Engaged Investments Conference 2025 Highlights and Exclusive Insights from Organizers

• Engaged Investments Conference 2025 welcomed over 450 investors, founders, and tech leaders from 24 countries
• Panel discussions centered around AI, defense tech, and deep tech, emphasizing Europe’s innovation and investment gaps
• Fifty startups, including space and defense ventures, pitched to investors with cross-border collaboration focus
• The Conference continues fostering CEE ecosystem growth and strategic investment

The 6th Engaged Investments Conference, co-organized by DEPO Ventures and J&T Ventures, gathered over 450 investors, founders, and tech leaders from 24 countries in Prague’s National House Vinohrady on October 22-23rd. Delegations of participants and attendees from the UK, France, Finland, and Lithuania highlighted growing interest in Czech and broader CEE innovation. This year’s edition reaffirmed Engaged Investments’ position as one of the region’s leading VC events, driven by high-caliber participants and discussions capturing the significant shifts underway in regional and pan-European venture capital.

The Conference and Its Organizers in a Nutshell

Over the years, Engaged Investments has grown into a leading international conference held each autumn in Prague, bringing together over 450 investors, founders, and tech innovators, from the CEE region and beyond. Designed to foster cross-border collaboration, highlight emerging technologies, and connect startups with investors, the event fills its agenda with panel discussions, hands-on workshops, curated startup presentations, and structured networking sessions, creating opportunities for meaningful partnerships and knowledge exchange.

DEPO Ventures focuses on early-stage startups in the CEE region, particularly in strategic technology sectors. Since 2019, it has backed more than 50 ventures, including blockchain platform Tatum, heart-monitoring solution Kardi AI, smart financing provider Flowpay, mobile guide SmartGuide, and logistics platform Ringil. Through the DEPO Angels syndicate, the firm also links investors with high-potential startups and streamlines funding processes.

J&T Ventures manages over EUR 90M across three funds and invests up to EUR 3M in early- and growth-stage tech companies across Central and Southeastern Europe. With more than 30 portfolio companies and five successful exits, it continues to support scalable, innovative startups across the region.

Day One: Investment Discussions Spotlighting Key Trends Influencing Global Venture Capital and the CEE Region

Panel discussions at this year’s Engaged Investments Conference highlighted AI, defense technology, and scientific innovation as central to Europe’s competitive edge. Experts noted how AI is quickly evolving from broad horizontal applications into specialized verticals, where access to unique datasets and deep domain knowledge in sectors like healthcare and energy becomes critical. Despite this growth, Europe faces a pronounced ‘AI adoption gap,’ where rapid technological development outpaces practical deployment across industry and services. While AI startups now attract half of all global VC funding, European companies have raised roughly EUR 9B compared with, e.g., over EUR 120B in the United States, underscoring a significant investment gap.

Defense technology is also expanding rapidly, now representing around 4% of European venture capital, or roughly EUR 2B annually, a remarkable rise from a previously marginal sector.

Despite strong research output from Czech and European universities, much deep-tech fails to reach the market due to limited tech-transfer capacity, mismatched speeds between academia and business, and relatively complex regulations compared to other parts of the world, such as  the US.

Day Two: Attention Turns to Founders

The Conference showcased 50 investment-ready startups, ranging from Pre-Seed to Series A, including space projects under the European CASSINI program and Ukrainian defense ventures. The event emphasized cross-border co-investing and discovering new opportunities.

Additionally, Practical workshops and expert consultations, led by law firm Bird & Bird, addressed regulatory challenges, which remain a critical consideration for startups and investors navigating highly regulated technology sectors across Europe.

‘Many startups and investors operate in highly regulated industries such as defensetech, fintech, healthtech, or regtech. While these ‘rules of the game’ may seem limiting at first glance, understanding them, especially with an advisor who knows the terrain, clearly defines each player’s room to maneuver. For investors, it enables choice in structuring transactions with bounded risk; for startups, it provides flexibility in identifying opportunities and paths to growth,’ Bird & Bird’s partner and country head Czech Republic and Slovakia Ivan Sagál commented.

Innovation and Investment in CEE and Global Relevance

ITKeyMedia approached Engaged Investments Conference’s organizers to dive deeper into what the event’s 2025 edition brought to the table, what made it stand out among previous editions and other topical events of the region, and what we are to expect in the future.

Engaged Investments Conference 2025 brought together over 450 investors, founders, and tech leaders. Beyond the numbers, what qualitative shifts in mindset or behaviour might you have observed among attendees? 

