- 8U.S. investors and founders from San Francisco and New York
- 25minutes a meeting, back to back
- 150seats at the conference, fully booked
01September 22–25, 2026
How It Went
Eight investors and founders from San Francisco and New York spent the week in Timișoara.
The delegates arrived on Tuesday and met that evening over dinner in the hotel courtyard.
Wednesday was the first working day, at Jecza Gallery: pre-matched 1:1 meetings on investment, U.S. market entry, growth financing and commercial partnerships, twenty-five minutes each, with coffee in the courtyard between them and lunch on site. Running alongside them that morning, a roundtable on the region’s own ecosystem brought Politehnica Timișoara, ADR Vest, Vest Ventures, Asternova Vest and Growceanu to one table with delegates from Cogito Capital Partners and Full In Partners. The day closed with dinner together.
On Thursday the conference opened at the Timișoara Convention Center, hosted by AmCham Romania, with the Senior Commercial Officer of the U.S. Embassy among the speakers. A hundred and fifty business leaders filled the room, and two panels asked how companies from here reach the American market, and how American capital reaches here. The matched meetings resumed after it. That evening, a walk through the old town with a guide and a private viewing of Picasso en visite at Art Encounters.
02Reported
Coverage
Twenty-two items across seventeen outlets.
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Scott Hartley, co-founder and general partner, Everywhere Ventures Romania’s business daily gives one of the delegates a dedicated interview, on a fund of around $100 million that writes first checks. Opens in Romanian · Read in English -
Romanian founders face to face with the American funds, in Timișoara Romanian founders and the visiting funds on camera, in a special edition recorded across the two days of meetings. Opens in Romanian · Read in English -
What the American investors saw in Romanian startups The U.S. investor view on technical depth, on founders who start from a real problem, and on the companies that were earlier than their funds normally invest. Opens in Romanian · Read in English -
The founders and their ideas were at a very high level The U.S. investor view after the meetings, alongside the organizer and the Romanian funds that sat at the same tables. Opens in Romanian · Read in English -
The entrepreneur bringing Silicon Valley funds to Romania The organizer on ten years in Silicon Valley, on how long it takes to build trust with investors there, and on what it normally costs a Romanian founder to get in front of them. Opens in Romanian · Read in English
03Select delegation
The Delegation
Managing partners, general partners and company founders, from San Francisco and New York.
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Martin Jasinski Managing Partner, Cogito Capital Partners · New York Early growth · €125 million fund · €5 to €15 million per company -
Zach Coelius Founder & Managing Partner, Coelius Capital · San Francisco Seed · up to $1 million per company · fourth fund -
Scott Hartley Managing Partner, Everywhere Ventures · New York Seed · $100M+ · 300 companies in 30 countries -
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Tanya Dadasheva Co-founder & CEO, Ainekko · San Francisco Bay Area Open-source AI silicon · RISC-V, from model to chip -
Roman Shaposhnik Co-founder & Head of Software, Ainekko · San Francisco Bay Area VP of Legal Affairs at the Apache Software Foundation · co-founder and former CTO of ZEDEDA
04At the tables
The Romanian Side
The Romanian companies, funds and institutions the delegation met across the week.
- Vest Ventures A €16.5 million pre-seed acceleration fund for the West Region. vestventures.vc
- Asternova Vest A €37 million regional venture fund for Western Romania, seed and Series A. asternova.vc
- Growceanu Regulated platform for investing in vetted Romanian private companies. growceanu.com
- Rayscape AI for chest imaging, X-ray and CT. rayscape.ai
- Aqurate AI product personalization for e-commerce shops. aqurate.ai
- OptiComm.AI AI sales agents for B2B distributors. opticomm.ai
- NostraBiome LIFE OS, a platform to understand and improve human biology. nostrabiome.com
- WakeZ A digital molecule for depression, software that works while the user sleeps. wakez.ai
- BioSync Health Saliva biomarker testing, a reusable reader and disposable cartridges. bio-sync.health
- Fiora5 Customizable RISC-V CPU IP for edge and custom chips. fiora5.com
- TrueNorth Navigation modules that let drones fly without GPS. true-north.aero
- CautCurier Same-day B2B logistics, starting with dental. cautcurier.ro
- FlowX.AI The multi-agent AI platform for banking, insurance and logistics. flowx.ai
- Prime Dash Software that connects banks with their business clients. primedash.com
- Nokia Romania Around 1,800 people in Timișoara and Bucharest, and Nokia’s largest research and development center for 5G in the country. nokia.com
- Endeavor Romania The Romanian office of Endeavor, the network of entrepreneurs scaling exceptional businesses around the world. Zein Darwesh came for the working days. romania.endeavor.org
- Upgrade 100 Dragoș Stanca’s publishing and events platform, behind the IQ Digital Summit series. He moderated both conference panels. upgrade100.com
- Politehnica Timișoara The technical university of western Romania, founded in 1920, and the source of most of the region’s engineers. upt.ro
- ADR Vest The West regional development agency, managing authority for the €1.18 billion Regional Programme West 2021–2027. adrvest.ro
05A minute and a half
The Film
06Value
What Each Side Got
Startups and VCs
Reaching U.S. funds from here usually takes months of introductions, a flight and several thousand dollars for a few minutes in front of one of them. These companies had the same roadshow at home, in two days, with investors who had read about them before they landed.
