CEE Startup & Tech Weekly: Bulgarian-Founded Varda Space Hits $1.6B Valuation After $250M Raise

News & deals

Varda Space Industries, with a Bulgarian-born founder at the helm, has raised €224 ($251M) in Series D round as it prepares to launch three missions in the next month. The company has reached a valuation of $1.6B. Based in El Segundo, California, Varda is among a small group of US companies developing fleets of uncrewed space capsules designed to serve as orbital laboratories and manufacturing facilities. These platforms aim to produce materials and products that can benefit from greater efficiency or purity when developed in space rather than under Earth's gravity.

Poland's state development bank Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) is committing €114M ($129M) to a new fund for space technology companies. The Vinci Space Tech Fund was presented on October 6 in Kraków and will be managed by Vinci, the investment company of the BGK group. According to its backers, it is the first fund of its kind in Poland and one of only a handful of space-focused funds in Europe.

Slovak-founded biotech startup Sensible Biotechnologies has secured $47M (€42M) in financing to further develop its cell-based mRNA technology, expand manufacturing capacity, and automate its laboratory and production processes. The financing includes a Series A round led by Oxford Science Enterprises and up to $20M in public funding from the Slovak government and the European Union. Prague-based VC fund Tech Horizons participated in the investment alongside OTB Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Recode Ventures, Isomer Capital, Y Combinator, Backed VC, Kaya VC, Civilization Ventures, and BlueYard Capital.

Siena AI, the AI customer experience startup co-founded by Romanian entrepreneurs Andrei Negrău and Lisa Popovici, has raised $17M (€15.19M) in a Series A round led by York IE. Joyance Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, Sierra Ventures and Super Angel Fund also took part. Siena will put the new capital into more autonomous agents and into expanding Siena Intelligence, the infrastructure that connects customer data with both the AI agents and the human teams working alongside them.

Ukrainian defense tech company Buntar Aerospace has raised ~€14.3M ($16M) in a new funding round led by Freedom Fund and an undisclosed international private equity fund. Gardar Venture Capital, Iron Wolf Capital and Autonomy Capital also joined the round, which brings the company's total funding to $30M. This is the company's second large round this year. In March, US security technology company Axon Enterprise led a €14.3Mn round in Buntar.

Tallinn-based spacetech Golbriak Space raised a €4M seed co-led by Join Capital and PhotonVentures to scale manufacturing of its in-house laser communication terminals for satellites and airborne platforms, already shipping to paying customers. The new funds will be spend on accelerating development and industrialization of the Estonian subsidiary, expanding production capacity, scaling manufacturing/assembly to meet customer volumes, moving into the new Tallinn (Mustamäe) lab and office, and recruiting.

NeoFleet Capital, a Limassol-based investment and technology platform providing financing for professional taxi fleets, has secured €3.5M in pre-seed funding. The round was backed by Mark Loughran, former President and CFO of global ride-hailing company inDrive, alongside other private investors. Loughran has also joined NeoFleet Capital as President and co-founder.

New funds launching

Endeavor Catalyst, the venture arm of the New York-based global nonprofit Endeavor, has closed its fifth fund with $320M in capital commitments, bringing its total assets under management to more than $850M. The fund backs founders from Endeavor's network of more than 3,100 entrepreneurs in over 50 countries, focusing on companies built outside major tech hubs.

Endeavor Catalyst co-invests on the same terms as the lead investor when an Endeavor company raises a round of at least $5M, usually with tickets of $1M to $3M. It plans to make 40 to 50 investments a year and back up to 150 companies from the new fund. Half of the fund's profits go back to Endeavor to support the next generation of founders.