Are AI agents a trend among startups in the Baltics and CEE?

Yes, and it is moving fast. 21% of the CEE founders who applied to BADideas in 2026 so far are building AI agents, up from 12% in 2025. Across all applicants it was 2% in 2024.

The figures

Agents are now 33% of the CEE startups that put AI at the core. In BADideas application data, agent startups sell to businesses: 95% are B2B, most often developer tools, sales and marketing, HR and finance. They ask for more than other applicants, a median of €750,000 against €500,000, and 47% applied with no revenue yet.

What is changing

The jump came in Q2 2026. Before 2025, agents barely appeared in applications at all.

What it means for you

• Agents are crowded fast. About one in five CEE applicants pitches them now. If you are one, show real usage, not a demo.
• Name the job the agent does and the person it replaces or helps. Investors see many agents that do "workflows"; the specific one wins.
• Expect questions on reliability and cost. What happens when the agent is wrong, and what each task costs you to run.

Also answers

How many startups are building AI agents?

21% of CEE applicants in 2026 so far, and 26% across all regions, against 12% and 15% in 2025.

How we measured it

• Source: applications founders sent to BADideas in 2025 and 2026 to date. CEE means the company is in a Central or Eastern European country. An agent is software that carries out tasks on its own, as the founder describes the product.
• Limits: these are founders who applied to one CEE pre-seed fund, so the sample leans towards companies that see themselves as a fit for it. A single quarter can swing, so read the change between years first. Whether a product is an agent is read from the founder's own description. Figures are rounded.
• Read: 26 September 2026. Updated every quarter.

Who we are

We are a pre-seed and seed fund for founders in Central and Eastern Europe. We have built and sold companies ourselves, and since 2022 we have backed more than 40.

We back founders who see something about their market that others do not see yet. They want to change how a whole industry works, start with something small, and learn fast.

Good founders rarely fail on the idea or the product. They fail on selling it. So that is where we help: operators who grew Zendesk, Square and Scale AI work on your go-to-market.

Raising soon? Get your deck read the way our deal leads read it

Read next

• Will an AI startup stand out to investors in the Baltics and CEE?
• How many startups raising in CEE are pre-revenue?
• How much do startups raise at MVP stage compared with once they have revenue?