Innovate Prague 
Innovation is an important source of solutions and new opportunities in a world facing increasingly complex economic, social, and environmental challenges. As education and research capacity have expanded, more people and institutions have become able to contribute to this process. In the European Union alone, around 4.6 million people worked in research and development in 2021, with more than one-third employed in higher education. Universities therefore represent a major concentration of the knowledge, skills, and talent from which innovation can emerge.
Their contribution extends beyond research itself. An international OECD study found that academic founders were involved in around 15% of the startups examined, with an even higher share in biotechnology. Researcher-founded startups were also more likely to patent, while student-founded companies were more likely to introduce radical innovations. This suggests that academic environments shape not only how many businesses are created, but also the type of knowledge and innovation they bring to the market.
However, the transition from knowledge creation to successful commercial application is neither automatic nor linear. Formal spinouts represent one route through which research institutions bring knowledge to the market., Alumni-founded companies, including those established independently from their former universities, provide another channel through which education, expertise and networks translate into entrepreneurial activity. Together, these pathways show how research, education, expertise, and academic networks can support entrepreneurship beyond the boundaries of the institution itself.
This publication explores how Prague’s research and education base is connected to entrepreneurship. It begins with the city’s research capacity and performance in competitive European funding, then examines universities as sources of entrepreneurial talent. The final part considers selected outcomes in company creation and growth, including high-growth alumni-founded businesses and formal spinouts.
Czechia and Prague’s research base
Czechia’s research investment in European comparison
Research and development expenditure varies considerably across Europe. In 2024, R&D expenditure in the European Union was equivalent to 2.2% of GDP. Only six Member States reached or exceeded the EU target of 3%, with the highest levels recorded in Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Finland, Germany and Denmark. At the other end of the distribution, seven Member States spent 1% of GDP or less on R&D.
Czechia occupied an intermediate position. Its R&D expenditure was equivalent to around 1.8% of GDP, well below the levels recorded in neighbouring Austria and Germany but above Poland and Slovakia and close to Hungary.
R&D expenditure indicates the scale of resources devoted to research, but it does not directly capture the ability of researchers and institutions to compete for high-level international funding. European Research Council funding provides a complementary perspective. ERC grants are among Europe’s most prestigious research awards, supporting investigator-led frontier research selected through international peer review on the basis of scientific excellence.
Between 2021 and 2025, researchers hosted by Czech institutions received 54 ERC grants with a combined EU contribution of €114 million. Within the Visegrád group, Czechia ranked among the strongest performers. Poland received slightly more grants, with 60 compared with 54, but Czech institutions attracted a higher total contribution, €114 million compared with €110.5 million. Czechia also recorded the highest proposal success rate among the V4 countries, at 10.4%.
A wide gap nevertheless remained between Czechia and its higher-performing neighbours, Austria and Germany. Austrian institutions received almost five times as many grants as Czech institutions, while Germany operated at a much larger scale across all indicators. Taken together, the figures place Czechia among the stronger research systems in the V4, while still below the investment intensity and ERC performance of the leading neighbouring countries.
Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the European Research Council (ERC) Dashboard
Prague’s position within the Czech research system
Research activity within Czechia is unevenly distributed across regions. In 2024, Prague accounted for 41% of national R&D expenditure approximately CZK 60.2 billion, more than twice the share of the South Moravian Region and by far the largest regional total.
The regional distribution also reflects different institutional profiles. Prague combines major universities, institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences, public research organisations and private-sector research activity. The South Moravian Region is centred on Brno’s university and research base, while the Central Bohemian Region includes specialised research infrastructures such as ELI Beamlines and HiLASE. The figures therefore show not only differences in scale, but also distinct regional models of research capacity.
Source: Czech Statistical Office, R&D expenditure: R&D expenditures by region, basic indicators in 2024.
The same regional imbalance appears in ERC funding. Between 2021 and 2025, institutions based in the capital received €67.4 million, more than three times the €21.5 million awarded in the South Moravian Region. In South Moravia, Masaryk University was the principal recipient, alongside Brno University of Technology, St Anne’s University Hospital and research institutes. Funding in the South Bohemian Region was associated with institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the European Research Council (ERC) Dashboard
Within Prague, most ERC funding went to two parts of the research system. Prague-based institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences accounted for 52% of the capital’s total, while Charles University received 39%. Together, they represented 91% of ERC funding awarded to Prague institutions. The remaining funding was divided between the Czech Technical University and the Czech University of Life Sciences.
The result points to the specialised expertise of the Academy’s institutes and the central role of Charles University in frontier research. It also shows that Prague’s strong overall research base does not translate into an even distribution of ERC funding across the city’s institutions.
Prague also performs strongly in the wider European comparison. The 2025 Regional Innovation Scoreboard classified Prague as a Strong Innovator, with a score equal to 110.1% of the EU average and a ranking of 75th among 241 European regions. Its strengths include human capital and scientific cooperation, while weaker results are recorded in some indicators related to business innovation and intellectual property. This supports the picture of a city with a strong research base but less consistent results in turning that capacity into commercial outcomes.
Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the European Research Council (ERC) Dashboard
2. Universities as a source of entrepreneurial talent
2.1 Startup founders by university
Universities represent an important source of entrepreneurial talent, however, the number of identified alumni founders differs widely across the selected cities, with Berlin far ahead of the rest. Berlin universities account for more than 4,000 founders, almost twice the total recorded for Warsaw. The other cities record much lower totals. Prague records around 1,100 founders, placing it close to Brussels and Budapest and above Vienna.
No single Prague university dominates the city’s total. Charles University, the Czech Technical University and the Prague University of Economics and Business each account for roughly one-third of the founders associated with the city’s principal universities. Prague therefore differs from cities where entrepreneurial alumni are concentrated predominantly in one institution. This reduces dependence on a single institution and gives the city a mix of general academic, technical and business expertise. 
Source: Dealroom; visualisation by the author
3. Selected outcomes of university-linked entrepreneurship
Larger university-linked founder populations do not always translate proportionally into later company outcomes. Berlin retains a wide lead, but the ranking among the other cities changes when the comparison is narrowed to companies that have raised substantial external financing.
3.1 Alumni founders whose companies raised more than €10 million
Berlin records the largest absolute number of alumni founders linked to ventures raising more than €10 million. Prague records 76, equivalent to about 6.7% of its identified founder base. Vienna provides the clearest contrast: despite a founder base of a similar order, it records 185 such founders, or about 15.9%. The difference indicates that Prague’s entrepreneurial base is sizeable, but a smaller proportion is associated with ventures that have reached this financing threshold.
Within Prague, the strongest result is associated with the Czech Technical University, followed by Charles University and the Prague University of Economics and Business. This distribution mirrors the breadth of the founder base, but CTU’s higher share suggests that technical and engineering networks may be particularly important for ventures capable of attracting substantial external capital.
Source: Dealroom; visualisation by the author
The financing indicator should be interpreted as an outcome associated with university alumni rather than as a direct measure of university performance. Funding depends on sector, company age, location, market conditions and investor access as well as founder background. Even with this limitation, Prague’s lower share relative to Vienna points to a potential scale-up gap between the creation of university-linked ventures and their progression to larger financing rounds.
4. University spinouts
University spinouts represent a narrower form of entrepreneurship than alumni-founded companies. They are created to commercialise knowledge, technology or intellectual property developed within a university and therefore maintain a direct institutional link to the research base. Their growth, however, is often difficult. A European Commission report found that only 11% of EU deep-tech spinouts reach valuations comparable with other startups, highlighting the importance of growth finance, clear intellectual-property arrangements and sustained institutional support.
Berlin stands far above the other cities in the comparison, with more than 670 spinouts across the universities shown. Most are associated with Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt University and TU Berlin, each accounting for roughly 190 to 240 companies. Vienna ranks second with 105 spinouts, followed by Brussels with 83 and Warsaw with 36.
Prague records about 1.4 spinouts per 100 identified founders, compared with approximately 8.9 in Vienna and 8.5 in Brussels. These ratios are not literal conversion rates because the indicators measure different populations, but they reveal the relative weight of formal commercialisation in each city’s university-linked profile. Prague’s activity is therefore much more strongly expressed through alumni entrepreneurship than through firms created directly from university research.
Taken together, the indicators identify a specific structural gap. Prague has a broad university-linked talent base, but its relative position weakens when the analysis moves from founder formation to large financing outcomes and especially to formal spinouts. 
Source: Dealroom; visualisation by the author
Dedicated support for university spinouts remains limited in Czechia. According to the OECD, only three Czech universities had established separate organisations to create and develop spinout companies. Reforms introduced in 2024 also aimed to strengthen university technology-transfer offices and expand early-stage funding for new spinouts.6 Recent initiatives in Prague therefore form part of a broader effort to improve how research is turned into new companies.
Overall comparison by city
Prague has a sizeable university-linked founder base, but weaker conversion into high-growth ventures and spinouts. Prague records 1,134 identified founders, close to Vienna’s 1,162, but only 76 founders linked to ventures raising more than €10 million and 16 spinouts, compared with 185 and 103 respectively in Vienna. This divergence indicates that similar founder volumes can produce very different outcomes. This suggests that Prague’s main weakness is not entrepreneurial talent, but the mechanisms that connect research, entrepreneurial teams, finance and company formation.
Source: Dealroom; visualisation by the author
Prague at a glance
Recent developments indicate growing institutional attention to the formation and development of research-based companies in Prague.
In February 2026, the Czech Academy of Sciences announced the establishment of CAS Innovations, a joint-stock company created to connect research teams with entrepreneurs and investors and to support the commercialisation of research results. Eight Academy institutes joined as the first shareholders, with participation expected to expand across the Academy’s wider network. The company will introduce more systematic procedures for forming technology companies, attracting external capital and developing research projects through an incubation programme.
In 2026, the Czech Technical University introduced the TRUE Venture Builder, a new structure intended to identify promising student and research teams and support them through market validation, prototype development and early investor engagement. Its first commercialisation programme selected 16 participants from across the university, working on projects in areas including cybersecurity, biomedicine and automated surgical technologies.
In March 2026, researchers from the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics at CTU established RoboX. The company commercialises software that uses CAD data to automate the preparation of robotic welding, reducing the programming effort required for small-batch and customised manufacturing.
For questions about the data, methodology, or content of this report, please contact:
MSc. MSc. Katarina Benkova
Analyst for Space and Aviation / Prague Innovation Institute
benkova@prahainovacni.eu