How Orfium is Harnessing Greece's Potential as a Global Tech Player

Greece as a Strategic and Attractive Hub for Global Tech Companies

While Athens faces competition from other European tech hubs like Lisbon, which hosts the renowned Web Summit, Greece stands out for its rich history of innovation, creativity, and invention.

Several other factors contribute to Greece’s attractiveness for business.

First of all, Greece’s strategic geographical location, which bridges Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, makes it an ideal hub for international tech companies aiming to relocate or expand their global presence. Additionally, Greece operates within time zones that are compatible with all global locations, facilitating seamless collaboration across continents. The country’s well-connected airports provide excellent connectivity, ensuring easy access and efficient travel routes for global teams and business partners.

The country is also experiencing economic and political stability having navigated a decade-long financial crisis and is attracting international investors from many parts of the world. As proof of this, the European Investment Monitor (EIM) revealed that foreign direct investments (FDI) in Greece surged by 57% in 2022, significantly outpacing the European average of 1%.

Significant improvements in infrastructure and digital transformation, along with a thriving startup ecosystem in fintech, AI, and health tech, also make Greece an appealing destination for tech investors.

Advantages for International Companies Establishing Tech Hubs in Greece

Greece boasts a well-educated and highly skilled workforce in crucial areas such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Many professionals have been trained in top-tier technical institutions, possess global experience, an entrepreneurial mindset, and are multilingual.

Greece is home to numerous science and technology parks, ICT clusters, incubators, and accelerators too, fostering a vibrant and successful tech ecosystem. Additionally, Greece’s proximity to Asia makes it an ideal location for establishing assembly facilities for ICT products, with parts sourced from China, Japan, or South Korea.

It is also financially attractive for many businesses, with the country offering generous tax incentives to attract companies. Furthermore, Greece has a relatively low cost of living compared to other European countries, and labour costs are lower than in more mature economies like Germany or the UK, making it cost-effective to hire local staff. These factors collectively create a favourable environment for international tech companies looking to establish a presence in Greece.

The Competitiveness of the Tech Talent Market in Greece: How Orfium Sets Itself Apart as an Employer of Choice

With the rise of startups in Greece and increasing investments year on year, there is a high demand for skilled professionals in areas such as data analysis, cybersecurity, software development, programming, and technical support.

The market is highly competitive, combining multinationals such as Meta and Google, as well as exciting startups, already established in Greece. That makes talent retention a top priority for any company operating in the Greek tech sector. It involves more than just offering high salaries; it includes providing a positive job environment, a healthy work-life balance, and challenging and exciting tasks.

At Orfium, we pride ourselves on having some of the most talented Product and IT teams, with the majority based in our Athens office (220 people +.) We are dedicated to making Orfium a great place to work for all our colleagues, regardless of their location, and we offer multiple benefits to support this commitment. We offer a vision for what can be achieved from Greece with a global impact and aim to demonstrate how innovation from Greece can resonate on a worldwide scale.

Our employees enjoy a balanced work-life with our ‘Work from Anywhere’ policy, where they have the freedom to choose where they work best, without being tethered to a specific location, for up to 30 days a year. We have introduced standardized healthcare for employees and their dependents across all our offices, ensuring everyone at Orfium benefits from the same level of care for their health and well-being. Additionally, our bonus scheme, reviewed every April, ensures that performance is fairly rewarded across all teams and locations.

The Return of Greek Professionals and Global Support Boosts Greece’s Tech Ecosystem

Brain drain should not be a significant concern for international companies looking to establish a presence in Greece. While Greece has experienced a long-standing brain drain that worsened during the crisis years since 2008, this trend has started to slow down in recent years.

Since 2018, and especially during the pandemic, many Greek professionals who migrated have returned to Greece. They are joining startups or tech multinationals and applying the valuable experience they acquired abroad.

In a globalised world, there are more opportunities than ever for Greek tech professionals to connect with Greek entrepreneurs, investors, and programmers around the world. The Greek diaspora is eager to support innovation and entrepreneurship back in Greece, offering their networks, expertise, and funding to tech professionals based in the country. This support helps mitigate the impact of brain drain and enhances the local tech ecosystem.

Strategic Location and AI Leadership Attract Major Tech Investments and Boost Startup Growth in Greece

As I mentioned before, location plays a part—sitting at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Greece is perfectly placed to be a global technology hub. Greece is a leader in AI, with AI researchers in all the universities, and we are thriving with AI innovation.

We have really leapt forward in recent years as well. Investment from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) has accelerated innovation and digitalisation, and it’s not by chance that major tech companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, Meta, Tesla, Nokia, Oracle, and Klarna are investing in Greece, with many, like Microsoft, establishing data and research centres near Athens. The startup scene has also exploded, with a lot more funding and investor confidence in recent years.

Investment in education and skills training has helped us deal with this rapid tech adoption, with the labour pool becoming more adapted to the digital world.

Embracing AI Development with Academic and Government Support: Orfium’ s contribution

Greece has embraced the development of AI in recent years. In academia (where I have significant experience), Greek universities and research institutions have made valuable contributions to AI research, and this has translated to the business world as well, where Greek startups are exploring AI applications across many different industries.

We have also seen support from government initiatives. The National AI Strategy will accelerate the adoption and development of AI in both the private and public sectors and increase the relevant skills and R&D.

AI and machine learning are fundamental to the development and evolution of Orfium’s technology platform, and we have been applying it since long before it was such a hot topic. Our entire vision of becoming the infrastructure of the entertainment industry relies heavily on a robust AI strategy, given that we need to process trillions of transactions to achieve our goals.

It means we can process huge amounts of data to track the use of music and enable creators to be paid from platforms that would otherwise be impenetrable.

As CTO, I manage our technology team based in Athens, with over 200 employees including data scientists, software developers, product managers, and designers. This team is immersed in AI development and forms over a third of Orfium’s workforce.

The Greek Team’s Role in Orfium’s Global Infrastructure and International Collaboration

Orfium is a global technology company with over 600 employees across nine territories in Europe, Asia and the US. The Greek team is one of the biggest and plays a crucial role across many aspects of the business, including technology development, business strategy and communications.

The core tech team is focused not just on developing Orfium’s products, but also on our broader AI and technology strategy. This means working closely with the commercial team, both here in Greece and in the rest of Europe and the US.

Close collaboration is always necessary—we need to create products that are tailored to our clients’ needs, and it is the business development teams who are in constant contact with those clients and understand perfectly what those needs are.

And, of course, we are also in contact with our Marketing and Communications team to tell our good news story and explain how our technology is working for good to ensure creators get paid from using their music on UGC and broadcast platforms.