Polish startups raised PLN 5 billion, but 74 percent went to two companies

After the first three quarters of 2026, the venture capital market in Poland has reached an all-time high. Without the ElevenLabs and ICEYE rounds, however, the remaining funding is smaller than a year ago.

Polish startups raised a total of PLN 5.03 billion from January to September 2026. This follows from a report by PFR Ventures and Inovo.vc, which was covered by, among others, ITwiz and My Company Polska. That is more than in any full year: in 2021, venture capital funds (VC, meaning those investing in young technology companies) put up PLN 3.62 billion, in 2022 PLN 3.64 billion, and in 2025 PLN 3.37 billion.

Two rounds from the first half of the year account for 74 percent of that amount: ICEYE (PLN 1.91 billion) and ElevenLabs (PLN 1.81 billion). Excluding them, the value of the remaining rounds is 13 percent lower than in the same period of 2025, although there are 9 percent more deals. A similar decline is reported by "Rzeczpospolita," which estimates the market value excluding the largest transactions at about PLN 1.3 billion.

In the third quarter alone, 60 funds invested PLN 407 million in 48 companies. In the second quarter, excluding the largest rounds, it was about PLN 595 million. The average transaction value fell from PLN 13.8 million to PLN 8.5 million, while the median rose from PLN 4 million to PLN 4.6 million.

There are more early-stage rounds. In the third quarter, there were 37 pre-seed and seed rounds, meaning startup financing, compared with 32 a year earlier. There were nine Series A rounds, compared with four a year earlier. Aleksander Mokrzycki, vice president of PFR Ventures, attributes this increase to money from the EU program FENG (European Funds for a Modern Economy). Maciej Małysz from Inovo.vc points out that funds' requirements for Series A and later rounds are higher than ever, and that "seed no longer buys time to look for direction".

Foreign funds accounted for 55 percent of the value of investments in the third quarter. According to Dmytro Golournyi from PFR Ventures, however, they rarely invest in Poland on their own: such transactions account for about 15 percent of the market, and co-investment with a local fund is becoming the standard.

For management boards and founders planning a round, the record amount says little about capital availability: nearly three quarters went to two companies, and a typical transaction in the third quarter was worth a few million zlotys.