Czech and Slovak Startups Closed 94 Rounds on Domestic Money Alone in 2021. In 2025, 47.

The Czech Startup Data Files work through Czech and Slovak startup funding one question at a time. The first question is whose money builds these companies. Since 2020, Czech and Slovak investors have taken part in most rounds, but foreign investors sit in 74.8% of the capital, and the domestic-only round is shrinking.

In 2021, Czech and Slovak startups closed 94 rounds with Czech and Slovak investors alone. In 2025, the last full year, they closed 47, 50% fewer. Rounds with a foreign investor moved far less: 53 in 2021, 42 in 2025. So far in 2026 foreign-backed rounds lead, 30 against 21 domestic-only ones through 2026-09-22.

We took every pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and later round raised by a Czech or Slovak startup from 2020 to late September 2026: 728 rounds worth €4.64B.

Domestic-only rounds halved

Domestic-only rounds peaked at 94 in 2021 and 90 in 2022, then dropped to 56, 47 and 47. Rounds with a foreign investor stayed between 41 and 53 a year from 2021 to 2025. Domestic-only rounds still outnumbered them in every full year, but the gap narrowed from 94 against 53 in 2021 to 47 against 42 in 2025. 2026 YTD is the first period in our data where rounds with a foreign investor lead, 30 to 21.

Count every investor seat in every round and Czech and Slovak investors still hold most of them: 984 of the 1573 participations with a known country, 63%. Count capital and the balance flips nearly three to one. €3.48B of the €4.64B went into rounds with at least one foreign investor.

The share of rounds with a foreign investor sat between 27% and 34% each year from 2020 to 2022. It reached 41% in 2023, 46% in 2024 and 47% in 2025, and stands at 57% in 2026 YTD. In 2026 YTD, all 12 Series A rounds recorded so far include a foreign investor, and 9 of those also include a Czech or Slovak one.

Who closes the round, stage by stage

At pre-seed and seed, Czech and Slovak investors still carry the market. From 2020 to 2026 YTD they closed 387 of 588 rounds (66%) with no foreign investor involved and took part in 490 (83%).

At Series A the picture flips. Domestic investors alone closed 16 of 85 rounds, about 1 in 5, while 68 (80%) had a foreign investor in the syndicate. Czech and Slovak funds stay at the table: they joined 58 of the 85 Series A rounds (68%). Series B and later follows the same shape, with 18 of 55 rounds domestic-only and 37 with a foreign investor.

At Series A the lead seat goes abroad as well. Of the recorded lead positions in Series A rounds, 25 of 35 went to international investors. At seed it runs the other way: Czech and Slovak investors took 38 lead positions to 17 for international ones.

Measured by capital, the split widens past seed. Rounds with a foreign investor hold 43% of seed capital, 90% of Series A capital and 76% of Series B+ capital. Two rounds make up 42% of all domestic-only capital: PPF Group's €280M into its own biotech SOTIO in 2021, and €202.4M into the Slovak-founded chipmaker Tachyum in 2025. Leave SOTIO out and the foreign share of capital rises to 79.6%.

Foreign money writes bigger rounds

Rounds with an international investor are larger at every early stage. Median disclosed round sizes, Czech and Slovak-only against rounds with an international investor, run €0.33M against €0.50M at pre-seed, €1.20M against €1.62M at seed and €4.00M against €6.89M at Series A. Bigger rounds attract foreign funds, and foreign funds write bigger rounds, so this data cannot separate cause from effect. It does show that a Czech or Slovak founder raising €5M or more will, in most cases, raise part of it from abroad.

Who the foreign funds are

Index Ventures leads by a distance. It joined 13 Czech and Slovak rounds across seven companies, 3 at seed, 3 at Series A and 7 at growth stage, including Rohlik, Productboard and Shoptet. Y Combinator comes next with 9, 7 of them at seed. Taiwania Capital follows with 8, half of them at Series A, and backs Slovak hardware companies Brightpick and Sensoneo as well as Czech ones. Zero Gravity Capital, a US fund, joined 7, mostly at seed.

Bessemer Venture Partners, EQT Ventures, Notion Capital and Seedcamp joined 5 rounds each. By country, US investors appear in the most Czech and Slovak rounds (124), with Germany at 53 and the UK at 51. Ranked by capital instead of round count, a different group follows Index: Kinnevik and Battery Ventures (both Mews), Tiger Global (Mews and Productboard), Quadrille Capital (Rohlik and Evy), Sofina (Rohlik) and HarbourVest (Exaforce and Mews). Each joined four or fewer Czech and Slovak rounds, mostly at Series B or later.

How deep is the pool at home?

Against the size of its economy, Czechia is not short of venture money by regional standards. Venture investment came to 0.16% of GDP in 2025 (0.22% adjusted for purchasing power), level with Germany's 0.15% and three to four times Poland (0.04%) and Austria (0.05%).

In absolute terms the pool stays small. Czechia saw about $618M of venture investment in 2025 against Germany's $7.4B, while it counts 91 startups per million people, more than Germany's 70 and far more than Austria's 30 or Poland's 15. Many companies chasing a small local pool is consistent with what the round data shows: Czech and Slovak money covers seed, and the Series A cheque more often comes from abroad.

Cost points the same way. Building a startup team in Czechia costs about $638K by our estimate, 0.44 times the US level, against $1.26M in Germany and $1.04M in Austria. A fund raising in dollars or euros gets more runway per cheque in Prague or Bratislava, one plausible reason foreign funds keep showing up at Series A.

Round sizes point the same way. Czech medians are the lowest of the four countries from pre-seed to Series A: €1.35M at seed against €2.75M in Poland, €3.00M in Austria and €3.10M in Germany, and €6.20M at Series A against €9.40M to €11.0M. At Series B the Czech median (€19.3M) sits closer to the neighbours.