UiPath to develop AI at AGH University. Romanian giant seeks to “pave the way for Polish LLMs”

UiPath, the Romanian start-up, and the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków have announced a partnership they describe as strategic. Polish specialists are to support the company in conducting research and developing artificial-intelligence technologies, including large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Poland’s home-grown Bielik. In return, the company will provide access to its tools and share its know-how.

As Aleksander Kania, UiPath’s regional vice-president for Poland, acknowledged, the firm wants to draw on the university’s research expertise. The aim is to take part in the race to automate processes and roll out innovation across Polish business and public institutions.

“By combining UiPath’s enterprise-grade automation platform with AGH’s research expertise, we are paving the way for the use of Polish AI models in addressing the country’s most pressing challenges,” the executive said in a press release.

From research to practice: AGH to make the fruits of its work available to business

AGH sees the partnership as an opportunity to further develop research into large language models (LLMs), while at the same time testing the results in practice – namely, how these models perform in day-to-day use by companies.

“As AGH, we bring to this initiative many years of experience in working on LLMs designed to analyze vast collections of documents. Now our priority is practical deployment,” said Marek Kisiel-Dorohinicki, dean of AGH’s Faculty of Computer Science.

Under the agreement, AGH researchers will use UiPath’s new Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) service. The platform allows users to connect their own LLM to the system and make it available to others, regardless of whether it runs in the cloud, on a company’s infrastructure or on university servers. In practice, models developed at AGH can be readily applied in real-world business projects. This will give interested firms access to cutting-edge technology, while allowing the model’s creators to see how it performs in use and what requires improvement.

The partnership also involves joint research projects, including the integration of Cyfronet – the university’s internal supercomputing network – with the BYOM system, as well as the development of solutions for UiPath technology tailored to the Polish language. In addition, both institutions plan to organize educational initiatives, training programs and workshops focused on the deployment of artificial intelligence and automation.

Polish universities are waiting for business. So far, the state has done most of the backing

The agreement between UiPath and AGH appears to be the largest collaboration of its kind announced to date by a Polish university. While projects designed to support the development of AI are nothing new for researchers in Poland, they have more often been driven by the state – or by government-sponsored programs – than by business.

One example is the Gaia AI Factory project. With a total budget of EUR 70m, financed equally by Poland and the European Union, the program envisages the creation of infrastructure and an ecosystem to support the development of cutting-edge technologies. To this end, a consortium of leading research centers has been established, including AGH, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Gdańsk University of Technology and the University of Warsaw.

A separate initiative is the Piast AI Factory in Poznań, developed by Poznań University of Technology, Adam Mickiewicz University and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. As part of the EU-backed “AI Gigafactories” project, the universities have secured funding to build infrastructure comprising more than 1,000 graphics cards, designed to unlock new applications for AI computing. According to the plan, comprehensive services based on the Poznań supercomputer are to be launched in Q3 2026.

These, of course, are initiatives involving Polish universities. A separate category consists of private ventures, which are no less ambitious. One notable example is Beyond.pl, a data-centre operator. In September, the company announced the launch of the largest AI factory in Central and Eastern Europe. Polish LLMs are also being developed outside academia, with the Bielik model created by the SpeakLeash Foundation among the most prominent examples.

UiPath is a heavyweight. The company was Central and Eastern Europe’s first unicorn

Returning to AGH’s partner, it is a fact that the Polish university has attracted a major player in the technology market. When UiPath listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, it reached a market capitalization of USD 1.34bn. In doing so, it became the first unicorn – a company valued at more than USD 1bn – to emerge from Central and Eastern Europe.

The firm specializes in process automation, with a strong emphasis on the use of AI agents. UiPath describes itself as a global leader in the field. With a valuation approaching USD 10bn, it ranks among the ten most valuable start-ups in the AI sector.

The company was founded in 2005 in Bucharest, Romania by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă, initially as a small team of developers building software. In 2015 the start-up formally adopted the name UiPath and began its rapid expansion in the market for RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tools.

Key Takeaways

1. UiPath and AGH regard their partnership as strategic. For the start-up, it is an opportunity to tap into the research expertise of Polish scientists; for the university, it offers a chance to make the results of its work available to companies that can provide the data needed to further develop LLMs.
2. AGH is part of the consortium building Poland’s AI gigafactory under the Gaia AI Factory project. A similar program is being pursued by universities in Poznań together with a university in Toruń, which are developing the Piast AI Factory. Both initiatives are backed by public funding and European Union support.
3. AGH’s partner is a true heavyweight among AI start-ups. UiPath made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, and since then its value has increased almost tenfold – from USD 1.37bn to around USD 10bn in market capitalization today. The company is also a global leader in automation powered by AI agents.