Last August, I wrote about the funding volume raised by Romanian founders in the country vs. Romanian founders in the diaspora. At that time, the data suggested that diaspora founders had raised around 6x more than founders based in Romania. Since then, we have new info - especially from the recent How to Web report - and it’s time to update the numbers.

1. Recap: local funding in Romania

The How to Web report shows a total funding volume of €130.7M in 2024 for Romanian startups. This figure covers everything from pre-seed to Series B+ rounds, plus various convertibles. Worth noting is that about €35M are new rounds, while about €95.7M are follow-on rounds.

2. Updated data on diaspora

In my original article, I mentioned that Romanian diaspora founders had raised about $104M in pre-seed, seed, and Series A (notably from companies like Datology AI, Ezra, Tektonic AI, etc.). Now, let’s expand that to include the end of 2024 data and align with the broader coverage of Series B+ rounds, as done in the How to Web report.

Here are some important diaspora rounds:

•Databricks: $10B (Series J)

•Harmonic: $75M (Series A)

•Dexory: $80M (Series B)

•Starcloud: $24M (pre-seed + seed)

•Cascade AI: $3.5M

•Others undisclosed (another about $14.5M)

If we simply lump it all together - including the Databricks outlier - the diaspora figure climbs to $10.3B+ (i.e., $10B from Databricks plus another $301M or so). Obviously, Databricks skews this number massively.

3. Making sense of the numbers

•With Databricks included, we’re looking at over $10B raised by diaspora founders, dwarfing the €130.7M in Romania.

•Excluding Databricks gives us about $301M total for diaspora - still 2.3x higher than the local figure (considering the eur - usd conversion too).

•Keep in mind that the €130.7M local figure also includes many follow-on rounds (like FintechOS’s €60M series B extension) - some of which started years ago - while much of the diaspora data I’ve listed above references relatively fresh raises.

Thoughts

Overall, I think the conclusion remains the same: diaspora founders manage to attract more capital largely because they have better access to funding networks and, in many cases, more advanced know-how derived from operating in mature ecosystems. In fact, I tend to believe that many experienced diaspora founders left Romania precisely because they struggled to find the right support - be it in terms of capital, mentorship, or market opportunities - back home. This doesn’t mean local founders can’t succeed; rather, it emphasizes the importance of building stronger support structures within Romania’s startup ecosystem, so that talented entrepreneurs feel they can thrive.