Polish VC funds invest PLN 444 mln in 35 companies in Q1 2025 - report
Poland's venture capital market saw 35 companies raising PLN 444 million (EUR 103.8 mln) from 34 funds in the first quarter of 2025, according to a report by Poland's development fund PFR subsidiary PFR Ventures and Inovo VC.
As reported, the value of invested funds increased by 155 percent year on year, with a similar number of deals and funds engaged.
Late-stage funding rounds played a significant role, with 17 recorded, accounting for nearly half of all transactions.
"We recorded the first transaction in the market in which FENG (EU) capital was present. This is a good prognosis. It can be expected that at the end of the second quarter and the beginning of the third quarter, the trend in the number of seed deals will change to an upward one," said the deputy head of PFR Ventures Aleksander Mokrzycki, quoted in the commentary to the report published on PFRV website.
"It is also positive to see entrepreneurs returning to the ecosystem and developing new projects after selling their companies. A good example is Ingenix.ai, in which 2 local funds and IFC invested at the initial stage," he added.
10 of the 35 deals were investments with PFR Ventures funds, which translated into nearly 40 percent of the capital. Most of the deals were carried out with significant participation from private Polish funds and business angels. 42 percent of the capital was provided by international funds.
"Among the largest transactions was the ElevenLabs round worth over PLN 700 million, which attracted the attention of foreign funds such as Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ Growth," PFR Ventures pointed out in the commentary to the report.
"There was also a lot of interest in Nomagic, which raised around PLN 140 million. We also recorded seven transactions in the PLN 20-50 million range," it added.
PFR Ventures is a subsidiary of Poland's development fund that invests in venture capital and private equity funds together with private investors, business angels and corporates. PFR Ventures currently has over 85 funds in its portfolio with over 900 investments.
Inovo VC is a venture capital fund investing in entrepreneurs from Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. Over the past 10 years, it has invested in over 80 entrepreneurs from 35 startups, including: Booksy, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, or Zowie and co-invested with global VC funds such as Insight Partners, a16z, Gradient Ventures and Tiger Global, among others. Across the three funds, Inovo.vc will manage capital of over EUR 160 million.
pel/ ao/