The Greek AI Ecosystem
A deep dive into Greece’s AI landscape
🤖 The Greek AI Ecosystem
AI is everywhere
Wherever you turn today, everyone talks about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Once cryptic acronyms like LLMs (Large Language Models), GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer), RL (Reinforcement Learning) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) have become common business and household names. As you are reading this, there’s a good chance you’re already familiar with most (if not all) of them already.
“So what does Greece have to do with all of this”, you might ask? Great question. The short answer is “more than you think.” The long one? Keep reading!
The Greek AI Ecosystem is small but strong
Despite Greece’s small size, Greek academics, scientists, developers, technologists, founders and startup operators play an outsized role in influencing the current AI wave. Some do it from within Greece, while many are making great strides abroad. Greeks all over the world are making fantastic contributions to the domain, either by leading new research or developing new tangible use cases.
Greek universities have traditionally been very strong in technical fields, including the field of AI/ML since its very infancy. Through the years, they have built a very strong pool of tech savvy engineers and researchers that have either flocked in specific domestic hubs (Athens first, then Patra, Crete and Thessaloniki) or spread their wings abroad. Many of them have been working on AI projects for years.
In 2019, 11% of researchers selected for oral presentations at the prestigious AI conference NeurIPS were Greek. The prevalence of Greek names in top conferences and journals has continued since then.
It is not a coincidence that Sequoia named Athens as a top European destination for AI talent this year. Top companies, such as Hewlett Packard and McKinsey’s Quantum Black, have been slowly but steadily moving key technical ops to Greece in past years to take advantage of the highly skilled domestic AI talent. Today, there are hundreds of job postings on Linkedin about AI/ML-related roles based in Greece.
The Greek AI ecosystem is rich, vibrant and consequential on a global level. There are three categories I want to highlight today: academia/research, startups and the wider industry.
The Greek AI Academia, aka the supreme “GreekAIdemia”
The list of top Greek AI/ML researchers is vast, so please allow me to start with a few notable selections.
First, let’s look at the MIT gang. Konstantinos Daskalakis (MIT), the most famous Greek (and perhaps the greatest living) Greek computer theorist in the world, whose most recent work lies at the intersection of Equillibrium Computation and ML. Dimitris Bertsimas (MIT), a legend in the fields of Optimization Theory, ML and applied probability. Manolis Kellis (MIT), a pioneer in Computational Biology and Principal Investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), the largest research laboratory at MIT.
There are two other OGs: Timos Sellis (Athena Research Center), a top AI and Data Science leader with experience that spans three continents (Europe, US, Australia) across both academia and industry. His recent interview at the Innovative Greeks podcast is spectacular and a must watch. Christos Papadimitriou (Columbia University), a guru in the fields of algorithms and complexity, globally renowned computer theorist and mentor of Daskalakis. He is also a co-author (and protagonist!) of Logicomix, the famous graphic novel about mathematics.
Sellis, Papadimitriou and Daskalakis are also ideators and Executive Board members of Archimedes, an emblematic Greek initiative launched in 2021 that is dedicated to the research of AI, data science and algorithms. This is a landmark new research unit supported by the Greek state that aims to turn Greece into an AI hub and help marry domestic AI talent with top researchers abroad. Archimedes is already showing great signs of promise, as it has awarded 25 scholarships for doctoral research and some of its students have won first place in a global AI competition.
Greece is also home to the Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Society (EETN), a non-profit scientific organization devoted to organizing and promoting AI research in Greece and abroad. There is also AI Catalyst, a Greek Association of AI, a network of experts that spans academia and business. Moreover, Athens is host to the The Athens Roundtable, an annual conference on AI and the Rule of Law.
The Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) at Demokritos, Greece’s National Centre for Scientific Research, is another important entity with a very strong AI scientific team. In 2020, IIT published a whitepaper with its vision about democratising AI and a proposed national AI strategy for Greece.
Many individual efforts by local experts have helped paved the way towards upskilling Greek AI talent. One of the most important contributors to the Greek AI scene has been Vasilis Vassalos, Professor at AUEB and Director of AI at Aisera. Vassalos is leading the Information Processing Lab and runs the Msc in Data Science at AUEB, both heavily AI-centric and important nodes of AI/ML excellence in the country.
