The construction of the building for the supercomputer in Sofia, part of the EuroHPC network, has officially begun. The processing power of the supercomputer will be unique for Bulgaria and the region. 

Last year, Bulgaria was chosen as one of the eight sites across the EU that will host the first European supercomputers. The other 7 supercomputing machines will be located in Ostrava (Czechia), Kajaani (Finland), Bologna (Italy), Bissen (Luxembourg), Minho (Portugal), Maribor (Slovenia), and Barcelona (Spain). 

The project is implemented by the “Petascale Supercomputer – Bulgaria” consortium with a leading partner Sofia Tech Park, and is located on the territory of the technology park. The supercomputer is planned to start operations by the end of February 2021. The state funding in the project, including the estimated operating costs for the first 5 years of exploitation, is EUR 12 mln., out of which 6 mln. are European funding.

This is the largest EU investment in Bulgaria related to the scientific infrastructure and is part of the pioneering European continent-wide plan to compete with the USA, China, and Japan as a major international player in supercomputing.

The supercomputer in Sofia will be able to execute at least 4 billion operations per second and together with the supercomputers in the other locations will support European researchers, the industry and the business in the development of new applications in a wide range of fields such as designing medicines, fighting climate change, testing and simulation in the aviation and automotive industries, data analysis, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and blockchain. 

„Today’s start of the construction of the digital hub in Sofia is a proof of Bulgaria’s potential to be a regional leader in the field of supercomputers”, said the EU commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education, and Youth Maria Gabriel at the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony. She emphasized that supercomputers can help ensure more reliable transport, energy saving, effective climate change fighting, and more. She thanked the team of Sofia Tech Park for their diligence, expertise and perseverance in working on the project.  

“Investing in technology, innovation and education is the way Sofia is going. All this is happening thanks to the great support which Sofia receives from the European Union, from our  Commissioner Maria Gabriel, and the government.”, said Sofia’s Mayor Ms. Yordanka Fandakova. She stressed that Sofia and Bulgaria will continue to invest in science, education, and to create quality jobs for educated and

Two years after settling in Bulgaria, Acronis is planning to expand its team to 1000 employees by the end of 2022 and turn its office in Sofia into the company’s largest R&D centre in the world. This was announced by thecompany’s managing director Plamen Toshev in an interview for Economy.bg. 

Acronis entered the Bulgarian market with the acquisition of the Sofia-based T-Soft and an investment of 1.2 million leva. The team of Invest Sofia was а partner of the company throughout the whole process of establishing operations in the capital. The Sofia office started with 30 people and today the world leader employs nearly 300 engineers who work on cyber protection, AI, and blockchain projects.  

See why Acronis chose Sofia for its development centre in our interview “Why Sofia” with Stanislav Protasov, co-founder of Acronis.

The company was hiring even during the months of crisis measures because of the spread of COVID-19 and last month it put into operation 4 new floors in San Stefano Plaza where the Sofia-based team of Acronis works. At the moment, the company is actively seeking for specialists for 29 open positions announced in the career website of the organization here.

In the autumn of 2019, the international leader in cyber security and hybrid cloud solutions became a unicorn with an evaluation of over USD 1,5 billion. 

Less than a month ago, Acronis announced the acquisition of DeviceLock, Inc. – a supplier of software for prevention of data loss from end devices of 4 million computers in over 5000 business organizations and state institutions in the world.

Nasekomo received an investment of 4 million Euro from the Bulgarian funds NV3 and Morningside Hill backed by the Fund of Funds in Bulgaria and private investors from the UK, France, South Africa and Bulgaria. This is the largest publicly announced AgTech deal in the region. The funds will be used to further develop the company’s automated insect breeding technologies.   

Nasekomo utilizes the incredible biological abilities of the larvae of black flies (the so-called Black Soldier fly) to turn organic waste into animal food. In a short time the larvae absorb great amounts of biowaste, drastically increase in size and in turn, after processing, become raw materials for pet food additives, for the agricultural sector, and even for the cosmetics industry.  

Nasekomo’s robotized insect rearing technology is a unique solution on the agrotech market. The company launched only three years ago and since then has managed to increase its production capacity over 25 times.   

“We have spent the last 3 years developing unique solutions for the insect rearing market. Nasekomo has leveraged robotics, A.I. and big data which allow us to produce insect protein efficiently. We will not only be competitively producing large volumes, but also addressing the challenges of our world related to animal feed”, states Marc Bolard, co-founder and technology lead of Nasekomo.

