LAUNCHub Ventures has raised 65 million euros in committed capital for the first close of its third fund, with a target of more than 75 million euros. Before it even announced the news, the Sofia-based fund had already made its first three investments from the new fund, in Nanogram, Lenz and 1Club.

A first close is the point at which a fund already has enough money to start investing, while it keeps taking on new investors up to its final target. This one comes 14 years after LAUNCHub was founded and five years after its previous fund, which raised 74 million euros. Over that time, the fund has put money into nearly 100 companies across the region, manages more than 100 million euros in assets, and has logged 18 exits, including the sale of Sofia-based SPLX to US firm Zscaler in 2025, as well as earlier deals involving FITE and OfficeRnD. About 4 in 10 of the companies LAUNCHub backs at the earliest or seed stage go on to raise a bigger Series A round. Companies in its portfolio have raised more than 700 million euros in extra money from other investors after the fund's first checks.

Nanogram, Lenz and 1Club

Lenz builds a tool that checks whether text written by artificial intelligence contains errors or made-up facts. It was founded by Kosta Yordanov, co-founder of sports streaming platform FITE, later sold to Triller. 1Club builds AI software for sports clubs and organised activities that tracks memberships and payments; it was started by Miroslav Miroslavov and Martin Kirov, who also founded office-space company OfficeRnD. Nanogram is a platform where users describe a game in text and get a ready-to-play version back; it is based in the US, with an engineering team in Sofia.

All three deals follow the same pattern: founders who already sold a company with LAUNCHub's backing have come back with a new venture, and the fund has put money in again. More than 10 founders from LAUNCHub's previous two funds are now investors in the third one, alongside family offices and entrepreneurs from the region.

EIF, EBRD and checks of up to 3 million euros

The biggest checks in the new fund come from two European institutions, the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). They channel public EU money into private venture capital funds as an indirect way of reaching small, growing companies. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation is considering joining at the second close, still to come.

With the new money, LAUNCHub plans to invest in around 25 companies over the next five years, writing first checks of between 300,000 and 3 million euros. The fund will be able to lead rounds worth up to 7 million euros on its own or together with another investor, and it is keeping part of the money back to put more into companies that reach Series A. LAUNCHub partner Stanislav Sirakov said the money from institutions needs to be matched by entrepreneurs' own involvement, adding that family offices in the region are still mostly first-generation investors.

Venture capital funds in Eastern Europe put a total of 3.6 billion euros into 1,034 deals in 2025 — just 5.5% of all venture capital in Europe, even though the region is home to roughly a third of the continent's population. Bulgaria takes about 6.4% of that sum, or roughly one in every 15 euros invested in the region. In 2025, Bulgarian startups raised 233.6 million euros across 23 deals, around 150 million euros more than the year before, but the average deal size was about 10.2 million euros. That shows most of the money is going into a handful of bigger, later-stage rounds rather than spreading across many small companies at the very start. The number of earliest-stage deals in the region is growing fast: pre-seed deals are up 45% and seed-stage deals up 43% on the year before. The trouble starts at the next step, rounds above 1 million euros, where getting funding is harder — and not because of a lack of good ideas or founders.

While it waits for the International Finance Corporation's decision on the second close, LAUNCHub has also grown its team. Raya Yunakova and Petar Tsachev were promoted to managing partners, Vedran Blagus joined in May as a partner associate covering Croatia, Slovenia and the Western Balkans, and in June Nikoleta Popkostadinova took charge of the fund's marketing.