For the regional funds at the table, it was a way to put local companies in front of U.S. investors years before a large round, and to invest alongside them.
U.S. delegates
Deal flow in a market their funds reach rarely, and a reading of the ecosystem that comes from being in the room. They met teams building deep technology, among them a navigation alternative to GPS for drone flight and processors that keep memory on chip to run AI locally, in real time.
The founders here start from a real problem and build toward it, which several of the delegates said they see less often in larger markets.
07September 24
The Conference
AI & Business Perspectives, AmCham Romania’s regional conference in Timișoara.
The public component of the summit was a half-day conference organized and hosted by AmCham Romania. It ran in English, around two panels, on Romanian technology scaling to the United States and on venture capital, with a networking lunch after. In the room were the U.S. delegation, Romanian and regional business leaders, AmCham members and U.S. companies operating in Romania.
Where
Timișoara Convention Center
1-3 Mărășești Street, Timișoara
When
Thursday, September 24
10:00 to 13:00
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9:30–10:00
Registration and welcome coffee
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10:00–10:10
Welcome remarks Letiția Pupăzeanu, Executive Director, American Chamber of Commerce in Romania Brittany Banta, Senior Commercial Officer, U.S. Embassy in Romania
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10:10–10:25
Remarks Dominic Fritz, Mayor of Timișoara Sorin Maxim, General Director, Regional Development Agency West Florin Drăgan, Rector, Politehnica University of Timișoara
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10:25–11:05
Panel 1 Romania’s Technology Prowess Scaling to America Moderated by Dragoș Stanca, Founder, Upgrade 100 Alexandre Lazarow, Managing Partner, Fluent Ventures Sabin Totorean, Country Senior Officer, Nokia Romania Scott Hartley, Managing Partner, Everywhere Ventures Remus Radvan, Chief of Staff, FlowX.ai
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11:05–11:10
Q&A
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11:10–11:50
Panel 2 Fueling Innovation: Venture Capital, Startups, and Scaling from Romania Moderated by Dragoș Stanca, Founder, Upgrade 100 Zach Coelius, Founder & Managing Partner, Coelius Capital Ioana Ștefănuț, General Partner, Asternova Vest Martin Jasinski, Managing Partner, Cogito Capital Partners Andrei Munteanu, Co-founder & Programs Managing Director, Vest Ventures
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11:50–11:55
Q&A
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11:55–12:00
Closing remarks Ionuț Alexandru Antiu, Organizer, U.S.-Romania AI & Business Summit
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12:00–13:00
Networking lunch
Every seat was taken.
08Context
Why Romania
Romania has been a member of NATO since 2004, the European Union since 2007 and the Schengen area since 2025. Romanian students place consistently among the leading national teams at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Google runs its largest wearables development center in EMEA here, shipping features to Pixel users worldwide. Adobe runs its largest EMEA research center in Bucharest. AMD designs in Iași, Intel in Timișoara. The case for Romania rests on that engineering base and the growth of local capital. Venture capital in Romania is close to a hundred times what it was a decade ago, according to the World Bank.
Timișoara
Timișoara is the city from which Romania turned west in 1989, and European Capital of Culture in 2023. Around 250,000 people live in the city and more than 400,000 in the metropolitan area. Politehnica Timișoara anchors the country’s third largest technology workforce: Intel runs its Romanian AI silicon work here, Nokia develops Open RAN, and Continental builds driver-assistance systems.
09Organizers
Who Convenes It
Partner
The convening partner for U.S.-Romania business since 1993, with more than 600 member companies including major Fortune 500 companies operating in Romania.
Partner
The regional development agency for West Romania.
Partner
The technical university behind the region’s engineering and research base.
Partner
The first venture capital fund dedicated to West Romania, investing in pre-seed technology startups across the region.
Partner
A €37 million venture capital fund for seed and Series A companies in West Romania, managed by Paris-based Aster Capital.
Ionuț Alexandru Antiu
Organizer
Technology entrepreneur and fractional CTO for U.S. enterprises and startups for over ten years, including Western Digital, SanDisk, Upthere and Bluescape. Based in Timișoara.
Community partners
The community of founders and makers in Timișoara.
Equity-free startup accelerator in Piatra Neamț, powered by the North-East Development Agency and ranked among Europe’s leading start-up hubs by the Financial Times.
10Next edition
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