- Bandits raise EUR 400K of Pre-Seed funding to deliver customizable AI solutions for enterprises
- Founders combine in-depth AI expertise with hands-on productization experience for workflow transformation
- Bandits’ modular, human-in-the-loop AI modules improve efficiency while ensuring compliance and operational safety
- Future plans focus on expanding integrations and scaling deployments to build a true AI workforce layer
This November, the well-known Czech co-founding investor Miton (supported DeepScout, among others) provided EUR 400K of Pre-Seed funding for Bandits—the provider of customizable AI solutions for enterprises.
The Birth of Bandits
The startup was founded earlier this year by Jiří Štěpánek and Kryštof Mitka. Mr Štěpánek is a serial entrepreneur with ventures like Goodbye.cz under his belt — a platform that modernized end-of-life planning and funeral services. With VC backing, it grew into a leading player in the Czech market and earned him recognition in Forbes 30 Under 30.
Jiří Štěpánek, Co-Founder at Bandits
‘In every business I’ve been part of, the same challenge kept surfacing: new technologies would come with high expectations, yet they rarely translated into meaningful changes in daily operations. Teams would adopt tools and run pilots, but core processes remained manual, fragmented, and inefficient. This recurring gap between potential and execution was my first signal that something deeper was missing,’ Mr Štěpánek recalls.
Mr Mitka’s background, in turn, is deeply rooted in applied machine learning and software development. He studied Applied Mathematics at the University of Twente and got an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam. Alongside the academic journey, he gained hands-on experience building production systems that needed to perform reliably under real-world constraints.
Among his endeavors was Undout, a health-tech startup where he worked on a combined hardware-software product from start to finish. This experience brought insights on how different the real world is from prototypes and how critical it is to create technology designed for long-term use. In parallel, Mr Mitka was involved in AI/ML research, contributing to scientific publications and outputs, with a continued focus on bridging research and practical systems that can operate safely, dependably, and continuously.
The idea for Bandits was born from observing how different companies were experimenting with AI, yet few could genuinely transform the way their work got done. They often treated AI as traditional software: purchase a tool, run a pilot, and see if it sticks. As such, what was missing wasn’t better AI models — it was system-level thinking. For AI to truly make an impact, it needed to be embedded into workflows, data, and decision-making structures.
The co-founders believed their combination of deep technical expertise and hands-on experience in productization and execution uniquely positioned them to solve the problem they detected.
‘The name ‘Bandits’ is a signal that we don’t follow traditional enterprise software approaches. AI demands a different mindset: faster iteration, tighter feedback, and deeper integration into real workflow,’ Mr Mitka tells ITKeyMedia.
Market Education Through Deployment
Seeing how many companies struggle with ‘AI as traditional software’ mindsets, an issue of market education arises. To handle it, the Bandits team starts by changing how people experience AI in their day-to-day work. Straightforwardly, this market education process happens through deployment:
- Identifying a specific, repetitive workflow with clear ownership.
- Deploying an AI module directly into the tools people already use.
- Keeping human control with explicit review steps and accountability.
- Measuring tangible outcomes, such as time saved, reduced errors, increased throughput, etc.
Bandits observe the teams’ mindset shift happening naturally when they see AI quietly taking over repetitive tasks as opposed to simply generating responses to prompts.
‘We avoid creating ‘chat experiments.’ Our modules are designed with permissions, boundaries, logging, and evaluation built in. They function as operational tools, not prototypes,’ Mr Mitka explains.
Modularity and Flexibility Across Industries
To ensure that modules remain effective across industries, Bandits build each module on a stable core that includes orchestration, evaluation, monitoring, access control, and safety mechanisms. This foundation remains consistent across industries, while adaptation happens through a flexible layer:
- Integrations into client systems.
- Domain-specific schemas and taxonomies.
- Validation and review protocols.
- Retrieval boundaries and knowledge constraints.
Kryštof Mitka, Co-Founder at Bandits
Such an approach allows Bandits to reuse proven systems while tailoring them to very different environments.
‘Modularity makes adoption manageable. Companies rarely want sweeping transformations overnight. They want one workflow automated thoroughly, followed by the next. Modules make incremental progress possible,’ Mr Štěpánek remarks.
