In the first half of 2023, the number of investments in the Baltic region decreased in comparison to the same period in 2022. It is said that the first half saw 55 startup investments while the figure was 87 the previous year. In the second half of 2023, Lithuania became the leader in the market, generating 47% of the Baltic growth funding. The report states that 23 Lithuanian startups raised €262 million while 38 Estonian startups collectively raised €243.5 million, and 19 Latvian startups raised €34.7 million.
While Estonian startups such as RAIKU and Efenco were the leaders among the Baltic states in pre-seed, seed, and series A rounds, Lithuanian startups won the race with growth rounds. We saw the Lithuanian VPN powerhouse Nord Security raise $100 million at a doubled valuation of $3 billion.
Fueling this trend in the Baltics, the Nordics VC Voima Ventures launched a €90 million deep tech fund to focus on deep tech and science early-stage startups in the Nordic and Baltic regions. Initial investment ticket size will range from €200K to €3 million. The VC has already backed eniferBio, MVision, and Kuva Space in the Nordics.
Justifying this trend, it is touted that the Baltics are becoming a hub for deep tech and AI startups. In the first half of 2023, VC investments into deep tech startups soared to €177 million, constituting one-third of the total investments, a remarkable rise from just 8% five years ago. Additionally, AI-powered startups raised an impressive €187 million, further solidifying the region’s prominence. That said, here is a list of interesting AI tech startups from the Baltics, based on insights from Dealroom.
Veriff
Founder/s: Kaarel Kotkas, Janer Gorohhov
Founded year: 2015
Total funding: $200M
Veriff is an identity verification platform partner for the world’s most innovative growth-driven organisations across sectors, including fintech, crypto, gaming, mobility, and online marketplaces. It helps them rapidly and conveniently verify and safeguard users anywhere in the world. It provides advanced technology that combines AI-powered automation with reinforced learning from human feedback, deep insights, and expertise. This is achieved by supporting over 11,500 identity documents from more than 230 issuing countries and territories. The identity verification platform analyses over 1,000 data points, including the person, document, device, and network to enable trust from the first hello.
In 2022, Veriff secured $100 million in funding led by Tiger Global and Alkeon alongside participation from existing investors Accel and IVP. With this round, the company’s valuation reached $1.5 billion, making it a unicorn.
Starship Technologies
Founder/s: Ahti Heinla, Janus Friis
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: $230M
Robotics company Starship Technologies builds fleets of self-driving goods delivery robots designed to deliver food, groceries, and packages locally in minutes. They claim that the robots use less energy than humans to deliver takeaways, grocery orders, tools and corporate documents to customers’ doors. Their delivery robots have become a familiar sight across Europe and the US, completing over six million deliveries and revolutionising the final leg of the supply chain.
Recently, Starship Technologies secured $90 million in a funding round co-led by Plural, a VC set up by Wise’s Taavet Hinrikus and Songkick’s Ian Hogarth and Iconical. It will fuel Starship’s ambition to capitalise on the booming demand for on-demand deliveries while offering a sustainable and ethical solution.
Ready Player Me
Founder/s: Timmu Tõke, Haver Järveoja, Kaspar Tiri, Rainer Selvet
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: $72.6M
Tallinn-based cross-game avatar platform, Ready Player Me, has built an avatar system across the metaverse. The platform also provides distribution through its network and opens new revenue opportunities through interoperable avatar asset sales and a cross-game economy. The company has collected a proprietary database of 20,000+ face scans captured with the company’s hardware-based 3D scanners. These scans enabled Ready Player Me to build a deep-learning solution that can accurately predict and render realistic faces from a single 2D photo.
Back in November 2023, Ready Player Me raised $56 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from other notable investors, including David Baszucki, co-founder of Roblox, Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch, Sebastian Knutsson & Riccardo Zacconi, King Games co-founders, sports and entertainment company Endeavor, Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Ventures, D’Amelio family, Punk6529, Snowfro, Collab Currency, Plural, Konvoy Ventures, Robin Chan, co-founder of Fractal, and more.
