We talk a lot about the Romanian startup ecosystem and the startups active here, but this time we looked over the news for startups that are co-founded by Romanians living abroad, thus startups with headquarters elsewhere.

With more than €240M raised in Series A, B, and C, in the second half of the last year, these startups raised almost 10 times more than the Romanian-based ones (most of them being at pre-seed, seed, and one in Series A).

Here’s a list of the most notable startups with Romanian co-founders living abroad that we had on the radar with notable fundraising rounds in the past year:

1. German startup Vaha co-founded by Călin Popescu as CTO received an undisclosed investment led by Unbound, and which also included contributions from Porsche Ventures as well as from existing investors HV Capital and the Rocket Internet fund Global Founders Capital. Vaha is a smart mirror that helps you stay in a progressive flow of physical and mental development, connecting the user with a personal trainer (link with details).

2. Anyscale a software startup co-founded by Ion Stoica as Executive Chairman has obtained a round of series B investments of $40M. The financing was led by the NEA investment fund and other large funds from the US have also participated in the investment Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Foundation Capital, and Intel Capital (link with details).

3. Founded by Emi Gal as CEO, the New York-based startup Ezra that provides early cancer detection by combining advanced medical imaging technology and AI research closed an $18M Series A funding round from 18 investment funds and received clearance from FDA for its AI software.

4. The British startup Proportunity, founded by 2 young Romanian entrepreneurs, Vadim Toader as  CEO and Stefan Boronea as CTO, obtained financing of over €8.2M to grant loans to those who buy homes with mortgages in the UK. The startup uses artificial intelligence to analyze and estimate the evolution of real estate prices in different areas for the next years and helps users find the desired luxury.

5. Bay-area startup Rockset that is focused on real-time data analytics and cloud infrastructure, that has Tudor Bosman as Chief Architect in the management team, obtained a new financing of $40M last year, from two of the most important tech investment funds Sequoia and Greylock.

6. Point Pickup Technologies, a US-based digital B2B courier platform, developed by a team of Romanian programmers, entered a new stage of growth after receiving financing of $30M from Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH). The funding they received is used to develop and improve technology and services, helping the company meet the growing and diverse demand.

7. The Boston-based startup Whoop, with Aurelian Nicolae co-founder and Lead Product Engineer, received funding of $100M. Whoop produces fitness trackers and offers them with a monthly subscription package that gives users access to sleep and exercise data and a fitness-oriented community. The round of financing was led by IVP and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with 9 other venture capital funds.
8. Stellar Health is a US-based startup that was founded by Octavian Costache as CTO and 3 other partners that received a $10M investment from Point72 Ventures. The startup is a platform that keeps communication between doctors and patients (link with details).

9. BotsAndUs, a startup providing full-stack robot systems for public spaces founded in London by two Romanian entrepreneurs, received $2.5M in June 2020  The financing round was led by Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures, the two investment funds being joined by angel investors from Great Britain and the United States (link with details).

10. In February 2020, a cybersecurity startup, OutThink founded by Flavius ​​Pleșu as CEO, has obtained venture capital financing of £1.2M (around €1.44M) from a group of investors led by Forward Partners. Other investors were Paramount Computer Systems and Subatomic Analytics (link with details).

In conclusion, we’re glad to see that the diaspora is quite active in the tech startups domain also. Having access to much more venture capital in their respective countries and being present in bigger markets, they can raise more funding and grow faster. 

Congrats to all who worked hard and received financing! Let’s keep things going in 2021!