáš Kačena, Rohlik and Duvo.ai founder Tomáš Čupr, and Jennifer Beroshi of Google DeepMind. Estonian expert and co-founder of The Agentic State initiative Luukas Ilves set out why governments should move towards administration built on AI agents.

Central and Eastern Europe represents 150 million people and an economy of 2.5 trillion euros. Yet we still arrive in Brussels to negotiate one country at a time. Our goal can no longer be just to catch up with the rest. We have what it takes to become an innovation centre where artificial intelligence is actually built, not just bought,” said Tomasz Snażyk, CEO of the co-organising AI Chamber. “We do not need to establish new institutions for this. We simply need to start acting at our real size – sharing compute, capital, and talent across borders, and building on what already works in neighbouring countries.”

Billion-dollar companies with roots in the region

Running through the programme were the stories of companies from the region that have made their mark on the global market. Antoni Rytel presented ElevenLabs, a company with Polish roots that investors valued at $11 billion this year. Erik Čebík of Innovatrics showed how technology for national identification systems is built in Bratislava and Brno. Stanislav Fort of Aisle spoke about the cybersecurity solutions the company develops in Prague, which currently outperform even models from Anthropic.

Barbara Vodicska of Oncompass demonstrated the use of AI in treatment decisions for cancer patients, and Ivan Oleksii of Ukraine’s DoD Solution discussed autonomy for unmanned systems. Benjamin Tallis of defence company Helsing, which investors valued at $18 billion this year, also shared his perspective.

Lukáš Kačena closed the summit with the question of whether Central and Eastern Europe can lead Europe’s AI future.

For AI Chamber, the summit was also an opportunity to bring the perspective of Central and Eastern European technology companies directly into the discussion on Europe’s AI policy. The organisation, which represents AI-focused SMEs from across the region, has been advocating for closer cross-border cooperation, better access to computing infrastructure and capital, and a regulatory environment that allows European AI companies to scale and compete globally.