Poland has consistently ranked among the most active startup ecosystems in CEE in terms of deal activity. According to Vestbee data, Polish startups raised approximately €305 million across 138 funding rounds in the first three quarters of 2026. We also recorded more rounds than startups in any other CEE country in every quarter since the end of 2025, accounting for 48 of the region's 118 rounds in Q3 2026 alone.
Yet the funding volume does not necessarily mean the largest amount of capital, and even more importantly, Poland's biggest wins of the year were booked abroad. ElevenLabs, founded by Poles in London, raised $500 million at an $11 billion valuation in February. ICEYE, founded by a Polish-Finnish team in Helsinki, followed with €450 million in Q2.
At home, the Polish market is mostly driven by seed deals, with much participation of foreign capital at growth stages. Meanwhile, several new VC funds that raised in 2026 are now entering or progressing through their investment periods.
How much VC funding did Polish startups raise in 2026 so far?
Polish startups have raised €305 million across 138 rounds so far in 2026, according to Vestbee data. Here is how the market changed QoQ:
- In Q1 2026, companies raised €72 million across 46 rounds. Poland led in the CEE by deal count, but was outpaced by Czechia and Ukraine in capital volume. It was 32% less than a year earlier, even though the number of deals rose by 18%.
- Q2 was Poland's strongest quarter. Startups raised €140 million across 44 rounds, making Poland the only CEE country to lead on both deal count and capital. Viktor's $75 million Series A accounted for just under half of that total.
- In Q3, activity rose to 48 rounds, which constituted 41% of all rounds in CEE. Funding, however, fell 34% to €93 million, or to 15% of the regional total.
Every quarter, the same pattern emerges: many small rounds, but few large ones. In Q1, 35 of 46 deals were seed rounds, 60% more than a year earlier, and no growth-stage deals at all. In Q3, 37 of 48 deals were at pre-seed or seed, with a median round of about €1.1 million, according to PFR Ventures and Inovo.vc.
The whole picture of the Polish market depends on whether we include the mega rounds of ElevenLabs and ICEYE as its successes
Including ElevenLabs' €427 million, PFR puts Q1 investment at €500 million — more than Poland's full-year totals for 2023 (€468 million) or 2024 (€486 million). Add ICEYE's €450 million in Q2 — and Polish-founded companies passed €0.9 billion within six months.
This represents the externalisation of CEE talent — companies built by Polish founders, but financed and headquartered abroad. In Q3 2026, other Polish-founded startups followed a similar path, raising significant capital whilst headquartered abroad: Pathway (Palo Alto), F13 (UK) and Immersion Labs (US).
However, on a positive note, there are signs that talent and capital are flowing back, hopefully creating a positive flywheel effect of reinforcement within the ecosystem. ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski now backs Polish startups as an angel, including Replenit, Elastics and Synthos Green Energy. ICEYE is the strategic partner of a new space fund launched by BGK, Poland's state development bank. PFR's data also shows former employees of Booksy, Wellbee and Inovo.vc founding their own startups, such as Mos Health, Zynt and Mimira.
Poland's startup ecosystem in 2026 — key facts
- Most active CEE market by deal count in every quarter since Q4 2025 (54, 46, 44 and 48 rounds respectively)
- Largest round by a Poland-based startup belonged to Viktor, which raised $75 million Series A
- Most active local investors: Hard2beat, Digital Ocean Ventures and 24Ventures, followed by Inovo.vc, Movens Capital and ff Venture Capital
- Leading themes in 2026 investments: applied AI, fintech and stablecoins, health and biotech, defence and dual-use, space, energy
The biggest Polish startup funding rounds of 2026
*Excluding the previously mentioned ICEYE and ElevenLabs
- Viktor — $75 million Series A
- Warsaw- and Munich-based startup building an AI coworker that works inside Slack and Microsoft Teams and connects to the tools companies already use.
- Selected investors: Accel, Inovo.vc, Nat Friedman, Jack Zhang.
- Pathway — $30 million seed
- Polish-founded, Palo Alto–based AI lab developing a “post-Transformer” model architecture designed to improve reasoning, memory, and adaptation at a lower compute cost. The latest tranche values the company at $500 million.
- Selected investors: Id4 Ventures, TQ Ventures, Red Bridge Ventures, Kadmos Capital, Jonathan Frankle
- Ingenix.ai — €13 million seed extension
- Warsaw-based AI biology company building a Biological Reasoning Engine to support drug development with pharma and biotech partners.
- Selected investors: Sofinnova Partners, OTB Ventures, Inovo.vc
- Osero — €12.3 million
- Stablecoin yield infrastructure that lets wallets, neobanks and exchanges offer stablecoin savings products to their users.
- Selected investors: Sky Ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO), RedStone
- Nomagic — $10 million Series B extension
- Warsaw-based warehouse robotics company that uses physical AI to automate picking and other warehouse operations.
- Selected investors: Cogito Capital Partners
- GRAI — $9 million seed
- Warsaw-based music lab building AI apps that let people remix and share songs, while artists keep control over how their work is used.
