The Central and Eastern European startup ecosystem holds a distinctive place on the European innovation map. Vestbee’s latest report, CEE Unicorns 2025: The State of the Billion-Dollar Startup Ecosystem, explores how the region built 56 unicorns worth more than €240 billion, how founders scale efficiently despite scarce late-stage capital, and what defines CEE’s distinctive, distributed innovation landscape.
CEE outpaces Western Europe in growth and efficiency
The CEE startup ecosystem continues its rapid rise, reaching €243 billion in combined enterprise value as of Q1 2025 — a 15.5× increase since 2015 and more than double Western Europe’s growth rate over the same period. Poland leads the region (€58B), followed by Estonia (€39B), Ukraine (€30B) and Romania (€28B), with Lithuania growing the fastest since 2020.
Despite strong growth, quarterly funding remains uneven: Q1 deal volume fell 23% year-on-year and total funding was driven largely by individual mega-rounds such as ElevenLabs’ €170 million Series C. Nearly half of the region’s enterprise value now comes from startups that moved their HQ abroad to access larger capital markets.
Still, capital efficiency remains one of CEE’s strongest advantages. Between 2020-2024, 74% of venture capital in the region went into breakout and late-stage rounds, with growth funding rebounding sharply after a 2023 decline.
CEE startups weathered the global downturn better than Western Europe and continue to produce unicorns through lean financing or bootstrapping, with countries like Poland, Croatia, and Romania showing a significant share of self-funded billion-dollar companies. This efficiency is feeding a powerful flywheel: over 300 alumni of major CEE unicorns have already founded new startups, driving the next wave of regional innovation.
Distributed geography as CEE’s key advantage
Most of CEE’s unicorn growth between 2024 and 2025 has come from Poland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, with Ukraine and Romania close behind. Unlike Western Europe, where unicorn activity is concentrated in cities like London, Berlin, and Paris, CEE’s billion-dollar companies are spread across multiple national hubs — a structural advantage that distributes talent and opportunity across the region.
Poland remains the largest market with 14 unicorns, while Estonia is the global per-capita leader with 11 unicorns and the highest unicorn density in the world. Beyond these leaders, Ukraine’s ecosystem continues to grow, adding a new fintech unicorn in Q2 2025 despite wartime conditions.
The scaleup landscape is similarly diverse. Poland hosts 60 scaleups, followed by Estonia (54), the Czech Republic (38), Ukraine (26), and Romania (21). However, scaling remains a challenge: limited late-stage capital means many companies relocate to access deeper markets. In total, 48% of CEE scaleups have moved their headquarters abroad — mostly to the US, Western Europe, or the UK, while keeping development teams in-region. Investors see this as a logical step toward global expansion, rather than a loss for CEE.
From SaaS roots to deeptech scale
Enterprise software, AI, and fintech dominate the CEE unicorn and scaleup landscape, reflecting the region’s strength in engineering talent and cost-efficient R&D.
Enterprise software, especially SaaS, remains the main growth engine with nearly 800 startups and global successes like Pipedrive and Grammarly. AI is now the second-largest and one of the fastest-growing verticals, driven by strong deeptech capabilities in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine. Fintech follows with billion-dollar companies such as Wise, Payhawk, and the newly added Fintech-IT Group. Other sectors, including deeptech, energy, cybersecurity, transport, and health, are smaller but expanding quickly as investor interest broadens.
Funding trends are shifting accordingly. In 2025, fintech, enterprise software, and security became the top-funded sectors, signalling a move toward financial technology and digital resilience. SaaS remains the dominant business model, but its share is slowly declining as investors back more hardware-driven innovation. Physical tech — robotics, defence, energy systems, IoT, now accounts for 28% of scaleups, up from 4% in 2020.
Overall, the sector mix shows a maturing ecosystem: fintech remains strong, but the fastest growth now lies at the intersection of software and hardware, particularly in defence, automation, and energy resilience.
The late-stage gap that still defines the game
If there’s a weak link, it’s growth capital. Late-stage funding — critical for building globally competitive tech companies — remains limited in CEE. After collapsing in 2023, it nearly tripled in 2024 to €818 million, with another $758 million raised in 2025. Still, most large rounds are tied to US-based structures or relocated headquarters, highlighting how many startups move abroad to access deeper capital pools.
Even so, the landscape is slowly maturing. Global investors like Accel and Tiger Global are becoming more active in CEE, while regional funds, including Credo Ventures, Inovo VC, Horizon Capital, Cogito Capital Partners, OTB Ventures, BlackPeak Capital, and Aspire11, are raising larger vehicles and moving up the investment chain. New players such as Radix Ventures are entering deeptech, signalling a gradual shift beyond fintech and enterprise software toward harder-tech fields like robotics, energy, and semiconductors.
More findings in the report
Explore the full CEE Unicorns 2025 report on Vestbee Insights, featuring complete data, sector breakdowns, country rankings, and commentary from leading investors.
source: Vestbee
