Zážeh AI ambice 2026 Reflections: An Extended Commentary from our CEO Petr Bednařík

Beyond the Infrastructure: Capturing the Real Value of AI in the Heart of Europe

On March 25, 2026, the Zážeh AI ambice conference at Prague’s Divadlo Hybernia brought together over 800 key stakeholders to define the future of the Czech Republic in the age of artificial intelligence. As the opening keynote speaker, our CEO Petr Bednařík delivered a clear message: Europe must shift its focus from merely building "digital highways" to owning the value that travels upon them.

From Startup to European Enterprise AI Hub

Our vision is rooted in a decade of practical experience. DataSentics was founded ten years ago in Prague as an agile AI startup with a simple goal: helping companies create real business value through data and AI. Since then, we have grown into one of Europe’s largest AI teams, now boasting roughly 300 data scientists and experts.

Today, as part of the Bull group, we are the primary European hub for its Enterprise AI efforts. In this role, we help global organisations extract tangible value from their data while supporting the development of the continent's largest AI supercomputers under the "AI factory" initiative, including major projects right here in the Czech Republic. Within the broader Bull organisation, our CEO, Petr Bednařík, leads the global AI business, working to build a complete European AI value chain that spans from hardware and software to real-world applications.

The "Value Layer": Moving Beyond the Hardware

A central theme of Petr's address was the distinction between infrastructure and what we call the "value layer" of AI technology. He observed that while the majority of current investment in Europe and the Czech Republic flows into infrastructure, such as computing power and GPUs, this is merely the foundation.

However, Petr warns that despite the global hype around AI, many organisations still need to bridge the gap between AI experiments and reliable production. "Getting AI to a state where it runs reliably in production... and truly generates value... is still surprisingly difficult," Petr noted during his keynote, highlighting that very few organisations have successfully integrated AI into complex processes to drive actual efficiency and profit. Petr compares infrastructure to a highway: while essential for transport, the highway itself does not produce the goods. True economic value and prosperity arise in the higher layers: software, platforms, and specific business use cases. For the Czech Republic to succeed, we believe we must move beyond being consumers of technology and focus on the layers where profits are generated and reinvested.

Hybrid Sovereignty: Owning the Value Chain

Through our integration with Bull, we now operate across the entire AI value chain, from building the supercomputers that power the continent to deploying final software solutions. To our CEO, sovereignty is not just about where data is stored or who can access it; it is about economic independence and control. It is a question of who owns the technology, who holds the know-how, where profits are generated, and how they are further reinvested.

Today, Petr argues, Europe often finds itself in the role of a user rather than an owner. One of the reasons is fragmentation. Across individual countries, there are many capable companies, technologies, and initiatives, but very few truly large, pan‑European players able to compete at a global scale. Supporting European innovation is therefore not just about creating more startups, but about enabling strong, scalable European enterprises. From this perspective, Petr advocates a model he calls Hybrid Sovereignty. The future is not about isolation. Instead, it is a pragmatic balance between:

• Strategic Pragmatism: Utilizing the best global technologies where they provide a clear advantage.
• Building Local Capacity: Systematically investing in local solutions, expertise, and proprietary products to ensure control remains within the region.

Openness as the Foundation of AI Sovereignty

This naturally leads to the final dimension of sovereignty: openness.

Petr warns that today’s AI ecosystem shows a clear trend toward increasingly closed platforms. Large players deliberately build systems that are difficult to leave, gradually creating long‑term dependency. This, he argues, is not accidental but strategic. Openness therefore becomes a decisive criterion, not based on whether a technology is European or global, but on whether organisations retain real control over it. Open technologies enable companies to understand, adapt, and further develop their solutions, build internal know‑how, and ultimately capture economic value. Closed systems do the opposite, locking users in and shifting control elsewhere.

Navigating the European Regulatory Landscape

Addressing the current economic and legal climate, Petr offered a nuanced perspective on regulation. While many fear the "hassle" of the EU AI Act or GDPR, we view these unified European frameworks as relatively manageable because they allow a company to solve a regulatory problem once for the entire continent.

The far greater challenge is local fragmentation. For an AI company like ours attempting to scale across Europe, the primary hurdle is navigating disparate local services, security certifications, and administrative policies that vary wildly between countries like Germany, France, and the Czech Republic. This patchwork of local bureaucracy is a more significant barrier to growth than centralized European regulation. Our CEO urged a shift in energy: rather than debating the consequences of regulation, we should focus on how to innovate the state sphere with AI and optimize processes for local businesses.

The Czech Opportunity: from Expertise to Value

Petr remains highly optimistic about the local AI landscape. With a strong tradition of technical education and engineering excellence, the country ranks among the European leaders in AI expertise per capita. The growth story of DataSentics itself stands as one of many examples of this potential.

At the same time, Petr highlights a critical gap. While AI expertise in the Czech Republic is deep and widely available, only a relatively small share of the economic value created by AI is captured locally. Too often, knowledge and talent are not translated into locally owned products, platforms, and solutions where long‑term value is generated.