work in progress

Problems to solve. A16Z announced big come back of Travis, Uber founder - backing Atoms, robotics AI company with $1.6B. Ben Horowitz writes that Travis spent last decade with CloudKitchens to "discover all of the primitives and patterns for how people make, store, and move things for other people, and learn how to build a computer for the physical world”. (We also spotted ex Uber engineers with this team in Vilnius, years back). This makes us think about Baltic companies that are rising with complex products, but alongside - very durable moats. They have spent years plumbing issues that makes product possible, including infrastructure, hardware, logistics, payments, and trust. Now it is super hard to compete with the likes of Vinted, Bolt, Ovoko, Aerones, Brolis Defence, Furniture1 and others - simply because “the value of a company is the sum of all problems solved” (Spotify's co-founder).

AI intermediation. As Stripe is rumored to acquired OpenRouter at $10B, this rhymes with nexos.ai and condense.chat - the intermediation layer might be very much alive. All three monetize the same three facts: models are many, expensive, and someone has to sit between the app and the model. In similar vein, CAST.AI arbitrages GPU/compute - and growing very well.

Social / consumer. The graveyard of startups in the field is huge, but it's always exciting to watch who might redefine what we consume. Yope from Poland lands $12.3M from Northzone's PJ for "private social platform. No algorithms. No ads. No public content. Just micro-communities, small groups of friends sharing unfiltered moments". Already 15M users.

In consumer, Baltic founders seem to drive ecommerce most successfully. With Burga's huge factory opening (now can do 60k items A DAY), we were asking you what products shall they produce next? So far premium travel gear leads (pet luxury much behind).

Gabriele started Doges - "the app for dogs who walk their humans”. Kiloverse hiring growth lead for Wordletic - language learning app. As Pocket raises 11M from Accel, we are reminded about the rise and moats of Fieldy. Flo now has fully branded Vilnius’ office, over 200 people there.

AI, large and small. Kimchi coding is GA now by CAST.AI. Soro is new product growing fast. Jevgeni, Estrid co-founder, starts new venture. Katana EPR going all-in with AI. Some SHIPYARD teams, startup ideas seem to have repeating patterns - easy to get inspired and bring to other industries or domains.

Defence. Brolis’ tender win in CZ is pretty large - EUR 78M. No wonder the PE acquisition was described as largest in the Baltics in defence so far. Valkyrie is one to watch / track. More in dual use, AISPECO closed 2025 profitable, EUR 3.5M revenue. Audrius introducing Mainline.

Oxylabs founders. Oxy factory has been producing a lot - including alumni founders. Adomas and Rasa just launched LinkPicker. Tadas has been building a lot – former scrapping engineer, he is now driving topYappers, influencer marketing platform.

Never heard of? List of overlooked B2B SaaS Lithuanian startups, bootstrapped or raised very little funding, approaching/passed 1M ARR.

People moves. Ex-Meta, Marius is open for new: Head of, Director or VP level in B2C marketing effectiveness, measurement and/or analytics roles. Lukas joins Mintos as real estate lead. Agne returns to Vinted. Contrarian summer interns, they are known to attract very smart young people. Karolis looking for software engineer gig. Marius joins Holo AI. Sigita joins Eldorado influencer marketing team.

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rounds and capital

European Technology Group (ETG) announced the acquisition of Lightning Reach, fintech-for-good platform helping people access financial support through a single digital journey. Ignas Velza has been building Lightning as the CTO - big congrats!

Robotics Academy secured EUR 500k debt for growth, including US.

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brand + design

Who builds the next ten Lithuanian unicorns? Darius raised an important question. Here’s an additional angle. We need to treat talent attraction as a storytelling and brand-building problem as much as a policy one.

Visas and tax incentives are necessary. But they're rarely the reason why talented people move to a certain city. They move to places that feel alive with possibility - where ambition is celebrated, serendipity happens by design, and the most interesting problems are being solved. We barely tell that story.

Ask young people anywhere in Europe if they know Vinted or NordVPN. Most of them do. Now ask how many know these are Lithuanian companies. Almost none.

The substance is there - ecosystem value up 39x in a decade to €20B+, Vilnius the fastest-growing tech city in the EU, nearly 30 startups founded by Vinted and Nord alumni. The story is still not traveling with it.

Lithuania is excellent at the investor story: metrics, multiples, capital efficiency. It works. That's partly why capital is no longer the bottleneck. But talent doesn't relocate for a pitch deck. US founders understand the difference.

Policy opens the door. The story is what makes people walk through it.

founder's guide

Need to talk about exits? All Baltic founders who had an exit 2026. Here is fresh Povilas’ post about launching Spike and the acquisition.

How Gustas keeps pushing the limits - now with a swim France to Italy through the Strait of Bonifacio.

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