Hi! Welcome to the place with the latest updates on CEE Startup & VC Scene. Here, exclusively for you, we have prepared a monthly overview of closed funding rounds, new VC funds and other interesting events from the region definitely worth your attention.

Ready? Let’s dig into the regional startup and venture capital happenings!

Leading CEE Funding Rounds Closed In May

Vinted - Lithuanian online marketplace and community for second-hand clothes that had a significant influence on the whole amount of investment secured on the CEE market in May. (Series F - €250M from Accel, Burda Principal Investments, EQT, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sprints Capital).
Omnipack - Polish fulfillment service that manages logistics aspects of the business - storage, packing, delivery and therefore makes these actions faster, easier and cheaper for its customers. (Seed - €4.1M from SMOK Ventures and others).
Confiva - Slovenian online platform that offers a shift of all event content to a hybrid or a completely digital format. (Series A - undisclosed amount and participating investors).
Placeme - Polish offline analytics company predicting potential sales at specific addresses and therefore helping customers to understand where their consumers are, where their services are missing and also improve the offline communication. (Seed - €440K from b.value AG).
Digitoo - Czech end-to-end accounting automation tool with a goal to free accountants of the manual and repetitive work they go through on a daily basis and therefore help them focus on more creative activities that have great business impact. (Pre-seed - €1.25M from Kaya, Nation 1).
ReSpoVision - Polish startup using cutting-edge AI technology to analyze football competitions and therefore provides clubs, federations, bookmakers, and media with an unmatched depth of knowledge (Seed - €1M from ff Venture Capital and RKKVC).
Bunnyshell - Romanian simple and fast cloud-agnostic DevOps automation platform to deploy, scale, and optimize applications. (Seed - €1.1M from Early Game Ventures).
ProperGate - Polish startup with a goal to digitalize construction site logistics by developing a smart system automating delivery management and providing real-time information and control of materials on complex construction sites. (Seed - €820K from SMOK Ventures and Realty Corporation Limited).
Rubicon - Albanian financial technology company that provides financial solutions and develops a payment processing network. (Pre-seed - €450K from Navy Yard Capital LLC and APC Integrated).
Formation.Fi - Polish startup with a goal to revolutionize defi portfolio construction with an idea of Cross-Chain Risk Parity Smart Farming 2.0. (Seed - €2.7M from AU21 Capital, Brilliance Ventures, Genblock Capital, Genesis Block Ventures (GBV), Kenetic, KOSMOS GROUP, Momentum 6, Shima Capital, Spark Digital Capital, X21 Digital)
Licenseware - Romanian startup which specialized in managing other companies’ IT expenditures, automating the administering of software licenses and providing tailor-made solutions for users and software makers. (Seed round - €120K from Early Game Ventures).

New VC Funds From CEE

Rockstart - a well-recognized accelerator and VC firm that from its inception in 2011, invested in more than 250 startups, has announced the closure of AgriFood fund at €22M with plans to further support Agritech and Food startups.
OpenAI - has announced a $100M investment fund with the goal to support early-stage AI companies pushing the boundaries of innovation in areas such as health care, climate change, and education.
The Yield Lab Europe - has announced nearly €50M at the second close for its sustainable agrifood tech venture capital fund. Funds will be invested in seed to series A companies from Europe.
White Star Capital - has announced the final closing of its €40M Digital Asset Fund (DAF) with the goal to invest into early-stage crypto-networks and blockchain-enabled businesses.

Interesting Events In CEE

Vernadsky Challenge - is an engineering startup competition, which has been held since 2015 by an initiative of the patron and co-founder of NGO "Noosphere Association'' - Max Polyakov. This year finals will be held on 15-16 June and 10 finalists in the fields of space technology and active bioelectronics will compete for the grant funding.
Applied Power Electronics Conference - is a conference focused on the practical and applied aspects of the power electronics business. The event will be presented in a fully virtual format from the 14th to the 17th of June, with a mixture of educational content, a virtual exposition, and networking opportunities.
Machinę Learning Week Europe - During a conference held from 14th to 18th of June hundreds of data scientists, analytics managers and AI visionaries from pharma, manufacturing, marketing, insurance, and many more sectors will discuss most important topics, insights and trends in machine learning.
Tech Camp Budapest x Untold Stories - is a unique program designed with a shared belief in the power of hands-on, participant-driven workshops and community learning. Workshops on B2B Sales, Product Management and Fundraising will be run on 8, 15 and 22 June respectively.
WeAreDevelopers World Congress - is one of the largest annual conferences for software developers, engineers, software architects and other tech-related professionals. The event will be run fully online from the 28th of June to the 1st of July.
SaaSGrowth - is an event taking place on the 7th of July and designed especially for B2B sales and revenue leaders. The initiative gathers together sales and marketing professionals alongside VCs, CEOs and founders.

Furthermore, worth your attention on the CEE startup scene is the acquisition of Twisto by Australian Fintech company - Zip. Twisto is a Czech platform that allows customers to shop now and pay their liabilities later. The acquisition deal is expected to conclude in Q4 of this year.

What’s more Polish Ministry of Finance plans to introduce tax relief for investors in venture capital funds and business angels, so they will be able to deduct up to 50% of the investment amount from the tax base. The Proposal was prepared by the Polish Ministry of Finance in cooperation with PFR Ventures.

Stay tuned for the next summary!

#2 CEE Startup & VC News - May 2021

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