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.
Three of Southeast Europe's most established technology companies, Next Consult, btProvider, and C4 Nexus, are bringing together more than a decade of collaboration, 200+ specialists, and over €20M in annual revenue under the new Trimaranix brand.
Warsaw-based Microamp has secured €6.5 million from the European Innovation Council to develop Any-G, a software-defined wireless platform engineered to support 5G, 6G and future network standards from a single architecture, without replacing physical infrastructure.
Poland is investing $11M in ElevenLabs through Vinci, the investment arm of state-owned bank BGK, giving the government a minority stake in the $11B AI voice company.
Can an algorithm handle an unexpected midnight crisis? Treating HNWI's like a premium mass market is a costly mistake. While AI excels at logistics, wealth management relies on human trust and subtle context.
Tilia Impact Ventures opens applications for the second edition of its flagship program, now reaching founders across CEE, Turkey, and Greece.
Lithuanian defense-tech startup PDKINEMATICS secured a €2 million seed round co-led by Coinvest Capital and Iron Wolf Capital to scale production and deployment of its battlefield-proven Gannet precision guidance system for UAVs across Europe, Ukraine, and NATO markets.
Greece's innovation ecosystem attracted more than €732 million across 95 funding rounds in 2025, marking another year of strong growth. In this interview, Found.ation's Filippos Zakopoulos explains why capital is no longer the biggest challenge.
Sloneek Intelligence connects corporate data across every HR application in use, and can be controlled entirely by voice or chat. The new round will fund the platform's AI development and expansion into the UK and Polish markets.
Founded by investors with backgrounds in Wall Street biotech research and healthcare finance, Kos aims to give European life sciences companies greater access to US industry expertise, capital, and networks.
Slovak startup Definic, previously known as Nordics, raised €2.5 million ($2.9 million) in seed funding to help enterprises pick the right IT vendors through AI-driven vendor intelligence and benchmarking.
Romania is buzzing over a promised $1B "Quantum AI" data center in Cluj, but tech experts smell a marketing stunt. Is it a sovereign tech hub or just a massive power drain wrapped in buzzwords? The details don't add up.
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.
Digital Serbia's new scaling program kicks off with three startups from Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia that have already raised millions and now want to win new markets.
The CEE-born company is becoming the definitive bridge between high-growth regional tech ecosystems. C-level of The Recursive will lay the groundwork in 2026 through onsite presence across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Vienna, Munich, and Berlin.
Fintech startup Paymove, based in Poland, secured €2.12 million in seed funding to build next-generation payment systems tailored for Agentic AI and fuel its expansion across Western Europe. 👯 Founder(s): * Piotr Mazur – Founder and CEO * Kamil Kuper – Founder and COO * Tomasz Gęsior – Founder and Product Lead 📅 Founding year:...
The newly launched CEE AI Index 2026 by AI Chamber, developed in partnership with The Recursive Media and supported by Europe Cloud — is the first exclusive, data-driven deep dive into the artificial intelligence readiness of 11 Central and Eastern European countries.
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.
