With the notable exception of SaaS decacorn UiPath, Romanian and Bulgarian startups have often flown under the radar of international investors — but this is slowly changing.
Like most of Europe, the Romanian startup ecosystem’s development has been slowed down by the economic downturn: in 2023, the country’s startups raised $107m, after a record 2022 when they raised $263m. But its leading companies are still catching the eye of top tier investors: fintech FintechOS raised a $60m Series B extension in March this year and last year chatbot maker DRUID raised a $30m Series B led by US VC TQ Ventures and B2B SaaS FlowX.ai scored a $35m Series A in 2023 from London-based VC firm Dawn Capital.
The Bulgarian ecosystem has passed through the downturn seemingly untouched: in 2023, its startups raised $75.9m, just down from the $82.9m raised in 2022. Some notable examples include a $40m Series A for drone-maker Dronamics and a $13m Series A for EV charging management platform AMPECO. At preseed and seed stage, the funding has also been stable ($33.9m in 2022 versus $36.2m in 2023).
Sifted asked local investors who know these ecosystems inside out for the next startups to watch (which are not in their portfolio).
Karolina Mrozkova, general partner at Credo Ventures
Credo Ventures is a Prague-based early-stage VC that backs CEE startups out of a €75m fund
Veridion
Founded in 2019, Veridion is a fast-growing data solution for business intelligence. The issue with current business data providers is that data tends to be incomplete, outdated and inaccurate. This means that business leaders have to work with multiple data vendors and verify datasets with their own research. Veridion has aggregated 79m business profiles with granular information (70+ attributes), which is constantly enriched and updated, removing the need to work with multiple providers. The Bucharest-based startup raised a $6m seed round in 2023 from Romania’s LAUNCHub Ventures, GapMinder Venture Partners and Underline Ventures, Hungary’s Day One Capital, and Poland’s OTB Ventures.
BibleChat
Headquartered in Galati, Romania, BibleChat is an AI-powered app that offers guided spirituality and Bible assistance through chat and games. The users can, for example, ask religion-related questions, get personalised prayers and play thematic games, as well as engage with the community. The company raised an undisclosed amount of early-stage funding in 2024 from Slovenian VC Silicon Gardens and Romanian Underline Ventures, according to Pitchbook.
Enis Hulli, general partner at 500 Emerging Europe
500 Emerging Europe is an Istanbul-based €70m early-stage fund that backs entrepreneurs from CEE and Turkey.
Creatopy
Founded in 2021, Creatopy is an AI-driven platform that helps businesses and creative agencies easily create, personalise, scale and serve effective ads. The company is US-headquartered but has an R&D office in Romania and its founder is also Romanian. In 2023, it raised a $10m Series A from 3VC and Point Nine.
Genezio
Bucharest-based Genezio makes tools that help developers automate the creation of apps. Its platform offers the entire technical environment to start, deploy, test and scale an app. The startup, which was founded in 2023, raised a $2m pre-seed round in April from two Romanian VCs: Gapminder Ventures and Underline Ventures.
Max Gruvits, partner at Vitosha Venture Partners
Sofia-based Vitosha Venture Partners invests in early-stage and growth stage companies based in, or related to, Bulgaria from its €26m fund.
Dronamics
Dronamics is developing a network of flying cargo drones that consume less fuel than a cargo truck per 100km. The system is designed to offer same-day delivery regardless of location, and claims to be up to 50% cheaper than existing same-day air cargo options.
The startup was founded in 2014 in Sofia, and is now headquartered in London. In 2023, it raised $40m in pre-Series A funding from VCs including Founders Factory, Speedinvest, SeedBlink and Eleven Capital.
Tokinomo
Bucharest-based Tokinomo develops robots for in-store experimental marketing campaigns. Using a mixture of technologies, sensors, motion, light and sound, the device gives products on shelves a “voice and personality” that allow them to interact with the shoppers. The startup was founded in 2018. In 2022, it raised a $1.7m seed round from investors including Early Game Ventures and Instore Power Provider.
AMPECO
Sofia-based AMPECO makes a white-label and hardware-agnostic EV charging management platform that allows large-scale EV charging providers to launch and scale their business operations under their own brand. The company raised a $13m Series A in 2023 from VCs including Bulgarian LauchHub, BMW i Ventures and Cavalry Ventures.
Alexandra Todorova — head of community and platform at LAUNCHub Ventures
LAUNCHub Ventures is a Sofia-based early-stage VC fund focused on technology startups in central, eastern and southeastern Europe (CEE & SEE), and diaspora founders based in global technological hubs.
TeamGPT
Founded in 2023, Team GPT is a SaaS platform which provides a private environment for teams of between two and 5,000 people to communicate with AI. It allows the users to collaboratively learn and use GPT in one shared workspace. The startup has been bootstrapped so far, and was launched by Bulgarian founders in San Francisco.
Ggml.ai
Founded in Bulgaria in 2023, Ggml is a tensor library for machine learning to enable large AI models on commodity hardware (low-cost desktop computers or workstations). The startup raised pre-seed investment from Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, according to Pitchbook — two angel investors who have backed some other AI startups from the CEE region, including ElevenLabs.
