Prague-based EquiLibre Technologies, a frontier AI trading research lab applying reinforcement learning to financial markets, announced the close of its Series A round at a valuation of more than €438 million ($500 million).
The round was led by Creandum and reportedly representents their largest investment to date. The majority of the capital will go towards purchasing compute power to scale the operation, bringing online one of the largest compute clusters in the region
Martin Schmid, co-founder of EquiLibre, says: “Trading is one of the few fields where technology is the entire game. There’s no sales cycle, and no marketing spend can rescue a weak product. The market is the judge, and the verdict updates every millisecond. That’s what drew us to the problem, and it’s why reinforcement learning is such a natural fit. The question is no longer whether this approach works. It’s how big it can get. We’ve proven the technology in the world’s biggest and most liquid markets.”
EquiLibre’s undisclosed Series A sits within a wider 2026 pattern of funding for European companies applying AI, automation and infrastructure software to financial markets and adjacent investment workflows.
Comparable announcements include 9fin’s €148 million raise for its AI-native debt-markets platform, Upvest’s €108 million round for securities infrastructure, Midas’ €43 million Series A for tokenised investment infrastructure, and Performativ’s €11.96 million Series A for an AI-native wealth management operating system.
Earlier-stage activity has also included Elastics’ €1.7 million pre-Seed round for AI agents in prediction markets and Ekiden’s €1.7 million Seed round for blockchain-based trading infrastructure.
Taken together, relevant 2026 activity represent approximately €357.5 million in disclosed funding across AI-enabled financial software, capital-markets infrastructure, digital assets and trading-related platforms.
“We want to build a global business from Prague. We are by far the most exciting company working on the frontier of applied AI research here, and this allows us to attract and retain amazing talent. Our ambitions are global, and we aim to build the world’s leading AI trading company,” adds Martin.
Founded by researchers from DeepMind and the team behind DeepStack – the first AI system to defeat professional players at no-limit poker – EquiLibre was established in 2022 with a vision to apply self-learning AI more broadly.
After testing their technology in crypto, EquiLibre transitioned to traditional financial markets. Equilibre went live early 2025, allegedly becoming the first company to deploy reinforcement learning agents live on the largest and most competitive financial instruments in the world.
According to the company, these agents now trade billions of dollars daily and have never had a negative month.
While the sum of the Series A remains undisclosed, the company has explained that the capital raised will be put towards scaling compute infrastructure. The new cluster will be one of the largest in the region. This will allow the company to make their models more profitable, and to expand to more products and markets.
The team of researchers and engineers – drawn from DeepMind, Google, Jane Street, G-Research, and Optiver – are also looking to grow the team across research and engineering roles in its Prague headquarters over the coming months.
Cameron Sellers, Vice President at Creandum, says: “This is the largest investment we have ever made, showing the belief that we have in the future scaling of the technology. EquiLibre is doing what the best frontier labs do: picking a domain where the feedback loop is brutal and honest, and letting the technology speak for itself. Martin and the team have proven the approach in the hardest possible environment. We’re thrilled to back them as they scale.“
Source: EU-Startups
