České Radiokomunikace, the Czech state backed telecom, has named a former deputy industry minister to coordinate a domestic AI compute build with Spanish quantum AI vendor Multiverse Computing, sketching a model mid sized European governments are weighing as they try to add…
Jan Kavalírek has spent the last two years in the rooms where Czech AI policy gets written. He was the country's deputy industry minister, then its first Government AI Envoy in 2025, then its 2025 AI Personality of the Year, then, from January 2026, CEE Ambassador for AI and New Technologies. This month he took a new title: director for EU AI Affairs at České Radiokomunikace, the Czech state-backed telecom and infrastructure operator. His brief is the Czech AI Gigafactory, a state-aligned effort to put domestic compute capacity for training large AI models inside the country and within reach of its Central and Eastern European neighbours. The personnel file tells you what the announcement actually is.
České Radiokomunikace, routinely abbreviated CRA in Czech reporting, is not a ministry and not a regulator. It is a commercial operator, historically the carrier of Czech broadcasting signals, that has spent the past decade repositioning itself as public-interest infrastructure for compute and connectivity. In October 2025 the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade formally backed the AI Gigafactory and filed the country's application at EU level, the ministry said in a press release on the application. A follow-up ministry release confirmed the first inter-ministerial coordination meeting on the project. In this arrangement, CRA is not a neutral host. It is the operator the Czech state has chosen to sit between commercial partners, the ministries and the European Commission, and Kavalírek is, by title and background, that interface.
The most concrete piece of the announcement so far is the memorandum CRA signed with Multiverse Computing, a Spanish quantum-inspired AI and optimisation software vendor. The strategic partnership MoU commits both sides to cooperate on the Czech AI Gigafactory and on building, in the parties' own framing, sovereign AI capacity for the Czech Republic and the wider CEE region. Czech-language reporting on Lupa.cz has put the potential Multiverse contribution at roughly CZK 1.2 billion plus software; that figure rests on a single Czech-language source and has not been confirmed by CRA, Multiverse or the Czech government in English. Roles, milestones, equity and governance of the eventual facility, branded AIGF CZ, remain undisclosed, and describing the MoU as a binding contract or a confirmed build commitment would go past the public record.
The physical anchor is Prague Gateway DC, CRA's data-centre project in Praha-Zbraslav and Jíloviště, which the company describes as more than 2,000 racks across 12 data halls with a 26 MW power draw, designed to be ready for training large language AI models. In later phases, CRA has said, that site could scale to roughly 77 MW and the compute equivalent of about 100,000 H100 chips. Both the 77 MW and the 100,000 H100 figures are company projections, not installed capacity, and the specific accelerator or compute stack that AIGF CZ will actually run has not been publicly disclosed. The quantum-AI framing around the Multiverse partnership comes from Multiverse's general positioning as a quantum-inspired software vendor rather than from any disclosed AIGF CZ technology roadmap.
Read together, the personnel file, the MoU and the existing data-centre project sketch a distinct model for how a mid-sized European government is trying to add AI capacity without matching hyperscaler capital expenditure. Instead of a single grand build, the Czech state has picked a specific operator, embedded a trusted former official inside it, signed an MoU with a European software vendor, and applied for EU selection under the AI Gigafactory framework. Three things the announcement has not yet resolved will decide whether the approach scales: whether the CRA-Multiverse MoU converts into a binding build commitment, whether the CZK 1.2 billion software-plus-cash figure holds up to English-language confirmation, and whether the eventual facility ships with a stack Czech and CEE customers can actually use. The Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade has filed the EU application. The next read is whether Brussels signals that the project clears the AI Gigafactory selection bar, and whether Multiverse's quantum-AI software has a concrete role on the compute floor, not just in the consortium brochure.