If you thought that GreekAIdemia is mostly dominated by men, you guessed wrong. There is a long list of exceptional Greek women conducting leading research at the forefront of the field. Here are a few: Lydia Kavraki (Rice University), leading landmark research across robotics, AI, and biomedicine. Katerina Fragkiadaki (Carnegie Mellon University), a deep learning expert who wants to build machines that understand stories from videos. Maria Papadopouli (University of Crete), who does research at the intersection of AI and life sciences, and is also a Principal Investigator at Archimedes. Maria Vakalopoulou (CentralSupelec), a leader in biomathematics, deep learning and AI applications. Georgia Gkioxari (Caltech), who does cutting edge work at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning, and has a strong industry experience by working for 6 years at Meta. Elena Chatzi (ETH Zurich), whose work on structural mechanics is using AI models to better understand infrastructure conditions and project its future efficacy.
Greek academics and scientists conducting top level research on AI: Alex Dimakis (UT Austin), Georgios Pavlakos (UT Austin), Dimitris Papailiopoulos (UW Madison), Christos Tzamos (UW Madison), Kimon Drakopoulos, (USC), Theodoros Evgeniou (INSEAD), Efstratios Gavves (University of Amsterdam), Dimitris Tzionas (University of Amsterdam), George Pappas (UPenn), Kostas Daniilidis (UPenn), Leonidas Guibas (Stanford), Vasilis Syrgkanis (Stanford), Iro Armeni (Stanford), Efthimios Kaxiras (Harvard), Manolis Zampetakis (Yale), Sotiris Tsaftaris (University of Edinburgh), Giorgos Stamou (NTUA), Andreas-Georgios Stafylopatis (NTUA), Dimitris Fotakis (NTUA), Ion Androutsopoulos (AUEB), John Pavlopoulos (AUEB), Yannis Panagakis (UoA) Andreas Vlachos (Cambridge), Georgios Piliouras (SUTD) Chryssa Zerva (Instituto Superior Tecnico), Ioannis Mitliagkas (University of Montreal), Michalis Vazirgiannis (Ecole Polytechnique), Vicky Kalogeiton (Ecole Polytechnique), Kyriaki Kalimeri (ISI Foundation), Stratis Skoulakis (EPFL), Maria Skoularidou (Broad Institute), Nikos Trichakis (MIT), Georgia Chalvatzaki (TU Darmstadt), Antonia Tzemanaki (U Bristol), Georgios Giannakis (University of Minnesota), Margarita Chli (ETH Zurich), Kostas Alexis (NTNU), Georgios Kopanas (Inria), Stefanos Zafeiriou (Imperial).
(The above list is only indicative of the depth/breadth of work done by Greek AI researchers and is by no means exhaustive.)
The universe of Greek-founded AI companies
There are many Greek-founded startups and scaleups building amazing new capabilities and unlocking new use cases with AI. A small list, in alphabetical order, can be found below and hopefully give you a good glimpse into the diversity of companies that have been created:
Aisera - Enterprise AI Copilot
Axelera - AI hardware & software platforms for edge computing
Borealis AI - AI for finance and banking
Causaly - AI platform for drug discovery & biomedical research
Cogitat - Merging the human mind and machines via AI
Connectly - Conversational AI commerce platform for SMBs
Cortisol - Observability cost inspector for cloud computing
DeepSea - Using AI to make ships more efficient
Dyania Health - Medically interpretable NLP software
Ellogon - AI medtech startup personalizing immunotherapy
Enchatted - Conversational digital experience generator (agency)
Flexciton - Solving wafer fab scheduling to improve chipmaking
Gizmo - Learning made easy with AI generated quizes
Helvia - No code language platform for generative AI agents
Homli - Real estate brokerage platform with AI backbone
Intelligencia - Derisking development of new therapies with AI
Junior - AI copilot for consultants
Kaedim - Game-ready, on-demand 3D assets
Lambda Automata - Autonomous surveillance and detection
LANGaware - AI driven disease detection
Modl - Game development AI engine
MBB - AI powered interview-prep for consultants
Moveo - Enterprise-grade Conversational AI platform
Moverse - Human performance digitization via AI & optical sensing
Omilia - Conversational AI for customer service
Persado - Generative AI text content generation
Progressive Robotics - Smarter robots for the production line
REOR20 - AI-based flood risk mitigation
Runway - Generative AI tools for artists & content creators
Seervision - AI driven camera automation software
TheraPanacea - Reinventing cancer care through AI
Wondercraft - Effortless podcast creation, for the AI era
Important Greek AI industry players
Many people have heard about Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, the most famous AI research unit in the world (acquired by Google in 2014 for £400M). But there are many other amazing AI experts of Greek origin scattered across the globe.
