The State of DevTools in CEE 2025

It’s no secret that Developer Tools is one of my favorite investment areas. I’m an early backer of startups like Spacelift, Pathway, and many others. I’m still actively looking for more companies in this space to be their first or second investor.

In the meantime, I put together a short overview of what’s been happening in the CEE region from 2020 to 2025 YTD.

The questions I set out to answer were:

• How many startups raised VC funding — and how much?
• Are we seeing more or fewer new DevTools startups in the region each year?
• Which startups have been the most successful?
• Who are the most active VCs in this space?

89 DevTools startups from CEE raised $1.5B+ in VC funding across ~150 investment rounds between 2020 and 2025 YTD

Left: VC Funding for DevTools in CEE 2020–2025YTD, Right: 89 VC-backed DevTool Startups from Central and Eastern Europe

What does the data tell us?

• 2021–2022 marked the peak in terms of the number of VC rounds (no surprise there), but 2025 has already set a new record for total funding raised — and that’s especially exciting considering we’re only looking at mid-year YTD data.
• Czechia leads the pack with the highest number of DevTools startups (20), but over the past five years, startups led by founders of Polish origin have secured slightly more total funding.
• At least 4 countries in CEE have seen significant Pre-Seed and Seed activity: Poland, Czechia, Croatia, and Romania.

Based on data from Crunchbase. 2025 YTD as of July. Undisclosed rounds’ sizes counted as 0.

Amount [$M] of VC Funding for DevTools originating from Poland, Czechia, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, and Romania

Why are we seeing fewer funding rounds?

• One explanation might be that fewer DevTools companies are being started.
• But based on what we’re seeing in the market, many startups are choosing to stay in stealth mode longer and are skipping public funding announcements.
• Even on our own website [as of July 2025], 7 out of the 14 new investments we made in 2024 are still undisclosed. So, the actual number of new startups raising VC funding is likely higher — we’re just learning about them with a delay.

Left: DevTools in CEE by Founding Year. Right: Disclosed part of our own portfolio from 2024 is at 50% [2025 July]

Who’s winning?

• Unlike the public markets, the private startup world doesn’t give us full visibility into valuations or business metrics — unless we’re already investors, or the startup is actively fundraising and sharing data.
• One common proxy for success is the amount of funding raised. The logic is: at each round, startups typically give away 10–20% of equity for a certain amount, implying a valuation of 5–10× the capital raised. That valuation generally reflects current ARR, growth rate, market potential, product quality, and the strength of the team.
• Looking at the past 12 months, the most successful companies in terms of funding are **ElevenLabs, [Cast.ai](https://cast.ai/), [Spacelift](https://spacelift.io/), [Blackwall](https://blackwall.com/en/home), and [E2B](https://e2b.dev/).**
• When I think about who else might be doing well in DevTools, I’d be betting on tools that benefit from the current wave of AI code generation. In our region, that includes companies like **Daytona (infrastructure for running AI-generated code) and Bunnyshell** (environments to test, review, and deploy AI-generated code).

The Biggest DevTool Funding Rounds in CEE So Far in 2025

Which VCs invest in DevTools in CEE?

1] Me! If you’re fundraising, **let’s connect on LinkedIn and have a chat.**

2] And at least 85 other VCs — that’s how many investors added a new DevTool startup to their portfolio in the last 18 months.

If you’re a founder, you can access 📗 this spreadsheet with the names and websites of these VCs to make your next fundraising round a little bit easier.

About us:

Inovo.vc backs early-stage startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–4m in startups from the CEE region and diaspora.

Methodology for the VC List:

• Includes funding rounds announced from the beginning of 2024 through end of July 2025
• Only VCs backing a new DevTools portfolio company are listed — follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies are excluded.

Methodology for the Startup List:

• Includes funding rounds announced from the beginning of 2020 through end of July 2025
• Includes both companies HQed in a given country and diaspora of a given country