EU Innovation Journey'25

Mikołaj Budzanowski is the CEO of EIT InnoEnergy in Central Europe. He is responsible for initiating and overseeing InnoEnergy’s investment strategy across multiple markets in the CEE region—from the Baltic States, through Poland, Czechia, and Hungary, to Serbia, Romania, and Turkey. At the same time, he serves as a Board Member at the fund’s headquarters, which has already executed nearly 200 pre-seed and seed investments and is now planning to expand its investments, including in the U.S.

Mikołaj Budzanowski is one of Poland’s leading experts in industrial energy transformation, with extensive experience in the energy sector and industrial innovation across Central Europe. Before joining InnoEnergy, he served as Chief Innovation Officer at Boryszew Group S.A., where he led investments in new technologies and hard-to-abate industries, including automotive, aluminum, chemical, and steel sectors (>35 factories). He was also the CEO of Boryszew Energy, an energy and gas trading company, overseeing green energy procurement and PPA contracts.

Mikołaj has held several positions in the Polish government, including Minister of Treasury, where he supervised the energy and oil & gas sectors as well as privatization processes. Since April 2024, he has served on the Board of Directors at Repono, a pan-European storage owner and operator.

He holds a PhD from Jagiellonian University and has studied business and finance at Stanford University and the University of Warsaw.