At DeepMind, one will also find Yannis Assael, Michalis Titsias and Angelos Filos, all very accomplished AI research scientists. At Spotify, one will find Konstantina Palla and Athanasios Vlontzos, two young bright scientists that apply their AI research to real-world industry problems. At OpenAI, there is Fotios Chantzis, a highly seasoned Security Engineer, and Elena Chatziathanasiadou, the first PeopleOps person in the team that helped scale the company to its current shape. At Luma, we have Theo Panagiotopoulos, an expert in mixed reality, computer graphics and 3D Vision. At Cohere, there is Giannis Chatziveroglou, a bright young Engineer who is Member of the Technical Staff. At Google, we see Manos Koukoumidis, an experienced AI/ML engineer who now works on Cloud AI. Eva Agapaki, co-founder of Hatch Labs, is helping startups with their AI PMF and development. There’s also John Drakopoulos, a multi-awarded research scientist that has worked on AI problems in some of the most successful tech giants (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Ebay). Kosmas Karadimitriou, data science leader and AI/ML expert now turned serial founder. Theodoros Rekatsinas, once a Professor and co-founder of Inductiv, an ML startup acquired by Apple, where Theo is a Researcher now. And Theofanis Karaletsos, ML researcher with deep industry experience at Insitro, Uber and Facebook.
Back in Greece, we have Spyros Raptis, former founder of text-to-speech startup innoetics that was acquired by Samsung, where he now leads key research functions on AI and beyond. Sergios Karagiannakos, ML Engineer at Causaly and creator of AI Summer. Christos Varytimidis, Principal ML Engineer at Workable. And Antonis Nikitakis, AI Research Director at maritech startup DeepSea.
But it’s not just top engineers and research scientists. We also have leading AI Product Managers, like Marily Nika at Meta (who also runs a famous newsletter about her craft) and Haris Ioannou at Google. Top business operators, such as Aris Konstantinidis, one of the first business hires at OpenAI now running strategy and bizops at Cohere. And top AI policy specialists, like Sophia Ignatidou at Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), UK's independent data protection authority.
This is just a small taste of the very many Greek researchers, scientists, product managers, operators, go-to-market experts and policy specialists working today on AI.
What the “Greek AI revolution” means for the country
2023 was a landmark year for AI in Greece. Traditional media have started paying attention to the significance of the AI wave, highlighting the unique stories of its Greek stakeholders and their impressive funding rounds. More and more Greek engineers are turning into AI startup operators and founders. And large Greek companies are planning acquisitions of new AI startups to improve efficiencies.
Even the Greek government is making moves. After pushing for the creation of a national AI strategy in 2020 and using AI to curb COVID in 2021, it has just formed an AI advisory committee (led by Daskalakis) to help formulate policy recommendations and create guidelines for a long-term national strategy. It is now even entertaining creative new methods based on AI to quickly detect wildfires.
Unfortunately, the Greek political scene is still too far behind on the AI train. Three years after its initial announcement, Greece’s national strategy on AI is very much a work in progress. The new AI advisory committee is comprised by important figures in the space but also people who are completely unrelated to the task at hand. The Greek government is playing catch up with little sense of urgency at a time when the entire world is shifting daily due to AI. Unsurprisingly, the Greek opposition has few relevant things to say other than criticize the government.
The Greek AI ecosystem and its place in the world are significant not just because of what AI will (or will not) be able to do at the end of the day. No. Rather, it is important because of the many talented Greeks that work on cutting edge technologies and the forefront of contemporary science. It is imperative for the culture it helps transfer to the country and the innovation it breeds in a new generation of scientists and entrepreneurs. And it is crucial because of its potential to put Greece at a leading front on the global tech map.
Greece has a chance here to achieve something truly special.
