♦ Romania has produced only one confirmed tech unicorn – UiPath, but six other companies with Romanian roots have attracted cumulative funding of more than 500 million dollars and are heading for billion-dollar valuations ♦ DRUID AI, FintechOS, FlowX.AI, Digitail, Dexory and Bible Chat form the nucleus of the «soonicorns» – companies with Romanian DNA on the path to valuations of more than one billion dollars.
The start-up ecosystem in Romania has so far produced only one unicorn – UiPath, a company founded by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă, which was valued at almost 30 billion dollars at the time of its listing on the New York Stock Exchange, in April 2021. Since then, the local market has been waiting for the next unicorns, and currently the premises are promising: a new generation of companies with Romanian DNA has accumulated total funding of hundreds of millions of dollars and are heading for valuations that could bring them (each individually) into the billion-dollar club. They are the so-called «soonicorns» of Romanian tech. However, these individual success stories are exceptions in a local ecosystem still characterized by a small number of projects and low amounts of funding. Romanian start-ups attracted funding of 103.2 million euros in 2025, distributed in 40 transactions, down by about 20% compared to the 129 million euros in 2024, according to the How To Web report. At the regional level, Romania ranked 11th according to the cumulative value of financing, and no domestic company entered the top 20 of the largest rounds. Given that only a third of the start-ups that took a seed round managed to later attract a larger round, the local ecosystem is losing ground in front of markets like Bulgaria, which attracted three times more capital in 2025. In this context, the stories of Romanian start-ups that manage to assert themselves despite the local ecosystem being less developed than in other markets in the region or in the west of the continent are all the more interesting. Those that have caught the radar of global investors have done so by developing niche technology with global applicability—from conversational artificial intelligence and banking infrastructure to autonomous robotics and mobile apps with millions of users.
In pole position
The most advanced candidate for unicorn status is DRUID AI, the conversational artificial intelligence platform for the enterprise environment founded by Liviu Drăgan, the entrepreneur known for the TotalSoft project, which passed away last year. The company develops virtual assistants for large companies – more than 300 customers in fields such as insurance, retail, health and telecom, including AXA, Carrefour, NHS and Orange – and has exceeded one billion processed conversations. The research and consulting company Gartner included DRUID AI in the Magic Quadrant as a «Challenger» in the segment of virtual agents for the enterprise.
In 2025, the domestic company attracted a Series C round of $31 million, led by the German fund Cipio Partners, bringing the total funding to over $80 million, while annual recurring revenues increased 2.7 times in 2024. It should be noted that the $31 million funding was announced after the death of founder Liviu Drăgan. The management was taken over by the co-founder Andreea Pleșea, and later a new CEO was recruited – Joseph Kim, former executive at the American company Sumo Logic.
For the banking environment
If DRUID AI automates the conversation between companies and their customers, FintechOS and FlowX.AI take care of what happens behind the bank counter. FintechOS, founded by Teodor Blidăruş and Sergiu Neguţ, provides the software infrastructure that banks and insurance companies use to launch digital products quickly, without replacing existing systems. The company raised $60 million in a Series B round in 2022 and serves clients in several European countries, with accelerated expansion in 2025 in Romania, Moldova, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. In a complementary niche, FlowX.AI, founded by Ioan Iacob, helps banks modernize their old IT infrastructure using AI agents dedicated to banking processes – about 200 so far. The company reached total funding of 44 million dollars (with Dawn Capital as the main investor) and works with banks such as Banca Transilvania, OTP, Alpha Bank, BNP Paribas and State Street – clients both in Romania and on international markets. «We don't believe in autonomous agents. We believe in 'human in control'», Iacob previously declared for ZF, emphasizing an approach that contrasts with the industry's dominant discourse on complete automation.
Other examples
Far from the fintech world, Digitail proves that Romanian technology can conquer markets that few would have thought of. The company digitizes veterinary clinics – from appointments and medical records to communication with pet owners – using artificial intelligence. The platform serves over 10,000 veterinarians and is used by 3 million animal owners from over 40 countries, the main markets being the USA and Canada. In November 2025, Digitail secured a $23 million Series B round led by Five Elms Capital, bringing total funding to $37 million. Perhaps the most spectacular trajectory in the entire list belongs to the start-up Bible Chat, founded by Laurenţiu Bălaşa (CEO) and Marius Iordache (CTO). The application uses artificial intelligence to make religious texts accessible, reaching more than 10 million users globally and annualized revenues of more than 33 million dollars by the end of 2025. Bălaşa built Bible Chat starting from Basmo, a reading application, pivoting in 2023, when he noticed that most users were interested in religious texts. In February 2025, the company attracted a Series A round of $14 million, led by Silicon Valley's True Ventures, with participation from Play Ventures (Singapore) and Silicon Gardens (Slovenia).
Different models
If Bible Chat conquered the American market starting from Romania, Dexory chose another path: headquarters in London, but with Romanian roots. The company has developed the world's tallest autonomous robot (16 meters) for scanning and inventory management in logistics warehouses, and is already working for GXO, Maersk, DHL and Stellantis. In October 2025, Dexory announced a Series C round of $165 million, led by Eurazeo, bringing the total funding to approximately $285 million. It is the largest financing attracted by a company with Romanian DNA after UiPath. Even further from the local ecosystem is Cyberhaven, the cyber security company founded by three Romanian entrepreneurs, which operates entirely from Silicon Valley. Cyberhaven has already reached the valuation of 1 billion dollars – practically becoming the second unicorn with Romanian DNA – after a series D financing of 100 million dollars, the valuation increasing seven times in a single year. Clients include Apple and Google. The connection with Romania, however, is one of identity, not operational.
On an upward trend
In addition to «soonicorns», the Romanian ecosystem also produces other companies on accelerated growth trajectories. The Brief (formerly known as Creatopy), the digital advertising automation platform founded by Gabriel Ciordaş, has grown primarily organically without large funding rounds. The company reported a 40-45% increase in revenues in 2025 and estimates that it will reach the profitability threshold in the first half of 2026. The platform is used by over 10,000 brands and between 800 and 1,000 advertising agencies from over 130 countries – an indicator of the international penetration of a tech brand built in Romania. At the opposite pole in terms of size, but with equally big ambitions, is Genezio, the start-up founded by Andrei Pitiş – one of the best-known entrepreneurs in the Romanian tech ecosystem, the creator of Vector Watch (the smart watch sold in 27 countries and acquired by Fitbit/Google) and co-founder of Innovation Labs. Genezio has developed a platform that helps companies understand how they are perceived in user conversations with ChatGPT and increase their visibility in those responses – basically, the SEO equivalent of the AI age. «ChatGPT has become an interlocutor, a kind of influencer. It is important in a discussion to be visible and what it says about you», explained Pitiş for ZF. The company already works with BCR and sells to enterprise customers, at a price of approximately 1,000 euros per month. With 15 employees and a funding of 2.5 million euros, Genezio aims for a new round of around 10 million euros in 2026, at a valuation of 35-50 million euros, with the ambition to become one of the top five global players in the field. The question is no longer whether Romania can produce the next unicorn, but how many it will produce and how quickly. And the answer depends not only on the quality of the entrepreneurs, but also on the capacity of the ecosystem to support them with capital, favorable regulation and infrastructure.