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work in progress
Researchers now hottest founders. Incredible round this week: co-founded by Vitalis Vosylius and Edward Johns, Machenta raised a $40m seed (!!!) co-led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures. They are bringing Instant Robot Learning to life. Similarly, co-founded by Estonians Kristjan and Andi, MuRay has raised €7.1M to see inside the components X-rays cannot penetrate. We keep an eye on Laelaps AI and several other deeptech startups, including several in Lithuania for news. Contrarian also adding robotics company - Bleu Robotics in France - as newest investment.
344x return — the power of power law. Anthropic listing is not an everyday event, and anticipated outcomes for investors are out of this world. The $124m Series A in May-21 was led by Jaan Tallinn, with Dustin Moskovitz and Eric Schmidt, and other investors - including Skaala in Estonia, participating. This round could be converting to $43B at IPO.
Pipedrive. Massive layoffs across the company, which seem to performing pretty well, around 400M revenue. 270 out of 380 Estonian emplyees made redundant, and also closing Prague and Lisbon offices. Looks like 500 out of 800 total jobs might be affected.
Lithuanian scale-ups are hiring rapidly, many are open for remote jobs - try Eneba, Nord Security, Hostinger, Ovoko, Surfshark, Source AI, Vinted.. roleplay section below.
Shipped projects. European Property Investment Map (rental yields). Augustas with nepagavau.win: a site where AI agents explain films and the plays staged at Lithuanian theatres. Edvardas launched Branvio. Eimantas building Strivie. Adomas building Steer. Adas built Tenenda.
Launched. OpenMail, mail for agents, launched with a bang on X - ask the founders who did they orchestrate that?
People moves. Angelina (ex-Nord) joins Dex Advisory. Unicorns Lithuania: Emilija joins as Project and Operations Manager, Ekaterina is new Data Tech Lead at Mediatech. Marius joins mrSoda. Deivydas joins CoinGate.
Anniversary. Tesonet turns 18!
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rounds and capital
Machenta out of stealth, startup out of Imperial, raised a $40m seed co-led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures, with IQ Capital and Hoxton Ventures.
MuRay has raised €7.1M - the €3.5M round is led by First Momentum Ventures and co-led by Caelora, and Superangel, Nordic Science Investments, Mätch VC, Arcas Ventures and Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company join as followers. A further €3.6M comes from EU’s Programme Horizon Europe.
Stargate Hydrogen is taking over HyStat alkaline electrolyser business from Cummins Inc.
TP Recommends
What technology do tech people consume? We asked to list three apps they love to use.
Justas Galaburda, Essential Apps
Instinct Agent runs my life. Claude runs my business. Hevy keeps me in shape.
Edvinas Sersniovas, HeyPolo
HeyPolo, ChatGPT, Apple Podcasts, RadioApp
Gabrielė Poteliūnaitė, Balnord
Spotify has the highest screen time for me – I consume podcasts like there’s no tomorrow. I used to be a die-hard fan of Claude, but lately I’ve transitioned to using ChatGPT way more (it fluctuates with every new model release). And Granola – honestly, it’s been the biggest game changer for me, both for calls and for in-person events and conferences.
Deividas Kovger, Holo
My new personal favorite is cursor. I’m not technical at all, but I use it for all funnel related stuff - landing pages, quizes and etc - replaced all the website builders for me. + Holo for creatives but I might be biased
roleplay
Ovoko - Head of Customer Operation, Engineering Manager
Oxylabs - Account Management Team Lead, Engineering manager
Eldorado - Lifecycle Marketing Lead and Product Owner
Hostinger - Chief Revenue & Analytics Officer, Google Ads Team Lead
Eneba - Head of Finance, CS Team lead
Surfshark - Brand Strategist, Head of Lifecycle
VIALET - Underwriting Team Lead, KAM
brand + design
Revolut’s designers are now 3–4x faster? Revolut has always had a strong design culture. That’s a big part of why this speedup is possible: they’re building on a system that took years of deep product thinking to create.
So what accelerated here is the assembly. Not design.
AI cuts the time needed for production. What makes design challenging isn’t just putting a UI or poster together. It’s deciding what the pieces are, how they work together, and what story and message they carry.
Treating output speed as the measure of design is the McNamara fallacy in action.
further insights
How to network like a diplomat (even if you’re not an extrovert). Helpful if you need this.
More action but for what? Dror writes that "Empowering more people to perform “creative” work won’t save the middle class. It will turn white-collar work into show business.”
VC returns, how would that look in Europe? Smaller startup hubs have delivered higher MOICs this year than New York or the Bay Area.
ecosystem
Lithuania and Estonia protects notaries in EU? Shocking to see leaked EU Inc files, what makes the change difficult. Embarrasing to see LT and EST are defending the need to use notaries… send this to relevant ministers, let's pick up — we are ourselves blocking EU inc, initiative for new legal regime to easily start and run European countries. Terrible for Baltic reputation, too
Klaipeda - Lighthouse is starting new incubation / acceleration project with 2M EUR backing from the government.
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