Karel Zheng
Partner @ KAYA
Prague, Czech Republic
Karel Zheng is a General Partner at KAYA VC, the leading early-stage venture capital fund in Central and Eastern Europe. He invests pre-seed to Series A into artificial intelligence, developer tools, infrastructure software, vertical software, healthcare technology, and B2B SaaS, with check sizes ranging from $250K to $4M.His portfolio includesBetter Stack, E2B, Jutro Medical, getviktor.com, GenPeach AI, Pencil.dev , Minerva Humanoids, True Claim, and Artificial.Agency. KAYA's broader portfolio includes unicorns Rohlik, Docplanner, and Booksy across 60+ companies and $500M+ AUM.Karel is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and one of the youngest fund partners in Europe. He is based in Prague and Warsaw, with presence in San Francisco and London. Amateur endurance athlete - half iron mans, ultra trails, marathons.
- Total investments:
- 4
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 50%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Karel Zheng invests in
Stages Karel Zheng invests in
Countries Karel Zheng invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Investment Focus
Industry
- Medical 1 (25%)
- Computer 1 (25%)
- Software 1 (25%)
- Health Care 1 (25%)
- Network Security 1 (25%)
Stage
- Seed 1 (25%)
- Pre-Seed 1 (25%)
- Series A 1 (25%)
Country
- Poland 1 (25%)
- Hungary 1 (25%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jutro Medical offers a combination of online and offline primary care — pairing mobile first telemedicine with physical clinic | $28.2M / Series A / Dec 16, 2025 | ||
| TopK features native support for both vector search and keyword search in a single, unified system. With its powerful query expression language, TopK enables you to build reliable search applications (semantic search, RAG, multi-modal, you name it) without juggling multiple databases or services. Our unified retrieval engine will evolve tosupport document transformation, query understanding (parse metadata filters from user query), and adaptive ranking (provide more relevant results by sending “relevance feedback” back to TopK) under one roof. | $5.5M / Seed / Jul 01, 2025 | ||
| Riptides is the non-human identity fabric for your workloads and AI agents, and they trust Every Connection. Even the Autonomous Ones. | $3.3M / Pre-Seed / Apr 23, 2025 | ||
| Jutro Medical offers a combination of online and offline primary care — pairing mobile first telemedicine with physical clinic | $13M / Series A / Mar 19, 2025 |
Co-Investors
About KAYA
KAYA evolved from Enern Investments - a regional financial group formed in Prague in 2010 that grew alongside the CEE ecosystem across clean energy, tech, real estate, and other activities. Ten years and €500m AUM later, Enern remains a holding for diverse investments while KAYA is conceived as a separate, focused successor of Enern Tech for all things venture capital, with 40+ investments and latest fund of €90.
KAYA Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Petr Smida
Founding Partner
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Karel Zheng
Partner
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Martin Rajcan
General Partner
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Pavel Mucha
Founding Partner
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Tomas Obrtac
General Partner
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FAQ
What does Karel Zheng invest in?
Karel Zheng invests primarily in Medical, Computer and Software startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 4 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Poland. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Karel Zheng?
Public channels for Karel Zheng include LinkedIn and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Karel Zheng last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Karel Zheng closed in Dec 2025. Shizune tracks 4 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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