Czechia
BottleCap AI is a Prague-based artificial-intelligence lab founded in 2023 that builds "efficiency-first" large language models — an architecture-led approach designed to reason more per unit of compute, rather than simply scaling up size and cost.
Its founding team is unusually heavyweight for a seed-stage startup: Tomáš Mikolov, the researcher behind word2vec, ex-Beat Saber executive Jaroslav Beck, and David Herel. In 2025 it raised a $7.5 million seed round led by 20VC, with angels including Canva’s Cliff Obrecht, Supercell’s Ilkka Paananen and Xavier Niel. Its first product, Pulse, runs on CAP1, the company’s own foundation model.
