Credo Ventures Raises $88M Fund to Back CEE Founders Early

Credo Ventures just closed its biggest fund ever. The Prague and Krakow based venture capital firm announced Credo Stage 5, an $88 million vehicle built to write the first check for startup founders from Central and Eastern Europe. With two decacorns already under its belt, this fund signals a bold bet on a region still largely overlooked by global investors.

What Credo Stage 5 Means for CEE Startups

Credo Ventures, a venture capital firm with offices in Prague and Krakow, has announced the launch of its fifth fund, Credo Stage 5, that raised $88 million.1 The fund is the firm’s largest to date, stepping up from the €75 million fourth fund closed in 2022.2

The fund has been raised in a single closing and builds on 15 years of activity during which Credo Ventures invested in more than 100 companies.1

Credo Stage 5 will focus on pre-seed investments, with initial checks ranging between $1 million and $5 million. The fund aims to build a portfolio of around 30 companies and maintain a pace of seven to eight investments per year.1 That focus on pre-seed makes Credo one of the few institutional investors willing to back CEE founders at the very beginning, when the risk is highest but the potential reward is massive.

Around two-thirds of the capital in the fund comes from institutional investors, with no public funding involved.2 Credo’s capital comes from institutional limited partners, including Adams Street, RSJ, Sequoia, Isomer, and Marktlink.3

Credo Ventures Fund 5 CEE pre-seed venture capital investment

A Track Record That Includes UiPath and ElevenLabs

Credo is not making promises based on theory. The numbers speak for themselves.

The firm co-led the pre-seed round of UiPath, which went on to IPO on the NYSE at a $35 billion valuation in 2021, and led the pre-seed round of ElevenLabs, recently valued at $11 billion.3 Both of these companies were almost unknown when Credo wrote that first check.

ElevenLabs was co-founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski, an ex-Google machine learning engineer, and Mati Staniszewski, an ex-Palantir deployment strategist. Both were raised in Poland.4 The pre-seed funding was primarily led by Credo Ventures, and joined by Concept Ventures.4

Today, ElevenLabs is one of the fastest growing AI companies on the planet. On 4 February 2026, ElevenLabs announced that it raised $500 million at an $11 billion valuation, as it eyes a potential IPO.4

Here is a snapshot of Credo’s key portfolio highlights:

Several of its funds have delivered top-tier returns, with two achieving performance exceeding 10x.3 The firm’s portfolio companies have attracted follow-on investments from leading global venture firms such as Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Index Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins.3

Why CEE Remains an Untapped Goldmine for Investors

Central and Eastern Europe is not Silicon Valley. But that is exactly the point.

Credo Ventures argues that Central and Eastern Europe continues to be one of the most underserved venture capital markets in Europe, despite its strong technical talent pool. With a population of around 170 million people and a combined GDP of roughly $2 trillion, the region is increasingly producing globally competitive startups.1

Despite operating with far less capital and limited international investor engagement, the CEE region has already produced 56 unicorns, with five emerging over the last two years. The ability of an ecosystem to consistently build billion-dollar companies remains one of the clearest indicators of its maturity.5

Yet the funding gap remains wide. Nearly half of CEE’s total enterprise value comes from startups that have relocated their headquarters outside CEE, often to gain access to deeper capital markets and international customers. As Dealroom data shows, 48% of CEE scaleups moved their HQ to another country than their country of origin.5

That is where Credo sees its edge. The firm notes that fragmentation and cultural divergence across CEE countries remain meaningful barriers for outside investors, creating a structural advantage for a firm that has built networks across the region for fifteen years.2

The Team Behind the New Fund

The fifth fund is managed by six partners. Alongside Bartos and Habermann, the team includes Gnutek, who focuses on the Polish market and diaspora connections; Jakub Krikava, whose background spans public policy and the Czech defence ministry; Max Kolowrat-Krakowsky, with international investment experience and US networks; and Matej Micek, focused on infrastructure, AI, and developer tools.2

This blend of experience matters. Founding partners Ondrej Bartos and Jan Habermann bring 15 years of institutional memory. The newer partners bring fresh networks across the CEE diaspora in San Francisco, London and beyond.

Jakub Krikava shared his perspective on founder sourcing: “We’ve always looked for founders who have seen or experienced greatness in any form. Big Tech remains a strong source of talent, but increasingly we’re seeing exceptional founders coming from companies like Palantir, from successful startups in the region, and from the CEE diaspora communities in the US and UK. The shrinking of large tech teams is certainly creating more opportunity, but what matters to us is the individual, not where they come from.”1

“We believe in strong founders more than ever. In a world where anyone can spin up an AI wrapper in a weekend, the bar for what’s truly defensible has shifted to the founders themselves.”

What This Fund Tells Us About VC in 2026

Credo’s fundraise comes at a pivotal time for the global venture market. In 2025, global VC remained highly selective, with capital continuing to concentrate around AI. The sector accounted for nearly half of global venture funding, with funding reaching about $211 billion, more than double vs. 2024, according to Crunchbase data.6

Only 45% of CEE VCs expect a better investment climate in 2026.6 Yet more than 70% of them shared that they are planning to deploy more capital in 2026 with new investments mainly.6

Credo describes itself as founder-first rather than theme-driven, but the team is specifically attuned to technical founders with global ambitions, and has a growing eye on AI companies after the pace of growth in its fourth fund portfolio.2

The strategy is clear. The fund size increase, from €75 million to $88 million, is modest rather than dramatic, which suggests Credo is not betting on a step-change in the regional output but on the compounding value of being consistently the first name a breakout founder from the region calls.2

In a world where AI is reshaping every industry overnight, the next UiPath or ElevenLabs might already be a two-person team working out of Warsaw, Bucharest or Prague. If history is any guide, Credo Ventures will probably be the first investor to find them. For founders across Central and Eastern Europe, this $88 million fund is more than capital. It is a signal that someone believes in their potential before anyone else does.

What do you think about Credo’s bet on CEE founders? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.