Central and Eastern European Startups – 2025

The fifth annual report on startups and venture capital in Central and Eastern Europe. Created in partnership with Cogito Capital, Shape Capital Partners, and Vestbee

Key findings

• CEE's startup ecosystem reached a combined enterprise value of €243B in 2025, up from €18B in 2015.
• CEE has a pipeline of 3.8K VC-backed startups, of which 275+ are scaleups with €15M or more in total funding.
• CEE companies raised €2.3B of VC in 2024; the €442M raised in Q1 2025 was 78% of the Q1 2024 total.
• 48% of CEE scaleups have moved their HQ outside their country of origin, and 56% of those that relocated moved to the US.
• All ten of CEE's most active pre-seed and seed investors since 2020 are local, while five of the ten most active Series B+ investors are US funds.