Prague, Czech Republic, 16 September 2025

Tropic Square has been selected as the winner of Nápad Roku 2025 (Idea of the Year), one of the Czech Republic’s oldest and most prestigious startup competitions. Out of 127 registered startups, the jury awarded first place to Tropic Square and its flagship product, TROPIC01, the first open and auditable secure element. The company also received the special “Kooperativa Security Has the Green Light” award.

Tomas Prejda was present at the award ceremony to accept prizes from Roman Kodera of J&T Banka and Jindrich Skrip of Kooperativa, on behalf of the whole Tropic Square organization.

Now in its 18th year, Nápad Roku recognizes the country’s most promising innovations and startups across industries. Tropic Square’s win builds on its international recognition, following two major award wins earlier this year at Embedded World 2025 in Germany. The company has also been shortlisted in the Startup of the Year category for the Elektra Awards being held in London at the end of 2025.

TROPIC01 challenges the conventional closed “black-box” approach to security hardware. Its open architecture design and accessible documentation make it auditable, enabling independent review and verification. This strengthens protection against hidden flaws and backdoors while providing a transparent and verifiable foundation for secure systems.

“Winning Nápad Roku is a milestone for our team, but more importantly, it validates a new approach to hardware security based on transparent and auditable systems,” said Jan Pleskač, CEO and Co-founder of Tropic Square. “Transparency and collaboration are not risks to security; they are the path to stronger and more trustworthy systems.”

With TROPIC01, Tropic Square aims to redefine digital trust, from consumer devices to critical infrastructure.

About Tropic Square

Tropic Square, a SatoshiLabs company, develops open-architecture secure elements for applications ranging from IoT and crypto wallets to any modern application that prioritizes security. 

By placing transparency at the core of our design philosophy, we invite industry experts and members of the open-source community to test, validate, and strengthen our security implementation. 

For more information, visit www.tropicsquare.com

For all media inquiries, contact pr@tropicsquare.com 

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