Chelsea owner invests millions in Slovak AI firm with Czech team

US investment firm Eldridge, owned by businessman Todd Boehly, has bought half of Slovak tech company Sudolabs — a deal valued at tens of millions of dollars that, by the company's own estimate, could become one of the largest publicly disclosed AI deals in the history of Czechia and Slovakia.

Sudolabs, headquartered in Košice, builds complex artificial intelligence systems for large corporations — including agentic AI systems capable of autonomously handling complex tasks such as large-scale data migrations. According to estimates by the analytics portal Latka, the company's revenue last year stood at around $14 million, with its overall valuation approaching $42 million. Given its rapid growth and investors' willingness to pay a premium for AI assets, CzechCrunch suggests the company's actual valuation in the deal could have been significantly higher — in the tens of millions of dollars — with Eldridge's investment for a 50 percent stake potentially ranging from $25 million to $50 million.

The remaining 50 percent of the company stays with its founders — Jozef Petro, Jozef Maruščák, Ján Kostelanský, Pavol Madar and Ján Kokavec — who will continue to run Sudolabs' day-to-day operations.

Eldridge is a major global investor managing more than $75 billion in assets. Its portfolio, besides the Chelsea football club and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, includes the film studio A24, the Aman Group hotel chain and the space company Isar Aerospace. Commenting on the deal, representatives of the holding said Sudolabs has built a “differentiated platform” that helps organizations deploy AI reliably and at scale.

The company started out building apps for Californian startups before gradually shifting its focus to deploying AI systems for large businesses — in that sense it can be compared to the recently acquired startups Tomoro (bought by OpenAI) and Fractional AI (bought by Anthropic). “Leading AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are building their own AI deployment platforms, recognizing that models alone are not enough — what matters most are the services that help businesses turn AI into real savings and productivity gains,” says Jozef Petro, head of Sudolabs. According to him, the partnership with Eldridge should help the company grow into a global leader in AI deployment while keeping its headquarters in Slovakia.

Although Sudolabs is formally registered in Slovakia, a significant part of its team works in Czechia — of its 70 engineers, roughly a fifth are based there, and the company works with Czech venture funds and startups, including Supernova and E2B. More than 90 percent of its revenue comes from abroad, with around 70 percent from the US market: Sudolabs operates in more than ten countries and serves around 50 clients.