- Selected investors: Khosla Ventures, Inovo.vc, a16z Scout Fund
- Sybilla Technologies — €8 million
- Polish spacetech company that tracks objects in orbit using a global network of robotic optical telescopes. This is its first external funding round.
- Selected investors: 3TS Capital Partners, Vinci
- Pstryk — €7 million Series A
- Polish energy tech company that sells household electricity at dynamic prices, with an app for tracking usage and costs in real time.
- Selected investors: Future Energy Ventures, Axpo, ff Venture Capital, Montis VC, Simpact Ventures
Who is investing in Polish startups in 2026?
Polish or Polish-American seed funds are the most active in the market, with Hard2beat, Digital Ocean Ventures, 24Ventures, Inovo.vc and Movens Capital at the forefront. Many of them invest public money alongside private capital.
Funds backed by PFR Ventures took part in half of all Polish deals in Q1, investing in rounds of €0.25–10 million. Additionally, funds using the EU's European Funds for a Modern Economy (FENG) programme had made 42 investments by the end of Q1. In Q3, public and public-private capital accounted for 54% of the money invested.
As active as Polish VCs are, it is international investors that write the biggest checks
In Q3, deals with international funds made up 55% of the capital deployed, despite being in only 11 of 48 transactions. Accel co-led Viktor, Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures backed GRAI, and Sofinnova Partners invested in Ingenix.ai. US strategic investors have also arrived at the earliest stage: In-Q-Tel backed drone-detection startup DefendEye, and Axon led Immersion Labs' round.
Inovo.vc partner Karol Lasota expects experienced founders and a new generation of young AI entrepreneurs, "playing for global stakes from day one", to define the coming years.
Polish capital also flows abroad
Polish VC funds invested €56 million in 26 foreign deals in Q1 alone, nearly matching their full-year total for 2024. OTB Ventures, for example, joined rounds in Waiv, Hydrosat, Twentyfour Industries, and TYTAN Technologies.
AI in Poland: the defining investment theme
AI-first companies raised the two largest Polish rounds of the year: Viktor and Pathway, and four of the six largest overall — adding Ingenix and GRAI — amounting to around €116 million, roughly three-quarters of the money in the eight biggest rounds.
Importantly, Polish teams are building core AI technology, not just applications. Pathway is developing a post-transformer architecture for frontier AI models, F13 builds foundation models for vector graphics, and Wrocław's semiQa designs analog neural-network chips.
Below these big rounds, there are a lot of applied-AI startups also gaining capital: Hellobot (voice agents for customer service), TesterArmy (AI software testing), autoMEE (AI bookkeeping), Mimira (AI for public tenders), Surveily (computer vision for workplace safety) and Ludus AI (tools for Unreal Engine developers).
AI is not Poland's only cluster
Health and biotech is becoming yet another investment theme, with significant funding rounds for Jutro Medical (€24 million in December 2025), Ingenix.ai (€9 million in April 2025), and Cellis (€10 million in January 2025).
Defence and space are also significant areas of activity in Poland, although investment has so far been concentrated at the fund level rather than in large startup rounds. Recent examples include Expeditions' €197 million fund and BGK's and Vinci’s €114 million space fund.
Disclosed funding rounds for startups in these sectors remain relatively small, with FlyFocus recording the largest defence deals at €4.5 million.
VC funds fundraising in Poland in 2026
Polish fund managers have announced more than €500 million in new funds, and fund closes since January 2026, most of it with a public anchor investor:
- Vinci Space Tech Fund (BGK), €114M
- Expeditions Fund II (final close), €197M
- Orbit Capital Venture Debt Fund II (Czech-Polish, second close), €107M
- EIF and BGK commitments in Expeditions (€31M), Balnord (€24M), and Cogito Capital Partners Fund II (€30M, growth stage)
- Four FENG funds: Epic Investments, Invento F2, Starter by YouNick Mint, Pomerangels Tech Ventures, ≈€55.5M (PLN 260M)
- Montis VC (first close), €50M
The dry powder is aimed at filling in the gaps in the market, providing capital in areas where it is scarce — the later stages (Cogito, Vinci Space, and Pomerangels), debt vehicles (PFR Ventures plans to put about 20% of its Innovate Poland budget into debt strategies), and the dual-use and defence vertical (Expeditions, Invento F2, and YouNick Mint).
And more is coming — FENG aims to support around 40 VC funds with about €447 million (PLN 2.1 billion) of public money, plus about €220 million (PLN 1.1 billion) from private investors. So far, 19 teams have received capital, and selection of new teams continues into early 2027.
What's next for the Polish VC and startup market?
Poland's ecosystem has depth at the earliest stages: more deals than any other CEE country, a growing pool of experienced founders, reinvesting and starting new firms, and available public-private capital. What it still lacks is the layer above — Series B rounds and exits at home.
The coming quarters will show whether this year's standout companies, from Viktor to Ingenix.ai and grAI, raise their next rounds in Poland or follow ElevenLabs and ICEYE abroad. Q4 is already looking good for Poland — it has started with KP Labs' €4.4 million (PLN 19.4 million) growth round and the launch of BGK's space fund.
