Connections Tech

📍People often ask us how PREVENT 2.0 spots a conflict of interest.
This is how:
1️⃣ The public authority fills in an integrity form in SEAP, for every procurement procedure.
2️⃣ The system automatically checks whether decision-makers, from the head of the institution to the evaluation committee, have any family or business ties to the bidding companies.
3️⃣ If something looks suspicious, it notifies ANI inspectors, and if the suspicion is confirmed, ANI issues an integrity warning to the institution.
4️⃣ The institution takes action before the contract is signed, not after the money is gone.

One single form 📜 filled in online, directly in SEAP.
No extra bureaucracy, no procedures put on hold.
Just technology doing exactly the job it was built for: stopping a problem before it happens.

That's tech making sense for society.

Read all about it on our blog 👉 https://tinyurl.com/mrx54bat

Bogdan Florea at Ziarul Financiar "ZF Deschiderea de azi", with Eduard Ivanovici. A few of the key points from the conversation:

📈 Net profit doubled in H1 2026 vs. H1 2025, without the BPO & ITO division, which used to run on thin margins. High-value products made the difference.
🔻 Classic IT outsourcing: renting out workforce with no real ownership of scope or product, just headcount on delivery is losing relevance in the industry. Two forces are driving that: Romania's economic contraction, and the rapid advance of AI.
▫️Recently announced contracts will start showing up in the financials in H2 2026 and into 2027. We continue to bet on cybersecurity & AI with R&D efforts in this areas.
▫️ What's next: the industry's next 3 years will be shaped by AI-powered data centers and AI-based cybersecurity protection

Full interview in the link 👉🏻https://tinyurl.com/4et8z9x6

📍PREVENT 2.0: technology that protects public funds before the damage is done.

Recently, the National Integrity Agency (ANI) announced the official launch of PREVENT 2.0 - a platform built by Connections, in close collab with ANI experts - which automatically identifies potential conflicts of interest in public procurement, before contracts are signed.

We can measure how effective this system really by looking at the latest results shared by ANI 👉 PREVENT 2.0 has flagged incidents and potential conflicts of interest in public procurement worth over 115 million lei, in a single month.

For Connections, these numbers confirm something we've believed for years: digitalizing public institutions truly matters only when it delivers a result citizens can feel, even if they never see it directly.

In the case of PREVENT 2.0, that means public money protected before any damage is done.

We've worked with Romanian public institutions for years: ECRIS, PREVENT, critical infrastructure projects for STS, and we've learned this: the state needs technology, but it also needs a partner who understands its particularities:
🔹 decision-making timelines and legal requirements;
🔹 data sensitivity;
🔹 the pressure to deliver without room for error;
🔸 the social impact of public sector work.

In GovTech, experience matters just as much as technical expertise.

For us, that's what hashtag means: technology built to work where it matters most ➡️ in the relationship between citizens and the state.

We're proud to support ANI in its ambition to become an institution with a truly anticipatory approach.

Thank you to the Connections team for (yet another) tech gem!
Thank you to Traian Ispir for representing us at the A.N.I. 2.0 Conference!

Check out the details on our blog https://tinyurl.com/4x9z4ufk

👉 Here are some of the takeaways from the IR Meet on September 3rd. Bogdan Florea & Radu Marcu, our co-CEOs gave their extensive opinion on many of the topics addressed by investors. Thanks for the energy!

➡️ R&D is in focus. We're building out university partnerships (Romanian and international) to turn early-stage research into real products. Products mean recurring revenue and less dependency on whatever's in the pipeline that quarter. Horizon for this: 2027-2030.

➡️ Private sector. Working on amplifying private sector projects to balance the revenue streams. Demand is rising again, driven by cyber & AI integration.

➡️ Govtech. PREVENT 2.0 (for ANI) was delivered and is producing good impact in society. + Major contracts were announced, strengthening our position on gov-partnerships.

➡️ Fact. Security incidents at state institutions are pushing demand for cybersecurity solutions and implementation up. We have the expertise & teams to deliver on this “trend”. Also, digitalizing the state will not stop just because the economy gets tighter. On the contrary, it is becoming a need the state has to address more ambitiously.

The full, in-depth conversation is available on the blog, youtube & the recording available on the event pages.

👉🏻https://tinyurl.com/mujytkkf

Thanks to everyone who joined the call!
More updates as all these topics & more move forward.

📍 H1 2026 unaudited, compiled financial results.
Gross profit reached 14.8 million RON (+107% YoY), net profit 11.9 million RON (+97%), and gross margin hit 31% more than double H1 2025. Profitability isn't being diluted by low-margin work anymore. It's coming from a smaller, more concentrated, higher-value portfolio.

