CEE Startup & Tech Weekly: Major Exit for Bulgaria

CEE Deals

European private equity investor Oakley Capital acquired a majority stake in Graphwise, a company formed in 2024 through the merger of Bulgarian Ontotext and Austrian Semantic Web Company. According to the companies, the deal marks one of the biggest exits in the Bulgarian software industry, although the financial terms have not been disclosed.

Vince Gaydarzhiev, the Bulgarian founder behind biometric security company Alcatraz AI, has raised $10 million (€8.62 million) for his second venture, Self Inspection. The round was led by Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, the family office of Sheryl Sandberg, with strategic investments from U.S. AutoForce and Westlake Financial. BrightCap Ventures, a Bulgarian fund, also participated in the round, making it the only European fund among the investors.

Lithuanian deep-tech startup Litilit has secured an €8 million loan from ILTE to advance R&D and make its femtosecond laser technology more scalable for industrial applications. Litilit's technology is based on an internationally patented method for generating ultrashort pulses, discovered by co-founder Kęstutis Regelskis with researchers at FTMC. 

Astute, a B2B platform with a Serbian founder at the helm, has raised an oversubscribed €1.3 million pre-seed round, with launching its new platform. The company uses two AI agents to automate creator partnerships for B2B companies. The round was backed by Flyer One Ventures, Silicon Gardens, Marathon Fund, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and strategic angel investors.

Vilnius-based Guideless has raised €1 million in pre-seed funding. The company uses AI to capture a workflow as someone performs it, then automatically generates a step-by-step guide, creating editable training guides up to 10x faster than screen recordings. The round was led by Superhero Capital, with participation from FIRSTPICK VC and angel investors.

Defense tech investment updates

Ukrainian Forland Systems, developing and manufacturing UGVs in cooperation with the Achilles unmanned systems brigade, has raised investment from UK venture platform Grenadyr. The amount was not disclosed. Forland Systems is working on the development of next-generation unmanned ground platforms for logistics, inspection, and mission-support applications. 

Polish-founded DefendEye, developer of fully autonomous drone systems, has closed a major investment round led by NovaCapital, with participation of Polish ff Venture Capital, and Hard2beat, German Sunfish Partners as well as US-based In-Q-Tel. The new funding aims to help DefendEye scale production of its flagship Overwatch Drone, an advanced aerial intelligence system built primarily for first responders. The amount was not disclosed.