AI can churn out agency proposals swiftly, but speed has a risky side effect: perfectly formatted estimates that are completely wrong. Before you hand pre-sales over to algorithms, see why skipping human technical discovery costs far more than it saves.
86 global unicorns were (co)founded by someone from CEE. Together they are worth about $1.8 trillion. Only six of the 86 were founded in the founder's home country.
Estonian billing and monetisation startup Creem has raised €5 million in a seed round led by Polish fund Inovo VC, bringing its total funding to €7 million.
The Bulgarian satellite manufacturer has secured a massive new round to standardise spacecraft production, and blown past $1B valuation. By building satellites like drones, EnduroSat wants to slash the cost of space data and turn orbit into a profitable layer for any business.
Romanian-founded Veridion has raised a $20 million Series A led by Hoxton Ventures to expand its real-time "living digital replica" of the world's businesses. It is the company's largest round to date, and the latest sign of Hoxton's growing conviction in Romanian enterprise AI.
The inaugural Dubai Future Finance Week, led by DIFC, runs 2-6 November. Over 850 speakers are confirmed across 85 events and 12 signature forums. The programme covers FinTech, tokenisation, Islamic finance, family wealth, sustainable finance and private capital.
“For global fintechs, our region is the rest of the world. Very little support, very little attention,” explains Paypercut’s Stoil Vasilev. He’s building a full-stack payment engine precisely where giants like Stripe refuse to get their hands dirty.
ElevenLabs’ Antoni Rytel discusses how CEE can turn its deep engineering talent into globally competitive AI companies and what the region needs to produce its next global success story.
Vilnius-based EnforceShield raised €1.7M led by Vendep Capital to scale its autonomous, attorney-built platform for removing IP violations at enterprise scale.
The San Francisco- and Warsaw-based startup uses AI agents that follow user journeys in plain language, no test scripts, no source-code access, and raised its pre-seed from Y Combinator, AIP Seed, Eight Capital, Script Capital and angels including Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch.
Brainly turned homework help into a $150 million business. Prezi rebuilt the slide deck. Lingvist trained its AI on particle physics data. These are the ten top-funded edtech companies in CEE.
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.
What started as a San Francisco hacker house led Yasin Ehsan to scout for a16z Speedrun. Now, he is looking for ambitious founders in emerging markets.
Think self-promotion is cringey? Entrepreneur and investor, Oliver Yonchev, warns technical founders that quiet diligence won't cut it in the AI era. As automated content floods the market, a strong personal reputation is no longer optional.
As mega-rounds rewrite early venture rules, boutique and emerging investors are being forced to adapt their playbooks, or risk getting priced out of the action.
As AI takes over the routine work of preparing exams and materials, universities face a quieter question: what should educators do with the time it hands back?
Italian Lexroom completed full acquisition of Sofia's Praven Intelekt, bringing a platform with more than 19,000 registered users and nearly 1.2 million Bulgarian legal documents into its European network; and naming co-founder Siyanna Lilova as its new Head of Central and Eastern Europe.
The Western Balkans do not need fewer banks, but they do need more of what sits around them.
At the first CEE AI Summit in Prague, more than 250 policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders focused on the region’s bigger challenge: turning its technical talent into globally competitive AI companies.
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.
Endeavor Catalyst is increasing its exposure to Europe, where its portfolio companies raised more than $8.3 billion across 2025 and H1 2026. Head of EMEA Pete Benedetto explains why the fund sees particular potential in CEE.
Three guests, three very different jobs, one thing in common: they're all in their twenties and already taking on a level of responsibility that usually comes later in a career.
In this episode of The Recursive Roundtable, we talk with Viktoriya Markileva (Head of Space Services at EnduroSat), Georgi Nichev (Marketing Specialist at Helios Marine, Co-Founder of Scylla), and Maria Nikolova (Strategic Partnerships Development Manager at BESCO) about what it's actually like to be trusted with real responsibility this early — what makes someone trust you with it, how they handle it, and whether a career needs to follow a clear path at all.
In this episode, we explore:
🟣 How Gen Zs think about failure,
🟣 what hustle culture looks like from the inside,
🟣 what progress actually means to them,
🟣 and whether they'd be willing to wait years for the next step in their career.
💡 This conversation is essential for entrepreneurs looking to hire young talent, and for any Gen Z professionals wondering if they are ready to take the leap into a leadership role.
In this episode of The Recursive Podcast, we sit down with Rakuten Viber CEO Ofir Eyal to discuss how the company is evolving beyond messaging through its partnership with OpenAI, the rise of AI-powered communication, and the long-term vision behind building a "super app."
The conversation explores how the company approaches privacy and responsible AI adoption, and why Europe has yet to embrace the super app model seen across Asia.
Ofir also reflects on his own journey from product manager to CEO, the leadership lessons he learned while navigating one of Viber's most challenging periods after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
In this episode:
☑️ Why Viber partnered with OpenAI
☑️ The future of AI inside messaging apps
☑️ Can Europe build a successful super app?
☑️ Privacy, security, and responsible AI adoption
☑️ How Viber makes money beyond messaging
☑️ Leadership lessons from scaling a global platform
☑️ Rebuilding after losing 40% of the business overnight
🎙️ Subscribe to The Recursive Podcast for conversations with the founders, investors, and technology leaders shaping the future of innovation across Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.
AI can generate logos, colors, taglines, and entire visual identities in seconds. But can it build a brand people actually remember?
In this episode of The Recursive Roundtable, we explore one of the biggest questions facing founders, marketers, and designers today: what does branding look like in the age of AI?
Joining us are three branding experts with decades of experience building companies across technology, consumer products, and global markets:
• Zlatina Petrova — Founder & Creative Director, Brandly
• Plamen Motev — Creative & Operational Director, Fontfabric
• Kiril Hadjidinev — Brand Strategist & Marketing Advisor
The episode is hosted by Etien Yovchev, Co-founder and CGO, The Recursive.
☑️ Why the strongest brands shape identity, not just recognition
☑️ How design, typography, and marketing create emotional connection
☑️ Why AI-generated brands often struggle to build authenticity
☑️ What happens to local brands in a world shaped by global AI models
☑️ How founders can preserve cultural identity while building for global markets
☑️ Whether AI can truly understand local language, heritage, and aesthetics
☑️ What remains of a brand when customers discover products through AI assistants
Whether you're building a startup, launching a product, working in marketing, or simply curious about how AI is changing creative work, this conversation offers practical insights into what still requires human judgment, and why great brands are built through relationships, not prompts.
