Warsaw-based Montis VC has closed its first funding round at €50 million, backing early-stage startups across Europe that are building for the energy and industrial transition. The Montis VC fund is anchored by the European Investment Fund through the REPowerEU programme, the Polish Development Fund contributing €10 million, and a group of family offices and private investors from Central and Eastern Europe.
The fund is still open. The €50 million first close is described by the firm as the start of a wider fundraising effort, with plans to boost the fund’s capital in the coming months. That means more capital, more portfolio companies, and a wider European footprint ahead.
The Fund’s Investment Focus:
Montis VC plans to invest in 20 to 25 startups at the pre-seed and seed stages, with initial cheques ranging from €0.5 million to €2 million, while half of the total investment budget has been reserved for follow-on rounds.
The three core areas are energy, industry, and resilience. The team is specifically looking at how AI can be applied in sectors like manufacturing, energy grids, and infrastructure. These are areas where software alone rarely solves the problem and where the team’s background in energy and industrial operations gives them a real advantage over generalist funds.
A Team With Operating History:
The fund is led by Managing Partners Łukasz Dziekoski, Wojciech Szwankowski, and Michał Gawęda, all of whom ran the predecessor Montis Capital fund. The same team has been investing since around 2018 and has already deployed roughly €30 million across nine companies.
That existing portfolio includes names like Autofixer, Talkin’Things, Micromobility Port, Fresh Inset, and Skriware. Founders from these companies have publicly described the team as hands-on operators, not just capital providers. Szymon Jezierski, CEO of Autofixer, noted that the Montis team helped structure operations, supported key hires, and coordinated follow-on fundraising rounds during rapid scaling. That kind of operational involvement is still relatively rare at the seed stage in Central and Eastern Europe.
Who Is Backing This Fund:
The institutional backing here is worth noting for founders evaluating who they’d be taking money from. PFR Ventures provided a cornerstone €10 million investment in the new Montis VC fund, and the European Investment Fund committed through the REPowerEU program. REPowerEU is an EU initiative designed to accelerate energy independence across member states, so this is capital with a clear structural mandate behind it.
The fund has also assembled a network of venture partners that includes Taavi Rõivas, the former Prime Minister of Estonia who was among the architects of the country’s early digital governance infrastructure; Tomasz Misiak, an entrepreneur and Harvard Business School graduate; and Bart Dujczynski, a renewable energy specialist with experience in Western European markets.
That combination of institutional credibility and network depth gives Montis VC meaningful access across both public and private stakeholders in Europe.
CEE as a Strategic Base:
Central and Eastern Europe has seen a steady rise in hard-tech and deep-tech focused funds over the past few years. This reflects a growing pattern among CEE venture funds, which have increasingly positioned themselves as specialists in hard-tech and deep-tech verticals as Western European capital has concentrated in software and consumer platforms.
Montis VC fits that trend and adds a layer of industrial credibility to it. The partners have backgrounds in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, infrastructure investing through the Marguerite Fund, and direct energy sector experience. That combination is uncommon in early-stage investing and positions the fund well for the type of capital-intensive companies it plans to back.
As a founder raising in the energy or industrial tech space, this is the type of fund worth putting on your radar. They understand capex financing, they have strong institutional relationships, and their track record shows consistent involvement past the initial cheque.
