AI Firms' Share of Polish Startups Grew Tenfold Over a Decade

The Polish Economic Institute (PIE) has measured just how much artificial intelligence has reshaped the landscape of the country's startups. The answer: radically. The share of companies in the AI cluster among newly founded tech firms rose from 1.3 percent in 2013-2016 to about 13 percent in 2023-2026. That is the largest increase of any market segment analyzed.

What the numbers show

The analysis, prepared by Magdalena Lesiak of the Polish Economic Institute for the PIE Weekly Economic Bulletin (Tygodnik Gospodarczy PIE), draws on the Dealroom database. The author compared two cohorts of startups: 2,213 companies founded between 2013 and 2016, and 707 companies founded between 2023 and 2026, using data available through April 2026. The method captures how the industry structure of newly founded companies has shifted over the decade.

The result is unambiguous. No other cluster studied grew as fast as the artificial intelligence segment. By comparison, cybersecurity increased its share from 1.7 to over 5 percent, and cloud and IT infrastructure from 1.7 to over 4 percent. Those are increases of roughly two to three times, while AI grew nearly tenfold.

Other segments lose ground

Not every sector benefited from the AI wave. The media and sports sector, which accounted for 27 percent of new startups in 2013-2016, shrank to about 22 percent in the most recent period. That is a sign that founders' capital and attention are shifting toward AI technology at the expense of the classic media and entertainment models that previously dominated the domestic ecosystem.

The share of startups in health and medical technology also grew, though more modestly, from 7 to 9 percent. That shows that beyond artificial intelligence itself, interest is also growing in sectors where AI is merely one component of a broader product rather than the main focus of the business.

This shift may reflect the global trend of widespread AI adoption and growing investor interest in AI-based projects - Magdalena Lesiak, Polish Economic Institute

Poland compared with the world

PIE's analysis notes that the Polish ecosystem is following the global trend but has not developed its own specialized niches comparable to those seen in major foreign markets. Unlike ecosystems such as the American or Israeli ones, Poland lacks clearly dominant AI-native or defense tech segments, which in other countries attract distinct waves of capital and talent.

That means most Polish founders are building horizontal AI solutions, business tools, process automation, assistants, rather than narrowly specialized products for individual, demanding sectors. It is a safer model, but also one that is harder to translate into the spectacular, unicorn-level valuations that drive more specialized markets.

What it means for Polish companies

For investors and fund managers, PIE's data confirms what is already visible in day-to-day dealflow: artificial intelligence has stopped being a niche and become the default reference point for new tech companies. Almost one in eight new startups in Poland now names AI as its main area of activity, a phenomenon that was marginal just a decade ago.

For founders themselves, this means growing competition for capital and talent within the same category. A market where nearly one in eight new entities is building something AI-related requires startups to differentiate their products more clearly, since the label 'artificial intelligence' alone is no longer a distinguishing feature.

The data also point to a limitation of the Polish market: the absence of specialized niches means domestic companies less often catch the waves of capital reserved for narrow, deep technologies. That could be a useful reference point when planning expansion into foreign markets, where such niches exist and attract investors looking for specialization rather than another general-purpose AI tool.