The Faculty of Information Technology at CTU in Prague (FIT CTU) and Datamole are celebrating ten years of collaboration that has become one of the key drivers of the technology company’s growth. It began in 2015, when faculty students Tomáš Borovička and Ondřej Stuchlík founded a startup focused on data and artificial intelligence. Datamole soon became a gold partner of the faculty and has held this position for a decade. What started as student projects has grown into a broad, long-term cooperation — from contract research and supervision of theses to joint innovation in the fields of IoT, data engineering and machine learning. This partnership has helped transform a student idea into one of Europe’s leaders in AI for industry and agriculture.
The founders of the company recall that the idea to start their own business arose spontaneously during the faculty’s Christmas party.
“Support from the faculty was incredibly important for us. FIT CTU was the only place where we could really experiment with new technologies such as AI at the time. When we founded Datamole, we didn’t have a precise vision, but we knew one thing – we wanted to work with AI and data, and to do work we enjoy with people who are a pleasure to collaborate with,” says co-founder Ing. Tomáš Borovička.
Datamole’s first office was the DataLab Science Laboratory at FIT CTU, where the team spent two years. From this academic environment, the company gradually grew, undergoing its first reorganization in 2019, surpassing 100 million CZK in annual revenue in 2022, and opening a branch in Brno. Long-term support and expert collaboration with the faculty became a major factor in the company’s successful development — through shared projects, access to talented students, and the ability to test new technologies in practice, the company was able to grow significantly faster.
Today, Datamole focuses on areas such as automated livestock health monitoring using AI, personalization of the milking process, non-invasive fruit quality control, and technologies for autonomous transport. Many of these solutions were developed together with FIT CTU students or PhD candidates, such as multi-agent simulations of dairy cattle behavior on robotic farms or predictive maintenance systems in manufacturing. A number of students and doctoral candidates have become part of the company’s team.
As part of this year’s celebration of the partnership, the event Data & AI Innovation in Industry & Agriculture Meetup was held on November 26, 2025, at FIT CTU. The event featured talks by experts from both industry and academia and opened space for discussions about the future direction of data and AI technologies in the friendly and inspiring environment of the faculty.
“Datamole is a long-term and inspiring partner for us. Their story demonstrates that quality technical education, good ideas, and strong motivation can lead to exceptional results,” says Ing. Jakub Novák, Vice-Dean for Industry Collaboration at FIT CTU.
Datamole is a prime example of a successful connection between academia and business.
“The Industry Cooperation Program at FIT CTU was created to give students and companies space to realize ideas with real-world impact. Datamole is an example of how the academic environment can help a successful technology company grow,” adds Novák.
Borovička and Stuchlík emphasize that even with more than one hundred employees, the company has kept its original philosophy.
“We want to continue doing work we enjoy with people who are a joy to collaborate with. And we want to remain a partner of FIT CTU — the faculty that shaped us and helped us grow. Without the support of the leadership at the time, especially former Dean Prof. Pavel Tvrdík and then-Vice-Dean for Industry Collaboration Assoc. Prof. Pavel Kordík, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” they add.
FIT CTU has long offered companies a unique environment where they can develop technologies, test new approaches, and push the boundaries of engineering and AI together with students and academics. A partnership with the faculty is not just a one-off collaboration — it is an opportunity to become part of an open, innovative, and technologically strong community. The faculty currently collaborates with 53 partner and sponsoring companies and is ready to expand its cooperation with new partners from industry.