Eliška Vámošová, Director at Engaged Investments Conference: Conversations were less conceptual and much more execution-driven this time. As for our attendees, they were far more intentional about forming deeper relationships and openly sharing insights and experience.

The Conference emphasized an ‘AI adoption gap’ in Europe (rapid development vs slower deployment). Do you believe there’s a role for investors to play in closing that gap, beyond writing cheques? 

EV: Indeed, capital alone doesn’t fix adoption. Active investors do. VC investors use their influence, networks, expertise and of course capital to accelerate deployment, reduce regulatory friction, and steer startups toward solving real enterprise problems.

The Conference also pointed out how the deep-tech ecosystem in CEE still struggles with tech transfer, regulation, and academia/business speed mismatch. How can one tackle those systemic barriers? 

Petr Chladek, CEO at JIC (South Moravian Innovation Center): Deeptech innovations are science-driven – yet in the whole Czech Republic, fewer than ten university spin-offs are created each year, while in countries like Germany or Finland, there are hundreds. At JIC, we aim to multiply this number in the coming years by developing the entrepreneurial mindset of students and researchers and incubating their projects.

What are the most underappreciated opportunities for Western funds in the CEE region? Conversely, what are the biggest blindspots? 

Petr Šíma, Founder and Partner at DEPO Ventures: One of the most underappreciated opportunities for Western funds in CEE is the region’s ability to build global products with extreme capital efficiency. Founders here operate with a level of resilience, technical depth and focus that’s still underestimated in Western Europe. Add to that strong talent in AI, cybersecurity, defence and other IP-heavy domains. And you get a market where true technological advantage is often hiding in plain sight.

The biggest blindspot, on the other hand, is the assumption that CEE moves slowly or offers only early-stage opportunities. In reality, the ecosystem is scaling fast, valuations remain attractive, and some of Europe’s most promising later-stage companies are born here. Many Western investors still overlook the geopolitical position of the region, which today makes CEE one of the most important hubs for strategic and dual-use innovation.

In a region still recovering from the geopolitical (and consequent economic) shock, how do you view the role of VCs and VC conferences in shaping resilience and ecosystem recovery?

EV: From what we can observe, the region in general is doing quite well, the growth rate is higher than in western Europe, for instance. The problem is fear of risk for most investors. With more VC money in the ecosystem we could expect the rise of entrepreneurship in areas like Deep Tech and the unlocking of our region’s tech potential in full.

Looking ahead to Engaged Investments Conference 2026, with what innovation or evolution in format, content, or community would you most like to experiment? And what worked so well this year that makes it worth doubling down on?

EV: Over the past years, we’ve shaped a format that works for our attendees: two days, with an investor-only day followed by a startup day. This year we saw a rise in interest around the startup pitches. Partly it’s because we improved the screening and curated them more rigorously by funding stage. Next year, we’d like to give these top-tier startups more room on the main stage.

As for topics, it will primarily depend on how the venture landscape evolves. We always shape the program around what defines a particular year. Personally, I believe that defence tech and AI will stay relevant for Engaged 2026.

Looking ahead even further, e.g. 5 years from now, what will you consider as a major success for this conference as an institution in the context of the CEE ecosystem?

EV: If our Conference helps drive more cross-border investing, brings global funds closer to the region, and consistently surfaces the most promising early-stage talent, then it’s doing its job. Ultimately, what measures our success most importantly is simple: CEE companies raising more capital, scaling faster, and growing their importance in Europe’s strategic tech landscape, with Engaged being one of the catalysts behind it all.

To conclude in the words of J&T Ventures’ founding and Managing Partner Adam Kočík, ‘Today, Central and Eastern Europe has enormous innovation potential for attracting more international capital. Conferences’ like Engaged Investments’ importance lies in providing people with a platform to meet, share their experience, and push the entire market forth.’

The Engaged Investments Conference team has worked hard and firmly established this event as a cornerstone of the CEE startup and VC ecosystem, providing a central platform for cross-border collaboration, knowledge exchange, and strategic investment. The 2025 edition highlighted highest-growth sectors like AI, defense tech, and deep-tech, while bringing together over 450 investors, founders, and industry leaders from 24 countries, reflecting the region’s growing global relevance. By connecting high-caliber startups with experienced investors and fostering actionable insights, the conference continues to drive the growth, resilience, and international integration of CEE’s technology landscape.