Cybercube
Founder/s: Ashwin Kashyap
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $105M
Established within Symantec initially, CyberCube delivers the world’s leading cyber risk analytics for the insurance industry. With best-in-class data access and advanced multi-disciplinary analytics, the company’s cloud-based platform helps insurance organisations quantify the cyber risk to facilitate placing insurance, underwriting cyber risk, and managing cyber risk aggregation. CyberCube’s enterprise intelligence layer provides insights on millions of companies globally and includes modeling on thousands of points of technology failure.
Earlier this year, CyberCube marked the end of a positive year of strong growth, surpassing 100 insurance organisations licensing its solutions. Its analytics are touted to be used by 75% of the top 40 US and European cyber insurance carriers to drive decision-making, manage risk, and build cyber resilience.
Jobbatical
Founder/s: Karoli Hindriks, Ronald Hindriks, Ankur Agarwal
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: $20M
Jobbatical is a global mobility platform that uses in-house immigration experts and AI to make the process of moving talent from one country to another faster and less expensive. In 2022, Jobbatical helped to relocate over 6,000 workers and their families in over 30 countries. Initially, Jobbatical served as an international recruitment platform before pivoting to focus on relocation and immigration services in 2019.
Back in 2022, Jobbatical raised €11.6 million in a new round of funding. Inventure VC led the round, with Karma VC, Metaplanet, and current owners Union Square Ventures and Swiss Post also participating. This round was also attended by several angels, including Joe Zadeh, the former Head of Airbnb Experiences, and Devotion Ventures.
Klaus (Acquired by Zendesk)
Founder/s: Martin Kõiva, Kair Käsper
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $20.5M
Recently, Zendesk signed a definitive agreement to acquire Klaus, an Estonian AI-powered quality management platform. The AI-powered review automation platform analyses and covers all customer interactions. It generates insights that can be relied on to bring radical service improvements to large and growing organisations that are struggling to maintain consistent service quality. With Klaus, Zendesk customers will be able to deliver consistent, high-quality service across every channel and both human and digital agents or bots, while unlocking the power of everyday customer interactions to increase loyalty.
In 2022, Klaus raised €12 million in a Series A equity funding round led by Acton Capital. Previous investors – Icebreaker, Creandum, and Global Founders Capital also participated in the round.
MELP
Founder/s: Vidmantas Šiugždinis, Robertas Šaltis, Juozas Sargūnas
Founded year: 2020
Total funding: NA
Vilnius-headquartered MELP (Medical services, Employee benefits, Lifestyle & Longevity, and Protection) is a startup specialising in digital employee well-being management. It offers an easy-to-use digital tool to personalise employee benefits for large and small businesses. The platform enables companies to host employee benefits and empowers employees to choose from over 6,000 goods and services available in the international e-shop as their preferred motivation. The platform is now used by over 16,000 employees and holds ISO 27001 certification for information security.
Last month, MELP secured €635K in an early seed stage round of funding from Coinvest Capital. Also, business angels from Lithuania and the UK participated in the round. The startup will use the funds to accelerate its international expansion.
Tuum
Founder/s: Jan Lakspere, Ove Kreison, Rivo Uibo, Vilve Vene
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: $49.5M
Estonian core banking supplier, Tuum allows banks to replace their legacy systems quickly and safely, lower their maintenance spending, and open up new possibilities to adapt and prosper in the digital world. It employs a smart migration approach to help banks to move off their current systems. Using this approach, its clients go live on average within 7 months. This system enables banks to easily launch new products and open up new verticals.
In a recent development, Tuum landed €25 million in a Series B financing round led by CommerzVentures, with participation from Speedinvest alongside existing investors. The capital will bolster Tuum’s international presence, allowing it to target new territories in the DACH region, Southern Europe, and the Middle East, where it is opening a new office.
Perfection42
Founder/s: Kestutis Tauckela, Simona Vasyte-Kudakauske
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $1.5M
Perfection42 provides artificial intelligence solutions for game development, and animation, architecture, design, and art industries. The company helps reduce the time required to render computer-generated imagery (CGI), eliminating multiple manual repeating processes and increasing work efficiency without sacrificing quality.
Last year, the Lithuanian AI development startup, raised €1.1 million in seed funding. Backers included CoInvest Capital, OCC, Lithuanian Business Angel Network LitBAN syndicate, Justas Janauskas, and other business angels.
