Top VC Funds Investing in CEE Founders in 2026
This is a list of funds actively investing in CEE founders in 2026 — pre-seed first, then seed. The filter is simple: who backs founders from the region, wherever the fund happens to be headquartered. That’s why you’ll see firms with offices in New York, Istanbul, and Palo Alto sitting next to Warsaw and Sofia. Geography of the check-writer matters less than geography of the founder.
Figures below reflect the most recent public fund data. Where a fund is between vintages or transitioning, it’s flagged — because “raised a big fund three years ago” and “writing new checks today” are not the same thing.
Pre-seed
SMOK Ventures — San Francisco / Warsaw / Kyiv. Pre-seed and seed, $100K–1M, ~$250K average, standard YC SAFE for Delaware C-corps with Eastern European founders. Software, devtools, gamedev, and vertical AI; CEE founders and diaspora. Leads roughly three-quarters of its rounds. Twelve investments in 2025 made it one of the region’s most active funds; Fund II portfolio sits around 33 companies, with Fund III in preparation. The angle: bridge CEE founders to Silicon Valley and Asian capital. Portfolio includes Authologic, Shen AI, 57 Hours, Juo, Alokai and Instreamly.
Credo Ventures — Prague / Kraków. Pre-seed, $1–5M first check, founder-first and deliberately sector-loose. Closed the $88M Credo Stage V fund in early 2026. Backed UiPath and ElevenLabs at pre-seed. The heavyweight of the tier — biggest fund, deepest track record.
https://www.credoventures.com/
Underline Ventures — Bucharest. Pre-seed and seed, $250K–1.5M, leads. Eastern Europe’s first solo-GP, private-only fund (Bogdan Iordache), backed by operators from UiPath, Telerik, and Bitdefender rather than institutions. Concentrated, explicitly anti-spray-and-pray. Note: it’s a single ~€20M debut vehicle from 2022, so 2026 pace depends on remaining dry powder or a second fund.
Bitspiration VC — Kraków. Pre-seed and seed, roughly $255K–1.3M, leads more than half its rounds. Reality over hype. Deep tech and hardware — the science-heavy end of the early-stage market. Founded 2016, frequent co-investor with SMOK. If the rest of this tier skews software, this is where the physics lives.
e2vc — Istambul / San Francisco (formerly 500 Emerging Europe). Pre-seed and idea-stage, up to $1M, often the first institutional check. First-closed a €100M Fund III in Q1 2026 across CEE, the Baltics, and Türkiye. Recent activity leans toward Turkey and gaming.
BADideas.fund — CEE, distributed. Pre-seed and seed, €50–300K syndicate checks on top of a ~€22M fund. Sector-agnostic with a B2B SaaS and marketplace tilt. Members are operators from Wise, Bolt, Pipedrive, Vinted, and similar. Fast, no-frills decisions; the syndicate-plus-fund structure is the differentiator. Co-invested with SMOK in Juo, and Workee.
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Seed-first (sometimes pre-seed)
Bek Ventures — Istanbul / New York (formerly Earlybird Digital East Fund). Pre-seed to seed+, high-conviction and deliberately concentrated. Closed a $250M Fund III in late 2024, three times oversubscribed. UiPath and Payhawk in the track record. Portfolio leans Turkey-heavy. Co-invested with SMOK at Alokai.
Inovo — Warsaw. Mainly seed, up to ~€3M initial with follow-ons to €10M, leads. Investing from a €107M Fund III (2022). Booksy, Preply, Spacelift, Tidio. Positions itself as the CEE alternative to a tier-one US seed fund. The 2022 vintage means it’s mid-to-late in its investment period.
Market One Capital — Warsaw / Barcelona. Pre-seed and seed first-check, €200K–1.5M. Pan-European, focused exclusively on marketplaces and network-effect platforms. Fund II is now follow-on-heavy and Fund III is in preparation — still writing new check, but in transition.
Movens Capital — Warsaw. Multi-stage, pre-seed to Series A+, €0.25–3M, leads most rounds. €60M Fund II, backed by the EBRD and PFR, and a frequent co-investor with SMOK. Fresh capital, clean entry.
Kaya VC — Prague / London. Pre-seed to Series A, €1–3M initial with follow-ons to €20M; generalist. First-closed a €70M Fund V in 2025. Two homegrown unicorns in Rohlik and Docplanner.
LAUNCHub Ventures — Sofia. Seed first-check, up to €3M, 90+ companies backed across CEE. The Bulgaria and Southeast Europe anchor.
Eleven Ventures — Sofia. Pre-seed and seed, €300K–1M initial and up to €6M over a company’s life, leads first rounds. Fintech, health, and AI across Southeast Europe. Payhawk is the unicorn.
Silicon Gardens — Ljubljana / Palo Alto. Pre-seed and seed first-check founders-for-founders. Investing from a Fund III at €33M in assets, topped up €10M by the Slovenian Technology Fund in late 2025. Adria region and wider CEE, focused on marketplaces, network-effect businesses, and B2B SaaS — a thesis close to Market One’s, differentiated mainly by geography.
Have we missed any funds actively deploying in pre-seed and seed stage in Central & Eastern Europe? Leave the fund names and the why in comments!
