Ondřej Vlček sells Czech AI startup Aisle to Canada’s Cohere

Czech billionaire Ondřej Vlček has announced that his startup Aisle will become part of the Canadian artificial intelligence lab Cohere. He made the news public at the “Better Czechia” (Lepší Česko) conference in Karlovy Vary.

Exactly a year ago, on the same stage, Vlček spectacularly presented Aisle to the public. For the eleven months before that, the project had been developed in complete secrecy by a team of more than thirty people. Now the entrepreneur once again saved the main news for the audience: the sale of the company happened very quickly, and Vlček, it seems, is already ready to explain why he decided to part with the project so early.

The deal shows how quickly Czech technology projects in AI are attracting the attention of global players. What will happen to Aisle next, within Cohere, remains one of the main questions of this story.

Other participants in the conference include banker Slavomír Beňa, who left the management of a large international bank for the “more local” J&T Banka. In his words, had he stayed, he could have played it safe, but he wanted to build. Beňa urged people not to be afraid of risk: in the US, a person gets credit for trying even if they fail, whereas in Czechia after a second or third failure people are already written off.