Who will pay for Polish AI? Data centres, factories and power

Katarzyna Staroslawska

Data & AI · AI Regulation · Poland

An expert in data and artificial intelligence with over two decades at the meeting point of technology, strategy and public policy. She helps companies and public institutions design and run data-driven strategies, so that AI is not only technically sound but also answers business goals, regulatory requirements and real user needs, and so that data turns into decisions through interoperability, data quality and cross-sector collaboration. She sits on the business advisory board of the SpeakLeash Foundation and the open Bielik.ai language model, where she previously served as vice-president; she is an expert in the European Commission informal group on the next generation European Interoperability Framework, a member of the SCIANCE AI in Science Working Groups (AISWGs) at the European Commission, a member of the Sector Skills Council for IT, Telecommunications and Cybersecurity, lead of the Data for AI stream and an expert on AI in public administration in the working groups at the Ministry of Digital Affairs, an expert in the public-private partnership group at the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, a member of the IT and mHealth in clinical trials working group at GCPpl, and an external expert for EIT Health and the European Commission. She speaks and moderates at conferences and runs workshops on using data and AI for growth.

Aureliusz Gorski

Founder · Entrepreneur · Poland

Serial entrepreneur with close to two decades in venture building, known in Poland for popularising the idea of innovation districts. For several years he ran the development of the country's key ecosystem projects and took part in building innovation districts abroad, work that shaped a good part of the Polish startup landscape.

He was behind AIP Business Link, the first Polish startup ecosystem, between 2012 and 2016; the CIC innovation centre in Warsaw, from 2015 to 2023; and Venture Cafe Warsaw, a foundation supporting the local innovation community, from 2019 to 2023.

In 2023 he founded CampusAI, the world's first virtual AI-native school, and DistrictORG, a platform that uses game engines to build digital replicas of local innovation ecosystems. CampusAI was quickly recognised for its approach to teaching AI: personalised, efficient and affordable. In June 2024 it raised ten million dollars in a pre-seed round and began expanding globally.

Kacper Wikiel

Founder · Engineer · Poland

Founder of Slayer Labs, the Warsaw lab behind Fabryka AI, which turns top olympiad-grade informatics talent into an open-source applied AI team. In parallel he works as a machine learning engineer at Apple. Earlier he built retrieval-augmented generation systems at PwC, developed an ML job parallelization framework on a project for Procter & Gamble, and spent two years shipping generative AI solutions as an independent engineer. A profile where code meets production: fewer slides, more systems that actually run.