The 4 million investment will allow Nasekomo to increase its market presence and its productivity by implementing more solutions related to robotics and automatisation and data analysis.

You can find more details in the official company statement of Nasekomo.

The Czech online grocery retailer Rohlik.cz acquires a minority stake in the Sofia-based eBag for a 500 000 euro investment and a future opportunity to double the investment with the consent of the parties to the deal. The investment in the Bulgarian e-shop is part of the European expansion of the Czech company.

eBag delivers more than 15 000 fresh food items from small farms and retailers, including meat, milk, fruit and vegetables delivered to over 35 000 households in Sofia. During the period, when crisis measures against the spread of COVID-19 were implemented, orders through the platform increased exponentially. The company expects the increased demand for and consumption of food ordered online to continue after the crisis.

With the investment, the Sofia-based company wants to accelerate its growth on the Bulgarian market and to expand its warehouse in Sofia to ensure capacity for the increased number of online orders. In the longer term, eBag wants to launch deliveries to other big cities in Bulgaria, such as Plovdiv and the cities at the Black Sea coast.

Rohlik.cz is based in Prague and is the largest online food store in the Czech Republic. Like its Bulgarian peer eBag, the retailer works with local suppliers and manufacturers. Last year, Rohlik.cz entered the Hingarian market with the acquisition of a local player and plans to expand to other countries such as Austria and Germany as well.

HeleCloud, a British technology consultant in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, announced the acquisition of 100 percent of the Sofia-based cloud software engineering company DataStork. DataStork will continue to operate under its name as a wholly owned subsidiary of HeleCloud.  

Through its experience with large cloud systems, the Internet of Things (IoT) and large data for international customers such as Bosch and Uber, DataStork is in a perfect position to expand HeleCloud’s portfolio of high value-added cloud software services, founder and executive director of the Bulgarian company Doychin Yordanov sais in the official statement. 

The Sofia-based DataStork was founded in 2016 and specializes in a wide range of technologies such as Microservices, IoT, Serverless, DevOps, BigData and others. The company currently employs over 20 software engineers.

The value of the deal remains undisclosed, but it is supported by BGF, an active investor in the UK and Ireland. Last year, the London fund supported HeleCloud for another acquisition – the Dutch OlinData, which specializes in open source infrastructure. The acquisition of DataStork is part of HeleCloud’s ambition to become a leading partner for public cloud services in Europe, the company says in its statement. 

Since the beginning of 2017, HeleCloud is an authorized partner of Amazon Web Services and an official distributor of Amazon Web Services for Bulgaria through its company HeleCloud Bulgaria. The company is registered and based in London, among its co-founders are three Bulgarians

In addition to London, the company has offices in Hague and in Sofia. The Sofia-based team is the biggest one at this stage. In the summer of 2019, HeleCloud Bulgaria moved to a new larger office. The company has a strategic partnership with the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Sofia University for a specialized course focused on the AWS Cloud platform and some of the latest technologies in the industry.

The Sofia-based Walltopia has built the world’s tallest outdoor climbing structure onto the side of CopenHill, a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen. The structure is 80 meters high and is designed, manufactured and installed entirely by the Bulgarian team of the company. 

CopenHill is capable of converting 440,000 tons of waste into clean energy annually. The power plant is a 41,000-square-metre facility with an urban recreation centre and an environmental education hub, topped by a 400 metres long artificial ski slope, slalom course and green rooftop park with panoramic views of the Danish capital. CopenHill is part of Copenhagen’s goal to become the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025.

When the power plant went under construction, the owners of the building started a tender competition where all major climbing wall suppliers were invited. The Walltopia team won the project in compliance with all of the requirements related to design, fixed budget, appearance matching the building architecture, climbing routes with varying difficulty for a supreme climbing experience – all these on a scale that has never been done before. 

The climbing wall is split into four 20 metres high pitches with rest areas that use the ledges of the facade of the building itself. The wall starts on a platform above the ground level to limit people from climbing without supervision. Walltopia had to find the right balance between appearance and functionality and to create a structure that matches the impressive architecture of CopenHill, to prevent blocking the light entering the building, as well as to choose building materials that will withstand the harsh Scandinavian climate. The 80 metres construction is made of materials produced in Bulgaria and is designed, engineered, and  assembled on site entirely by the Bulgarian team of Walltopia. 

Find out more about the making of the CopenHill climbing wall here.

