The 36 Czech and Slovak Investors Backing Local Startups in 2025 and 2026

Episode 1 showed that Czech and Slovak money closes most seed rounds here and episode 2 that the market shrank after 2021. This one asks who that local money is. We took the 50 Czech and Slovak investors that joined 5 or more rounds in Czech and Slovak startups since 2020, from VC funds to angels, banks and public money, and looked at the 36 of them that backed a Czech or Slovak startup in 2025 or 2026. 27 invested in 2026 so far, 7 made their last local investment in 2025, and 2 have since stopped making new investments.

Who backs whom

The map shows every startup these investors backed in 2025 and 2026 so far. Each orange dot is an investor and each blue dot a startup, at its registered address in Czechia and Slovakia; startups abroad sit around the border, grouped by country. Investors with no round in those two years are not on it. Zoom into a city to see its companies by name, or click an investor to see what it backed.

The small investors are thinning out

Of the 27 small investors, 15 joined a local round in 2025 or 2026. The 8 investing in 2026 are BD Partners, i&i Biotech Investments, Orbit Capital, Borovicka Capital, Genesis Capital, Impulse Ventures, Jiří Hlavenka and Jet Venture 1; Albert Michael Poplar, Fazole Ventures, Inven Capital, Jaroslav Beck, Crowdberry, Lumus Investment Collective and Y Soft Ventures last invested in 2025.

The small investors that stayed write later and bigger. Pre-seed made up 39% of their rounds in 2020 to 2024 and 19% in 2025 and 2026. The median round they joined went from €1.0M to €2.9M. Their rounds since 2025 are mostly in AI, marketing and sales tools, and e-commerce.

Angels

Of the 9 angels and angel clubs with 5 or more local rounds since 2020, Garage Angels, Seed Starter and Jiří Hlavenka invested in 2026. Albert Michael Poplar, Jaroslav Beck and Lumus Investment Collective last invested in 2025. Angel rounds often go unannounced, so these counts are a floor.

Mid-sized investors took over from the big funds

The 11 largest investors joined 57% of all local investments by these 50 investors in 2020 to 2024 and 38% in 2025 and 2026. The mid-sized ones went from 18% to 41%. JIC Ventures joined 7 local rounds in 2025 against 2.2 a year before, Tensor Ventures 5 against 2.4, and Rockaway Ventures has 5 in 2026 so far. Slovak Investment Holding joined 12 Slovak rounds since 2025, Gi21 6 and Venture to Future Fund 8.

The big funds invest less at home, and more abroad

N1 joined 50 Czech and Slovak rounds in 2020 to 2024, about 10 a year, and none since August 2024. Purple Ventures joined 8 in 2025 and none in 2026. Miton went from 7.4 a year to 4 in 2025, Lighthouse Ventures from 6.6 to 4, Credo Ventures from 6 to 4, Depo Ventures from 5.6 to 3 and Kaya VC from 4.8 to 3. Czech Founders VC, the most active local investor of 2025 with 8 rounds, and Presto Ventures have stopped making new investments.

Most of these funds still invest, but abroad. Across the 21 local VC funds with 8 or more local rounds, the share of rounds going to startups outside Czechia and Slovakia rose from 30% in 2020 to 2024 to 46% in 2025 and 2026. N1 did not stop: it now backs AI and health startups in the United States and Europe from offices in San Francisco, Prague and Luxembourg, and joined 11 rounds abroad since 2025, among them Novoflow, Paratus Health and Human Archive. Purple Ventures joined 7 rounds abroad in 2026 alone, among them Lupin & Holmes and Shiplog in France.

Few new local investors

Only 3 of the 50 made their first Czech or Slovak investment in 2023 or later: Lumus Investment Collective (2023), BD Partners (2024) and Jet Venture 1 (2025). Slovak Investment Holding appears in our data from 2025.

The 36 investors that invested in 2025 and 2026

What this means for founders

The active local money now sits with mid-sized investors such as JIC Ventures, Tensor Ventures, Rockaway Ventures, Slovak Investment Holding and Gi21, and the small investors still active come in at seed rather than pre-seed. For a first cheque at pre-seed, the pool is thinner than it was in 2021.