Revenue landed at 47.4 million RON, 2% below H1 2025. This is the first full semester built entirely without the BPO and ITO activities we exited in 2025, which alone made up 38% of last year's H1 revenue. The core business fully absorbed that gap in 12 months.

Public Software now makes up 68% of Group revenue, up from 42% a year ago — a direct reflection of where we've placed our bets: GovTech.

🤝 Projects that defined the semester:
- an AI & HPC infrastructure platform for STS (45.9M RON, PNRR-funded),
- and two subsequent contracts with ADR for cybersecurity application migration (143M RON combined, 28-month delivery).
- PREVENT 2.0 - the platform we built for Romania's National Integrity Agency - went fully operational.

None of this reads as a straight line to December. A meaningful part of this year's project costs and deliverables sit in H2 by design - H1 is a solid half, not a full-year forecast.

👇Check out the full Report in the link below 👇

"A unified public digital infrastructure, built on clean, accessible data".
This is what Bogdan Florea, founder & co-CEO of Connections thinks the digital transformation of the State needs to accelerate.

In a new interview with Economica, Bogdan shares his view, shaped by years of delivering large, complex projects for public institutions.

His take:
🔹 it's rarely about budgets or talent. It's about structure.
🔹 digitalization often starts before internal processes have been fully mapped and optimized
🔹 connecting systems across agencies rarely has one clear owner, which makes real interoperability hard to achieve
🔹 and large-scale transformation typically needs 5-7 years to show results, while political cycles run on a much shorter clock.

Read his full opinion inside the interview here

De ce eșuează România în marea digitalizare. CEO Connections: Ne trebuie o infrastructură comună, altfel vom avea doar insule care nu comunică - Economica.net România nu mai are nevoie de încă o aplicație sau de încă o platformă dezvoltată separat de celelalte, ci de o infrastructură digitală comună care să permită instituțiilor să schimbe date între ele și să construiască servicii publice integrate. Într-un interviu acordat Economica,...

"What we're missing as a country to become a regional innovation hub isn't necessarily more funding, it's a different mindset, one that teaches us to innovate, not just replicate models."

In the most recent discussion on the Ziarul Financiar "For Romanian businesses", Bogdan Florea - founder & co-CEO of Connections spoke about the need to move beyond the "lohn" paradigm: renting out people, low value-added services. Romania can build strong companies, both service-based and product-based. We have enormous potential!

Bogdan also pointed to Poland, Hungary, and Moldova, countries that, each in their own way, followed a coherent strategy and moved faster on digitalization.

We're not speaking as outside commentators.
Connections has already delivered complex digitalization projects for the Romanian state: ECRIS or Prevent for the National Integrity Agency. From this hands-on experience, we believe Romania's biggest win would come from a coherent national strategy, sustained across political cycles so that major projects actually have time to show results.

And finally, the solution Bogdan sees: education reform, with a focus on critical thinking and analysis, not memorization.

👉 Link to full discussion here

CEC Bank pentru afaceri româneşti, un proiect ZF şi CEC Bank. Bogdan Florea, fondator şi CEO al Connections: Vom ajunge în câţiva ani să ne uităm cu admiraţie la digitalizarea Republicii Moldova, în timp ce România tot pariază pe lohn î România ar trebui să renunţe la modelul serviciilor cu valoare adăugată mică şi să îşi con­stru­iască o strategie de ţară în jurul inovaţiei, după exemplul unor vecini care au avansat mai re­pede, consideră Bogdan Florea, fondator şi CEO al companiei de tehnologie Connections, l...

What does digital sovereignty actually mean?
Not building everything ourselves. Not isolating ourselves from the rest of Europe. And definitely not putting a flag on a server and calling it strategy.

In a recent discussion on Aleph Business, Bogdan Florea - founder & coCEO, shared this perspective: digital sovereignty starts with knowing where your critical data sits, who controls the keys, and whether you have the people capable of operating and developing the technology, not just buying it.

A few other ideas from the conversation stayed with us:
🔹 Technology alone does not create progress. Many digital investments become simple expenses if they are not adopted, used, and connected to real needs.
🔹 You cannot digitalize broken processes and expect better outcomes. Technology amplifies what already exists — good or bad.
🔹 Cybersecurity should start much earlier than it does today. Not at the end of a project, but from day one. And not only in organizations, but through education, starting from school.

But perhaps the most important takeaway is this:
👉 Technology is becoming easier to buy. What remains difficult to build are the capabilities, culture and expertise needed to use it well.