Walltopia, founded in Sofia in 1998, is the world’ s leading climbing walls manufacturer. The company has built climbing walls in more than 70 countries on 6 continents and has offices in the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, Austria, Russia, China, the UAE and the Asia Pacific region. For its headquarters in Sofia, Walltopia has built its own office building on Tzarigradsko Shose Blvd, close to Sofia Tech Park, and has two manufacturing facilities – in Letnitsa and Bozhurishte. The company currently employs over 600 people.  

The Belgian Team.blue, the largest hosting group in Western Europe, acquired the Sofia-based SuperHosting.bg – a market leader in Bulgaria in professional web hosting, domains, and VPS services. The company will continue to develop under the same brand and with the same team and management.

This is SuperHosting.bg’s second success for the last year. In 2019, the company launched an office in Belgrade and SuperHosting.RS quickly became a preferred partner for many small- and medium-sized businesses in Serbia. Following this step, the Sofia-based company wants to continue its expansion in the region at a time when the hosting industry has become one of the sectors with the highest boost by the pandemic, and digital solutions have become the only option for many businesses to keep their activity.  

This is an important step that will allow us not only to expand our presence in the region but also to turn our office in Sofia into a regional hub for digital services and online business. The entry of a strategic investor for the sector, such as team.blue, positions Bulgaria as a regional center for hosting services and online business, states the company in its official statement.

SuperHosting.bg was founded in 2005 and today has a 40% share of the local market and nearly 100 employees in its office in Sofia. By joining the Belgian group, the Sofia-based company will help team.blue expand its presence in the region.

The team.blue Group includes over 30 local European brands and serves over 2 million customers in 10 markets in Europe. This is the second acquisition for the Belgian company in the last month after a deal for the Turkish hosting provider Natro in June. With the acquisition of SuperHosting, the group aims to further strengthen its position in the CEE region.

The Bulgarian telemedicine platform Healee received funding of EUR 800 000 from two local VC funds in order to expand its market presence to USA, Germany, Great Britain, Australia and others.

Healee offers a remote connection between doctors and patients with video connection, exchange of photos and clinical results plus chat. The platform works for both mobile and desktop devices. The company says that since the beginning of the COVID-19  crisis the platform has registered a 300% jump in online consulting sessions. The price of the consultations is determined by the medical practitioners, with the platform charging a 10% fee.

In times like these, telemedicine is essential for patients and doctors. This is the most appropriate and often the only option for people to talk to a doctor without exposing themselves and others to the risk of infection and without putting additional stress on overburdened hospitals, the company explains.

The interest in telemedicine as a service is expected to grow further after the end of the pandemic.

Healee has launched a little over one year ago and is a part of the large CampusX family.

A year after Bosch opened a software engineering center for the automotive industry in Sofia Tech Park, Bosch will also have a hardware department in Sofia to work on the engineering of key automotive control components.

According to the interview for Capital of Thomas Metz, Managing Director of Bosch Engineering Center Sofia, as a first step, the Sofia team will develop hardware for a central communication module (Automotive Gateways). Modules play an important role as a central hub for the communication of the electronic control units in an automobile.

The Sofia-based team is also a part of over 40 projects together with the company’s development units in Germany, USA, Hungary, and Romania. Projects include driver assistance systems (AI monitoring and evaluation of the behavior of drivers to prevent accidents), automated driving, electric mobility, a front-facing video camera tracking the road conditions, intelligent headlight control, and even software for electric bicycles.

Despite the COVID-19 crisis, the German company plans to expand further and continues to expand its team in Sofia. The office opened with 120 employees, and today the Sofia-based team exceeds 250 people.

The Sofia-based e-commerce platform CloudCart raised € 500 000 in funding from the venture capital fund New Vision 3 (NV3). The money comes from public funding from the Bulgarian Fund of Funds, as well as private capital. The investment will be aimed at market expansion in Europe. In return for the investment, NV3 acquires a minority stake.

CloudCart AD was founded in Sofia in 2016. The company develops the e-commerce software CloudCart which is an intuitive software for entrepreneurs who want to transfer their business quickly and easily online. Merchants can build their stores on the platform for free and sell free of charge up to their first BGN 1000 in turnover.

CloudCart has over 2000 active paid merchants in nearly 100 countries around the world, who, in turn, sell to end customers in 200 countries. CloudCart stores have reached 35 million unique visitors and over 3 million deals totaling BGN 130 million. During the COVID-19 lockdown, over 1,200 small and large businesses have managed to quickly bring their business online with CloudCart’s “Go through the crisis. Go online” campaign.

In 2019, CloudCart ranked in the Top 3 of the prestigious Newsweek Best Business Tools ranking in the category “eCommerce Software”, along with some of the most popular international e-commerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce.