Kraków is one of the popular tourist attractions in Europe. Known as the royal city in Poland, now, the startup scene in Poland has flourished and Kraków has become a breeding ground for entrepreneurs and businesses.
Though the country’s capital Warsaw still has the lion’s share of startups, Kraków is also home to many of them. As per reports, €2.5 million and above is considered a big funding round in the country and 40% of such heavily funded companies were in Kraków.
As the tech growth in the city has been growing rapidly, we have listed 10 most funded Kraków tech startups as sourced from Dealroom.
Brainly
Founders: Lukasz Haluch, Michał Borkowski, Tomasz Kraus
Funding: €61 million
Valuation: $108 million – $162 million
Founded year: 2009
Why its hot: Brainly is the Quora for students. This social learning platform scored €27 million funding recently and lets students crowdsource homework answers in science, history, social studies and math. The latest funding round was led by Naspers, bringing the total raised by the startup to €61 million. The company plans to use the funds to further expand into the US, where it has a New York office, but only 10 million users in a market of 76 million students.
Claims to be one of the fastest-growing edtech startups in the world, Brainly lets middle school and high school students make learning outside the classroom highly effective, engaging and rewarding. This way, students can connect to their peers and strengthen their skills.
Silvair
Founders: Rafal Han, Szymon Slupik
Funding: €15.3 million
Valuation: €60 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Silvair is a rapidly growing company that develops innovative IoT technologies for the smart lighting industry. The company provides advanced software solutions for commercial building automation and wireless lighting control. Silvair developed the first Bluetooth mesh stack and aims to be the world’s leading wireless solutions provider for professional lighting applications.
Kontakt.io
Founders: Szymon Niemczura
Funding: €7.5 million
Valuation: $2 million – $3 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Kontakt.io operates with a goal of helping the visually impaired navigate public spaces easily. The company has developed a proximity solution before Apple came up with the iBeacon profile that uses Bluetooth Low Energy and now it is the leading global provider of such solutions.
Synerise
Founders: Jaroslaw Krolewski, Krzysztof Kochmański, Miłosz Baluś
Funding: €6.1 million
Valuation: $12 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Synerise is a leading AI growth cloud. This company combines sophisticated customer intelligence and personalisation capabilities. It enables businesses to gain insights about their customers by interacting with them in both offline and online contexts via mobile app, website, offline stores, social media, loyalty programs, live chat and more. Based on the data, it lets businesses deliver engaging and meaningful experience and complete personalisation.
Elmodis
Founders: Kamil Kozak, Marcin Święch
Funding: €4.7 million
Valuation: $20 million – $29 million
Founded year: 2015
Why its hot: Elmodis provides end-to-end IoT solution, which monitors performance and improves the efficiency of industrial machines. Its solution is connected directly to the machine’s electric motor, detects malfunctions and estimates savings for optimal working conditions. This way, machine manufacturers can reduce warranty repair costs and develop better and more efficient products.
Cyberus Labs
Founders: George Slawek, Jack Wolosewicz, Marek Ostafil
Funding: €2 million
Founded year: 2015
Why its hot: Cyberus Labs comprises a team of cybersecurity specialists that understand new cyber threats faced by any type of organisation. In the digital era wherein IoT is playing a role in every sector, consumers are under the threat of hacking in various forms such as data theft, identity theft, phishing and more. Its core products – Cyberus Key and ELIoT Pro are moving cybersecurity to the next level and make the system more secure with easy-to-use password-free authentication.
Harimata
Founders: Anna Anzulewicz, Krzysztof Sobota, Marek Przystaś, Mateusz Stec, Pawel Jarmolkowicz
Funding: €1.7 million
Valuation: $280k – $420k
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Harimata makes diagnosis easily accessible by turning tablets and smartphones into health monitors. It uses data mining and machine learning algorithms to identify behavioural patterns that might indicate particular disorders. Harimata focuses on supporting an early assessment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and measuring the progress of the therapy.
Codewise
Founders: Bartłomiej Dawidów, Robert Gryn
Funding: €910k
Valuation: $4 million – $6 million
Founded year: 2010
Why its hot: Codewise is the industry-first service provider of AI-powered ad exchange and online ad measurement and optimisation platforms for digital marketers. It was recognised as one of the fastest-growing European companies in 2017 and 2018 by The Financial Times. Headquartered in Poland, Codewise has offices in Santa Monica and London as well.
Husarion
Founders: Dominik Nowak, Filip Kramarczyk, Radek Jarema
Funding: €530k
Valuation: $480k – $720k
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Husarion is specialised in robotics. The company’s founders are friends and graduates from AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. The company provides autonomous robots platforms for education, research and software tools to connect to the robots. Husarion also provides hardware robotic controllers, development kits and robots along with cloud platforms and some programming tools.
SEEDiA
Founders: Artur Racicki, Piotr Hołubowicz
Funding: €240k
Valuation: $1 million – $2 million
Founded year: 2016
Why its hot: SEEDiA produces products that draw energy from the sun. The company designs solar benches, stands and energy products. These products have USB ports to charge mobile devices, heated seats, lighting LEDs, paper screens, play radio and WiFi hotspots.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
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