At Techsylvania in Cluj-Napoca, the CEO of SPARK, Sharjah's Research, Technology and Innovation park, made the case for partnership over competition, explained the role of government vision for attracting world-class talent, and was candid about what European founders get wrong about the Gulf.
Ivan Maltsev has spent a decade building and investing in crypto across three continents. His read on 2026: the UAE leads on regulation and ecosystem, the US still owns the venture capital, and Europe is maturing, just more slowly.
Organized in partnership with Plug and Play, the event created a platform for high-impact discussions, meaningful networking, and cross-border collaboration between Europe’s innovation ecosystem and the rapidly growing markets of Azerbaijan, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and beyond.
"I found someone who was a better entrepreneur than me, who was more visionary… I was like, man, I would love to work for you.” The story of how Gabriel Dymowski left his company to build AI hardware startup Pocket, which just raised €9.65M ($11M) led by Accel.
Czech startup Wultra has raised a new funding round to expand its post-quantum digital identity platform globally as demand for next-generation cybersecurity solutions continues to grow.
Asternova Vest, developed by a Romanian-French consortium of Aster Capital Partners, Iceberg+, and Venture Booster, targets €37M to back 18+ Seed and Series A startups from Western Romania, the region that produced Movidius, Tazz, and 123FormBuilder.
While messy code slows your product, "culture debt" quietly stalls execution as you scale. Here is how founders can build organizational clarity before implicit habits slow the team and company.
The Recursive’s weekly roundup aims to cover key tech developments across Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the growing impact of CEE-born founders on the global stage. Take a look at the latest news in funding, startup milestones, and emerging trends tied to the region’s innovation potential.
As AI arms global hackers, the EU's NIS2 fines have sparked a massive cybersecurity gold rush. While total funding hits records, Central & Eastern European startups are quietly leading the charge against digital threats.
The Series A round brings Almetra's total funding to €20.8 million and will support the company's expansion into the US as demand for AI-powered industrial inspection grows.
Deep tech investor Constructor Capital co-led the round alongside Greencode Ventures and XISTA Science Ventures to back a startup that compresses AI models by up to 80%, cutting inference costs for companies deploying AI at scale.
AI startup SuperPlane, based in Serbia, secured €2.28 million in pre-seed funding to build an open-source control plane that lets AI agents and engineers safely collaborate on production infrastructure.
From e-voting to unicorns, Estonia has become a global innovation success story. But according to Startup Estonia's Vaido Mikheim, the next chapter will depend on turning research into companies, scaling deep tech, and thinking beyond national borders.
The "if-then" rule is dead. As modern workflows grow too complex for static logic, businesses are swapping rigid, traditional automation for adaptive, goal-oriented AI agents. But how do you control a system that "thinks for itself"?
Czech startup Grid.online has closed a €4 million round to grow its neutral courier infrastructure, off the back of 10× delivery growth and over 1 million parcels delivered in year one.
Norma's natural language analytics, already adopted across 10,000 Foodics branches, will now power the next generation of agentic AI for restaurant operations.
From participation rates above 90% to measurable changes in team performance, Mirror 360's first large-scale deployment explores what becomes possible when feedback shifts from a periodic exercise to a continuous process.
“When researchers come to us, it doesn’t start with a negotiation,” Viktor Olsson of KTH Innovation explains. Here’s how Sweden’s founder-friendly university model is creating a deep tech powerhouse and what CEE can learn from it.
The Recursive’s weekly roundup aims to cover key tech developments across Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the growing impact of CEE-born founders on the global stage. Take a look at the latest news in funding, startup milestones, and emerging trends tied to the region’s innovation potential.
Through a partnership between BSMEPA, Future Unicorns Accelerator, and The Recursive, Bulgaria's first coordinated Startup Grind delegation connected founders with the conversations, relationships, and market perspectives shaping global tech, while strengthening ties with Silicon Valley.
