Techcelerator

19/10/2026

Raising now? Pitch on stage at Transylvania Venture Day.

On Tuesday, 7 December 2026, we bring a selection of 7 startups in front of local and regional investors, business angels and corporate partners at The Office Conference Center in Cluj-Napoca.

What selected teams get:
→ A pitch and live product demo on stage
→ Direct feedback via interaction with an experienced jury
→ Visibility with media, public stakeholders and the regional ecosystem

Who can apply: technology-driven teams from Transylvania and the surrounding regions: early-stage startups with an MVP and first traction, scaleups raising their next round, product companies launching a spin-off, and university or research teams with a technology ready for commercialisation.

Selection is based on team strength, innovation and market potential, traction to date and investment readiness.

📅 Deadline: 15 November 2026
👉 Apply here: https://forms.gle/4FjumUZDKS9aQefi6

Transylvania Venture Day is initiated by Techcelerator and ROTSA - Romanian Tech Startups Association, co-organized with ADR Nord-Vest, INNO - Rethinking Business Networks

16/10/2026

We’re happy to share some good news from the Deepstash team!

Deepstash, which has participated in our programmes at Techcelerator, has won Consumer Tech Company of the Yearat the 2026 Allstars Awards in London.

We’re always happy to hear what the teams we’ve worked with have been up to. This update certainly deserves a place in our feed.

Congratulations to everyone at Deepstash, and enjoy the celebrations! 👏

Photo Credit: Allstars

13/10/2026

dotLumen - Empowering the Blind has won the €5,000 Grand Prize at Glovo’s Tech Catalyst România 2026, with ambitions to bring its navigation technology into delivery robotics. 🏆

The Romanian team’s Pedestrian Autonomous Driving AI powers glasses that help blind and visually impaired people navigate through their surroundings using cameras and haptic feedback.

Now, founder Cornel Amariei sees another application for the same technology: delivery robots that can move autonomously through unfamiliar spaces.

The award also included a place at Glovo’s StartUp Campus 2026 in Barcelona, offering access to mentors, investors and the company’s leadership team as dotlumen explores this direction.

Congratulations to Cornel and the dotlumen team!

Photo credit: start-up.ro

🔗 Full article in the comments!

09/10/2026

MeOut Summit powered by EU-Startups comes to Budapest on 25–26 November, bringing together founders and investors to discuss what it takes to build an international business from Central and Eastern Europe.

The programme follows the decisions founders face as their companies grow: entering new markets, winning larger customers and rethinking products as AI changes how software is built and sold. Sessions also explore defence innovation and space biotech, with founders sharing what they’ve learned along the way.

On the funding side, Marius Istrate, Partner at 3VC, and Marcin Hejka, Co-Founder of OTB Ventures, will discuss how investor expectations change between funding stages. Andrei Dudoiu, CEO of SeedBlink, will join a conversation on alternative financing.

Alongside the talks, there’s a Pitch Marathon, structured networking and the Central European Startup Awards Grand Finale. If you’re considering the trip, the agenda is a good place to start.

📍 Akvárium Klub, Budapest | 25–26 November 2026

🔗 Explore the programme and book your ticket.

05/10/2026

What should a deep-tech company be able to demonstrate before applying for EIC funding? And how does a founder decide which programme fits their stage?

Today at STUP in Bucharest, we’re co-organising Meet the EIC in Romania, giving founders the chance to ask EIC experts those questions directly. 🇪🇺

The discussions explore how the EIC Pre-Accelerator helps early-stage companies prepare for investment, what the EIC Accelerator looks for in companies ready to bring their innovations to market, and how the Plug-in scheme gives selected projects from certified national or regional programmes direct access to the Accelerator’s full application stage.
Masterclasses offer a closer look at the application process.

We express our particular appreciation to Ramona Nicoleta Dinu, State Adviser for Corporate Governance and Tourism at the Presidential Administration of Romania, for joining us today.

Taking part in the panel on the Pre-Accelerator and Plug-in are Momchil Sabev, Director of the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency; Dragoș Pîslaru, Minister of Investments and European Projects; Cristian Dascalu, Partner at GapMinder VC & Techcelerator, EIC Ambassador and jury member; and Roxana Vesa (Sabau), co-founder of Synaptiq.io and a Pre-Accelerator beneficiary.

There are other familiar faces on the programme, too: Cornel Amariei of dotLumen - Empowering the Blind and Anca Marcu of AMSIMCEL, the company behind HyperPV, are sharing their experience. Seeing our return to speak with other founders is a part of the day we particularly value. Their experiences with EIC support give founders the chance to ask what applying has meant for the teams themselves. 🎤

As an EIC Business Acceleration Services Partner in SEE and Plug-in Scheme Administrator in Romania, we work with companies on the preparation behind these funding paths. Today brings that work into the room with EIC experts, beneficiaries and investors.

Meet the EIC in Romania is co-organised with the EIC - The European Innovation Council, Ministerul Investițiilor și Proiectelor Europene, UEFISCDI and Endeavor Romania.

02/10/2026

Being able to walk on your own should be something you can take for granted.

For Irina and Silvia, the dotLumen Glasses help make that possible.

We’ve followed Cornel Amariei and the dotLumen team closely, and it means a lot to see their work become part of Irina and Silvia’s everyday lives. Cornel, congratulations to you and the whole team! We’re proud to count you among the !

Thank you, Irina and Silvia, for letting us into your lives. Spend five minutes with their story and watch the film linked in the original post below. 🔗

Lumea are o dizabilitate: a fost construita fără să țină cont de toți oamenii.

Faceți cunoștință cu Irina Crocker și Silvia Stelea. Ele folosesc Ochelarii .lumen pentru a se deplasa independent și pentru a face un lucru pe care mulți dintre noi îl luăm de-a gata: să meargă pe cont propriu.

Ne-au primit în viețile lor pentru acest film care are premiera astăzi. Și le suntem profund recunoscători pentru asta.

Filmul nostru All In este live. Prezentat de The Valuable 500 și produs pentru Arrow Electronics de BBC StoryWorks.

30/09/2026

How do defence startups get their technology into use, and build a business around it? That’s the question we kept coming back to while reading these two pieces by Techangels Romania's Vice President, Vasile Tiple.🔍

One examines how SAFE funding is spent and whether national procurement decisions add up to what Europe needs.
The other looks at Ukraine, where rapid development and battlefield testing sit alongside regulatory hurdles for companies seeking investment and customers abroad.

Worth reading if you’re building in defence tech or considering investing in it. Both articles are linked in the original post. 🔗

As defence and dual-use technologies move higher on Europe’s agenda, the interesting questions are increasingly about how capital is deployed, how innovation scales and how the pieces fit together across Europe. Our VP Vasile Tiple recently explored this from two complementary angles.
➡️Looking at SAFE, the EU’s €150 billion defence instrument, he asks whether Europe is building a genuinely coordinated defence portfolio, around common capability gaps, interoperability and complementarity , or mainly financing national priorities. One line captures the challenge well: CARD may show what the puzzle should look like and SAFE may finance the pieces, but the pieces still need to build the same picture.
➡️His second piece looks at Ukraine’s defence-tech ecosystem, where the distance between identifying a problem, testing a technology and deploying it has become exceptionally short. The next challenge is making the full investment cycle work just as efficiently: from company creation and private capital to international scale, returns and reinvestment into the next generation of innovation.
Two different cases, one broader European question: How do we turn urgency and new capital into a defence-tech ecosystem capable not only of innovating, but of scaling?
Our Friday reading recommendation ⬇️