Czechia builds hardware as readily as it builds software
- Prague: 5 unicorns, a $13.9bn ecosystem
- Red Hat — about 1,200 engineers in Brno
- Prusa Research, 3D printing, founded 2012
- A national supercomputer in a coal city
Three editorial pieces on the Czechia digital market. Editorial register, no product pitch. Companion series: France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Luxembourg.
How Czechia’s tech scene grew
The Velvet Revolution
The end of one-party rule opened the Czech economy to foreign investment and private enterprise — the precondition for everything that follows on this page.
The digital economy here
Prague is the centre of gravity and the numbers are not close. Dealroom values the city’s tech ecosystem at $13.9 billion in combined enterprise value, with five unicorns and $185.5 million in venture capital invested. Productboard, founded there, raised a $125 million Series D in February 2022 at a $1.7 billion valuation.
What makes Czechia different from its neighbours is how much of its technology is physical. Prusa Research, founded in Prague in 2012, is a 3D-printing manufacturer selling hardware internationally — not a software company with a hardware side. Ostrava, a former coal and steel city in the industrial east, runs IT4Innovations, the national supercomputing centre at VŠB–Technical University, operating since 2013 as the country’s strategic high-performance computing, AI and quantum research infrastructure. Software, hardware and heavy research infrastructure are all genuinely represented rather than one narrow specialism.
Brno is the second city and the judicial capital, and it has a distinct character worth knowing: a large share of its technical workforce works inside foreign-owned R&D centres rather than local startups. Red Hat Czech, an IBM subsidiary, employs roughly 1,200 engineers there and serves as one of the company’s primary hubs for OpenShift and middleware development. Those centres chose Brno over Prague deliberately — strong technical universities, lower costs than the capital.
Where the work happens
Three cities, three genuinely different economies — the national picture flattens differences that matter a great deal to anyone selling into them.
Prague
Five unicorns and a $13.9 billion ecosystem by Dealroom’s valuation. The tech layer is internationally funded and English-comfortable, moving at a pace closer to Berlin or Amsterdam than to the rest of the country. A major tourism and hospitality economy runs alongside it, largely separately.
Red Hat Czech, Brno
Around 1,200 engineers, one of the company’s primary hubs for OpenShift and middleware. It anchors a wider cluster of multinational R&D centres that picked Brno over Prague for its technical universities and lower costs.
IT4Innovations, Ostrava
The national supercomputing centre at VŠB–Technical University, running Czechia’s strategic HPC, AI and quantum research infrastructure since 2013 — sitting inside a post-industrial coal and steel city still working through that transition.
Prusa Research
Founded in Prague in 2012 and now a significant 3D-printing manufacturer selling hardware worldwide — the clearest example of Czech technology being made rather than only coded.
Events worth knowing
The country’s main web and product event has been running longer than most of the companies on this page.
WebExpo
Running in Prague since 2008 and billed as central Europe’s largest conference dedicated to the web. The 2024 edition ran 1,600 attendees, 70 speakers and six halls at the Lucerna Palace.
How Czech businesses buy websites
Czech-first almost everywhere, with a significant English-comfortable layer inside Prague’s tech sector and Brno’s R&D centres. The gap between those two audiences is wide, and pitching the wrong one is the most common mistake here — a Prague startup and a Brno trades business are not the same customer in any respect.
Price sensitivity varies sharply by city as well. Brno buyers compare directly against Prague prices, and Ostrava is the least wealthy of the three, with expectations shaped by its industrial history far more than by the research centre next door.
Trades and home services
Czech-first and local. Name the districts and towns you cover, and keep the phone number obvious.
Clinics, salons and studios
Online booking is expected in Prague and Brno. Publish prices — Czech buyers check them before they call.
Shops, cafés and hospitality
In central Prague a large share of your customers are visitors, so English matters. Elsewhere it mostly does not — decide which you are.
Professional and B2B services
The R&D-centre layer buys in English and compares internationally. The wider business community is methodical, Czech-first and reads the detail.
How well do you know Czechia’s digital economy?
5 quick questions. Get all 5 right and you win a 10% off discount code. Every answer is somewhere on this page.
Czechia quiz · 1 of 5
How many unicorns does Prague have, by Dealroom’s count?
Why FastSites works here
A market that compares prices city by city deserves one it can see without asking. Ours is published, and a one-page site is a proportionate answer for most Czech small businesses rather than an under-sized one.
Live in days, built mobile-first, and light enough to load anywhere in the country. Tell us whether you are selling to Czech customers, to the international layer, or to both — in Prague especially that is a real decision rather than a formality.
The Czechia series
One piece per city, written in an editorial register for people assessing the market rather than shopping for a supplier.
Ostrava: an old coal city that now runs Czechia’s national supercomputer
IT4Innovations has run the country’s strategic high-performance computing infrastructure from Ostrava since 2013 — a research asset with no obvious connectio…
1 min readPrague: central Europe’s unicorn capital, and a serious 3D-printing manufacturer
Prague’s tech ecosystem is valued at nearly $14 billion.
1 min read