Let’s grab it!
🙌🏼 PROOF THAT GREECE IS CHANGING.
What does the top weekly news magazine in the world, the authoritative food guide on the planet, the most admired VC fund in history and the most comprehensive startup ecosystem map today all have in common? They all gave Greece improved scores in each of the following categories: economics, food, talent, startups.
The Economist ranked Greece in the top 10 of its economic pentathlon, which measures key macroeconomic indicators across all 27 EU Member States.
Athens was awarded 13 Michelin Stars and 3 Green Stars in 2023. While still very far from France’s top spot of 600+ stars, Greek gastronomy is witnessing a renaissance.
Sequoia's lists Athens as one of the top 5 European cities for AI in its new report on Europe’s technical talent.
StartupBlink ranks Greece in the top 50 countries for startups, moving us from 48th to 46th place. Athens ranks 5th in SEE (after Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Milan).
💰 GREECE BACK ON INVESTMENT GRADE.
S&P upgrades Greece to investment grade. After a 13 year break (that felt like an eternity) in junk rating territory, Greece has finally, officially and undeniably returned to investment grade thanks to the upgrade by one of the ‘Big 3’ credit rating agencies. While the effects of this rating change have already been priced in by the market, this is a huge win for the Greek people and will open up the economy to a set of larger institutional investors that were unable to invest in the country until today. The Greek Comeback is real, but optimism should be met with caution to ensure it’s also lasting.
UniCredit offers to buy Greece’s stake in Alpha Bank, becoming the bank’s biggest investor after acquiring the 9% stake owned by the Greek bank bailout fund.
Greece achieved its best FDI performance since 2000, attracting 47 large projects in 2022 and marking a 57% increase vs 2021 with FDI in Europe only inching 1%.
Greece expected to set a 14 year investment record in 2024, thanks to growing FDI and the large contribution of subsidies/loans brought in by the Recovery Fund.
Amazon completes a solar power investment project in Aitoloakarnania as part of its clean energy push in Europe.
🚀 GREEK ENTREPRENEURSHIP ECOSYSTEM ON THE RISE.
Greek-founded startups have raised $1Β+ so far in 2023, with $270M allocated to companies with operations in Greece, according to data collected by Marathon VC. A few notable examples of recent raises by Greek-founded startups (in or out of Greece): Endor Labs ($70M Series A), TileDB ($34M Series B), Orbem ($32M Series A) Vivante Health ($31M) Rated Labs ($12.9 Series A), Lambda Automata ($6.3M Seed) Navenio ($6.3M Series A), Gizmo ($3.5M Series A), Elyos Energy ($3.0M Seed) Bota Systems ($2.5M Seed), Morphoses (€2.1M Pre-Seed), LANGaware (€2.0M Seed), GoCharlie ($2M Seed), Fileverse ($1.5M Pre-Seed), Infrared City (€1.0M Pre-Seed), Dataphoria (€0.2M Pre-Seed) UniStudents (€0.1M Pre-Seed), Perceptual Robotics (undisclosed), VODA.ai (undisclosed), Protio (fundraising), Pobuca (fundraising), WeCook (fundraising).
US tech companies keep acquihiring Greek startups, adding local talent and their tech in key functions of their global operations.
There are purportedly 48 companies doing spacetech in Greece. While most are minor players, there are some hidden gems that are worth exploring.
Walk, startup and innovation accelerator at AUTH, is supporting university spin-offs in Northern Greece. It is still accepting student submissions until today.
The steward-ownership model has landed in Greece. The civil nonprofit company STEWARDS is hoping to drive a responsible ownership ecosystem in the country.
Serial entrepreneur Nicky Goulimis has co-founded fintech startup Tunic. Still early on, but I have a feeling we will be hearing more soon from this top female founder.
Another serial entrepreneur, Alex Argyros, is building a climate-tech startup. While still on stealth mode, it looks like this new venture is starting to take great shape.
What’s the best place in Athens to work and meet startup builders? I have my own thoughts, but would love to crowdsource favorite locations from the community.
Until next time!
I would also add Persado, the first Greek company whose core business is AI!
A great summary!
As mentioned there's a lot of Greek-based AI researchers that are doing amazing stuff, every day, in emotion AI, causality, drug discovery, and a lot more.