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.
DEPO Ventures has been selected to manage a new fund backing startups from Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Managing Partner Petr Šíma explains why competition for Ukrainian technology is intensifying, and how Czech manufacturing could become part of the equation.
The Recursive co-founder Etien Yovchev talks to H.E. Wesam Lootah, Director General of GovDigital at DGE, on how the Abu Dhabi Government upskilled 95% of its workforce for AI, how it balances global tech partnerships with data sovereignty, and why governance guardrails matter most for public trust.
Business owners across wider Europe are quickly adopting AI, but most still fund growth from their own profits and remain cautious about costs, regulation and uncertainty.
Osavul, the Ukraine-born, Luxembourg-headquartered company whose AI spots hostile intent across the cyber, physical and information domains, raised €8.5M led by 33N Ventures, taking its platform, already trusted by NATO, to enterprises and critical infrastructure worldwide.
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.
With 250+ investors expected in Bucharest, How to Web 2026 gives founders access that would otherwise take months to arrange. Our guide covers the meetings, programs and sessions worth planning around.
OfficeRnD founder Miroslav Miroslavov is building again. His new startup, 1club, has raised €2.2M from LAUNCHub Ventures and BrightCap Ventures to take its sports and fitness management platform global.
The Bulgarian VC firm is targeting a final fund size of €75M+ and plans to make around 25 pre-seed and seed investments over the next five years.
In less than three years, Bulgaria has gone from almost no battery storage to becoming one of Europe’s biggest battery markets relative to the size of its power system. What made this possible, and can the same formula work for wind and the grid?
HCLSoftware to buy Croatia's Robotiq.ai for €9 million to reinforce its automation suite and bolster agent integration into legacy systems.
Hadas Zucker explores why founders need human signals, emotional intelligence, friction, and intuition to build products that genuinely resonate.
Pentest-Tools.com became the first Romanian company to exhibit at DEF CON, joining just ten exhibitors and a global community of more than 25,000 ethical hackers and security practitioners.
Our last edtech list ranked the region by how much money it had raised. This one goes the other way, to the early end — the pre-seed and seed teams quietly building things worth paying attention to. Here are five CEE edtech startups to watch before everybody else catches on.
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.
Shelly's founders have agreed to a €1.2 billion offer from Schneider Electric, which wants to bring the Bulgarian company's home energy platform into its global business.
After operating without external funding for over a decade, Prague-based internet infrastructure provider CDN77 has sold a minority stake to private equity giant CVC.
After a decade of bootstrapping, Lithuanian web intelligence company Oxylabs took its first external investment at a €3.1B valuation. Its leadership explains why it chose a partner now and why it believes Europe can build global tech companies on its own terms.