He admits that the biggest challenges Bandits face are rarely technical. Instead, they’re organizational and structural: fragmented data ownership, unclear permissions, undocumented processes, and outdated systems with poor APIs. The way to address them is by starting small and focused: one team, one system, one workflow, one measurable result.
‘We design solutions that work within constraints rather than trying to ignore them. If APIs are limited, we create controlled integration points. If data is messy, we prioritize data readiness as a core task. Guardrails and human-in-the-loop systems are built in early to ensure scaling remains safe and reliable,’ Mr Mitka specifies.
Compliance by Design
As AI regulation evolves in Europe, Bandits build their compliance strategy around privacy and control by design. Systems get structured with strict access controls, audit trails, traceability, and clear definitions of what AI can and cannot do. AI outputs are treated as decision support, not autonomous authority.
For industries like healthcare and finance, compliance is foundational. As such Bandits have to work closely with legal and compliance teams to align system architecture with regulatory requirements from the start. This includes data residency, retention policies, permissions, logging, escalation processes, and human override mechanisms.
‘A critical aspect is deployment flexibility. Many of our modules can run on-premise or within our private cloud infrastructure. Through collaboration with CRA, we leverage dedicated GPU resources that allow sensitive data to stay fully within the EU – and often within the client’s own environment,’ Mr Mitka notes.
Early Adoption
Oliver Mead, Sales Project Manager at OKTAGON
The largest European MMA organization, OKTAGON, which communicates with fans worldwide, is among Bandits’ earliest adopters.
‘Bandits are stepping into the cage with OKTAGON to build AI-first systems directly integrated into our operations. The goal is clear: to multiply internal capacity and deliver the best possible experience to fans and partners alike. Partner reporting is a crucial, often overlooked part of the advertising game, and with Bandits we’re building a complex environment that brings new value to our partners,’ OKTAGON’s sales PM Oliver Mead states.
Why Bandits Stands Out for Investors
According to Miton’s partner Tomáš Hodboď, their investment in Bandits is driven by the belief that the AI revolution is comparable to the rise of the internet, creating a massive opportunity to redefine how work is done.
He explain in detail the reasons that convinced Miton to back Bandits:
- ‘Tapping into an Inevitable Macro Shift. Miton views the transformation of the labor market as undeniable. Just as the internet created entirely new roles, AI is set to automate manual, costly, and slow processes. They are investing in the certainty that ‘AI-first’ approaches,using LLMs and agents, are the future of efficiency.
- Solving the ‘Barrier to Entry’ Problem. A primary motivation is Bandits’ ability to solve the technical hurdles that stop companies from adopting AI. Miton values that Bandits offers a modular solution where clients do not need to:
- Train their own models.
- Build internal AI expertise.
- Deploy complex orchestration systems.
- Targeting an Underserved Market (Democratization). Miton sees high potential in bringing AI to sectors that are often left behind by deep-tech innovations. Bandits is designed to deliver immediate value to:
- Mid-sized companies.
- Non-tech industries.
- Focus on Immediate Value Rather than vague experimentation. The investment is grounded in Bandits’ ability to automate repetitive tasks immediately. By shifting the human focus from ‘doing’ to ‘validating,’ Bandits accelerates AI adoption where it offers concrete, instant ROI.’
Growth Plans
Specifically, Bandits will use this funding to:
- Expand engineering and implementation capacity to meet existing demand.
- Strengthen the platform’s core (security, monitoring, evaluation, reliability).
- Build more integrations with enterprise tools.
- Transition validated pilots into repeatable, scalable deployments.
Tomáš Hodboď, Partner at MITON
‘This also allows us to deepen investment in reliability, evaluation, and orchestration – ensuring our systems remain dependable long after deployment, not just impressive in early demos,’ Mr Mitka adds.
‘We’re working toward creating a true AI workforce layer – systems that seamlessly take over repetitive tasks and grow alongside companies over time,’ Mr Štěpánek concludes.
A pivotal shift is underway in the AI landscape—moving from experiments and hype toward tangible, workflow-level transformation, and Bandits’ work underscores it. By prioritizing modular deployment, compliance, and human-in-the-loop design, they are tackling the structural barriers that prevent enterprises from realizing practical value from AI. Such an approach has the potential to democratize automation and reshape how everyday business operations evolve in the coming decade.
Kostiantyn is a freelance writer from Crimea but based in Lviv. He loves writing about IT and high tech because those topics are always upbeat and he’s an inherent optimist!
