Central and Eastern European startups – 2025 in review

Keynote presented at Vestbee CEE VC Summit, Warsaw March 2026.

Key findings

• CEE startups raised €2.3B in VC in 2025, with the recovery starting in Q4 2025 at €756M and continuing into €952M in Q1 2026.
• The combined enterprise value of the CEE ecosystem reached an all-time high of €274B in 2026, made up of €142B private and €132B listed startups.
• AI took 52% of CEE VC investment in 2025, up from 23% in 2024 and above Europe's 34%, while deep tech rose from 17% to 37%.
• On 2021-2026 rounds, CEE firms are 90% of the ten most active pre-seed and seed investors, 40% at Series A and 10% at Series B+, so scaling capital comes from abroad.
• CEE produces 120% of the European average in enterprise value per euro of VC raised, on 40% of the European average VC funding per unit of GDP.