DiscreteStack has closed a €800,000 seed funding round. The capital will support our expansion into new regulated sectors – finance, insurance, and the public sector – and increase our access to GPU computing capacity to support further development of the technology.
The round was led by CleverPine Ventures, joined by strategic angel investors Milen Manev (Next Solutions, RE:Benefit) and Stoil Vasilev (Paypercut), alongside several smaller investors.
“European AI does not mean an American product hosted on a server in Frankfurt. It means organizations controlling the infrastructure on which their artificial intelligence runs, owning their own data, and setting their own rules. We believe AI will become critical infrastructure for businesses, and companies should be able to own it rather than simply rent it.”
— Hristo Todorov, Founder and CEO, DiscreteStack
What the Funding Accelerates
DiscreteStack is building a platform that enables organizations to run state-of-the-art open-source AI models on their own infrastructure instead of relying on an external cloud service. Through patent-pending engineering optimizations, the solution changes how AI models are deployed, enabling even the largest models to run on a single standalone server. Where requirements demand it, that server can be completely isolated from the internet, ensuring data never leaves the organization.
The new capital extends this work in two directions. First, into sectors where the case for owned infrastructure is strongest – finance, insurance, and the public sector, where data sensitivity, regulatory exposure, and cost predictability are boardroom concerns rather than engineering preferences. Second, into additional GPU computing capacity to support the inference-optimization engineering at the core of the platform.
Eight Months In
DiscreteStack was founded in 2025. Just eight months later, the company serves its first enterprise customers in Bulgaria and abroad, and has earned recognition across the European and global AI ecosystem:
- Seal of Excellence from the European Innovation Council Accelerator
- Partnership in the AI Partnership Corporation, the Canada-based alliance of more than 190 companies working in AI
- Acceptance into the NVIDIA Inception Program, NVIDIA’s global program for high-tech AI companies, in early June
Why This Round, Why Now
Europe is increasingly seeking technological independence in artificial intelligence. More and more organizations are no longer choosing AI solely on model quality; they ask who controls the infrastructure, where their data is processed, and under whose jurisdiction the provider operates.
Today, approximately 70% of the European cloud infrastructure market is controlled by U.S. technology giants – and much of the leading AI services companies use every day is built on that same infrastructure. This is raising growing concerns about European businesses’ dependence on platforms over which they have no meaningful control.
The next major question is no longer who has the best model. It is who owns the infrastructure on which that model runs.
The Principles Behind the Platform
Unlike most AI providers, which deliver their services through the public cloud, DiscreteStack allows AI models to run entirely on infrastructure chosen by the customer.
The platform can be deployed in an organization’s own data center, in a private cloud, or in a fully isolated environment with no internet access. Sensitive information never has to leave the organization, and every security, access, and regulatory compliance policy stays under its control.
The product is built around three principles:
Transparency – through the use of open-source models and technologies that can be inspected and audited – the same open-weight foundation reshaping the frontier.
Control – customers choose the infrastructure their AI runs on, without being dependent on any specific cloud provider.
Predictability – instead of pricing based on tokens consumed, DiscreteStack offers a fixed annual per-server license, letting companies plan costs years in advance.
In certain scenarios, this model can reduce AI costs by up to 90% – without compromising performance or security.
From a Recurring Problem to a Company
DiscreteStack was founded by Hristo Todorov, a software engineer and entrepreneur with extensive experience building international technology companies.
A graduate of the Vocational High School of Computer Technologies in Pravets, Todorov built his career in software engineering and technical leadership across telecommunications, fintech, and aviation. His entrepreneurial track record spans a decade: Upnetix, which he co-founded, was recognized by Google in 2017 as one of the world’s top 40 software agencies; after its successful exit in 2018, he co-founded CleverPine, which in 2023 established the VaeroLabs joint venture with Lufthansa Technik – part of Lufthansa Technik’s €50 million investment program in Bulgaria.
It was this work with large international companies that surfaced a recurring challenge: organizations want state-of-the-art AI, but they are not willing to give up control over their data and critical infrastructure to get it.
That insight became DiscreteStack.
Continue exploring the topic: read DiscreteStack’s ownership-versus-renting analysis,
or get in touch to see the platform on your own infrastructure.