Treating emerging markets as a monolith is a costly mistake. Utopia’s Alina Truhina explains how to leverage strategic arbitrage between emerging markets and GCC, and why local nuance is the ultimate sourcing advantage.
Can We Safely Live with Humanoid Robots? 🤖 In this fascinating episode of The Recursive Podcast, we sit down with Emily Kate Genatowski, an AI PhD candidate, historian and domestic robotics researcher who provides a unique, hands-on perspective on our future with machines. Unlike most researchers who work in controlled labs, Emily lives full-time with a humanoid robot named Tova (a Unitree G1) in her apartment in Vienna.
As the founder of PSL (Proportional Stake Liability), an insurtech startup bridging the liability gap in robotics, Emily’s career is dedicated to uncovering the practical, legal, and social friction points that arise when AI gains a physical body. She moves beyond the "AI hype" to explore how humanoid robotics will realistically intersect with our legal regulations, physical infrastructure, and the daily fabric of our communities.
🧠 Why Watch?
Whether you’re a tech optimist, a skeptic, or someone worried about the future of work, this conversation offers a grounded, practical look at the challenges ahead. Emily moves the needle from philosophical fear to practical empowerment, showing us that we are still the architects of the future we want to see.
What does AI engineering actually look like inside modern enterprises — and how close are we to truly autonomous software development?
In this episode of The Recursive Podcast, we sit down with Karol Przystalski, Chief Data and AI Officer at Exadel, to explore how organizations are moving beyond AI experimentation and into AI-native operations.
We discuss the evolution from AI copilots and coding assistants to fully orchestrated engineering systems, why many companies are measuring AI success incorrectly, and how enterprise leaders should think about ROI, productivity, and organizational change in the age of autonomous engineering.
Karol also shares insights into Exadel Colleague — an AI-powered engineering teammate designed to support entire software teams—and explains why the future of AI isn't about replacing humans, but helping them focus on higher-value work.
In This Episode:
🔹 Why AI adoption is shifting from experimentation to real business value
How enterprises have moved beyond AI proof-of-concepts and are now focused on productivity, efficiency, and measurable outcomes.
🔹 The difference between AI-enabled development and AI-native engineering
Why coding assistants are only the first step—and how autonomous systems are transforming entire software development lifecycles.
🔹 How to measure AI ROI beyond token usage
The metrics that actually matter, including productivity gains, human-equivalent hours saved, accuracy, and business impact.
🔹 The future of autonomous engineering and the role of humans
Why AI won't replace software engineers, but will fundamentally change how teams work and what skills will matter most.
🧠 Whether you're an engineering leader, CTO, product executive, or simply curious about the future of software development, this conversation offers a practical look at where enterprise AI is headed next.
In this episode of The Recursive Podcast, we sit down with Kilian Kaminski, the co-founder of Refurbed, the Vienna-based marketplace that has become a powerhouse in the European circular economy. Kilian shares insights from his transition from Amazon to entrepreneurship and the ongoing battle to establish refurbishment as a standardized global consumption category.
A former head of Amazon’s Certified Refurbished program in Germany, Kilian left the corporate giant to revolutionize how we consume. Today, Refurbed has surpassed €2 billion in sales, proving that "rethinking new" is not just a sustainable choice, but a massive business opportunity that sits at the intersection of consumer trust and environmental impact.
What we discussed in this episode:
♻️ The limitations of corporate sustainability and the origins of Refurbed’s marketplace model.
♻️ Overcoming the "chicken and egg" problem of acquiring sellers and building consumer trust in non-new products.
♻️ The critical need for standardized European legal definitions and quality criteria for refurbishment.
♻️ Cultural differences in consumption habits and the untapped "gold mine" of 600 million unused devices in European households.
♻️ The impact of the "Right to Repair" directive and the role of the European Refurbishment Association (EUREFAS) in policy lobbying.
🧠 This episode is a must-watch for entrepreneurs interested in marketplace dynamics, sustainability advocates, and anyone curious about how the "Right to Repair" legislation will impact the gadgets we use every day.
