Way beyond software

work in progress

• Gotta love robots. Is it Waymo, that is catching up with UBER (passed Lyft) and will enter Europe one day unexpectedly? Or perhaps Latvian Aerones, which just raised $62m for growth (already team of 500), proving that going deep into a niche and building a superior product is the best way to win. (btw, round was co-led by S2G Ventures, where Audre Kapacinskas is a Principal, now added to the updated list of Lithuanian VCs globally). byFounders led $1.6M pre-seed round for Loki Robotics, Swiss startup with a Latvian co-founder and a cool idea – cleaning robots to run dirty work. Here Elinta Motors is powering an aircraft-washing robot.
• Marketplace. Better Market is B2B marketplace that found PMF and probably raised some capital. Who else is emerging? Eany.io, of course. Saltz is actively hunting talent for DE, PL, EE. Tingit. Traxlo. And here is a kind reminder from Thomas Plantega (Vinted) on how they prioritise markets (first, figure your drivers of potential success).

• Acceleration. Plug and Play calls for the last batch to apply, July 4th the latest. FIRSTPICK launches the Baltics’ first AI Accelerator.
• Bio. Pick your next Atrandi Biosciences (or perhaps, Fermentas): Vital3D has created the first bioprinted wound patch for pets — and plans to bring the tech to human organs, writes TNW. Longevity Lab (nutraceuticals) joins Plug & Play accelerator. We might hear from Allergomedica at some point, solid 20% monthly growth. If your headache is IP, consider talking to Agne from SeqVision or other speakers. And if just lacking inspiration – come to the next Startup Meetup Vilnius (June 17), with Juozas Nainys from Atrandi Biosciences.

• Underlooked. Go to W3Techs and search for "Hostinger", to be surprised with scale. Netzet venture builder has expanded rapidly in the past few years, hiring top talent. Pineca launches Poland (10th market), and you might not know that they are at 75M revenue already. Fleming might also be a new company for some, but with 1.2m customers they are already in very high revenues and keep searching for talent.
• Fintech. Amlyze signed a significant contract with Advanzia Bank. Highly focused, Greet has reached 750 locations in LT and €3.5M in monthly GPV. We are also keeping an eye on Chaseit AI, as well as Kashimi – strong founding teams.
• Two wheels. London has become a cycling city. Vassla moped from Sweden redesigned and engineered by famous teenage engineering (modern Honda Ruckus?). Jony Ive’s LoveFrom helped design Rivian’s first electric bike. Lukas started ItaroBlu – helmet safety technology startup. Couple of former Vinted employees are now building Gearro, a marketplace for second-hand bikes. MTB Hopper stands around 1.5m in revenue, but has eroded profits post-covid.
• Atoms is tech. In LT, 13 rounds announced so far in 2025: 54% of these have hardware/atoms in the very core of product offering (Atrandi Biosciences, Pulsetto, WeSky, Sort a Brick, Astrolight, FPRO, Samphire Neuroscience). Fieldy introduced their wearable AI note taker on Product Hunt.
• People. Kadi-Ingrid Lilles is stepping up to be a partner at Iron Wolf Capital. Raimundas Usackas joins Willgrow as COO. Mindaugas Petrutis (ex On Deck) joined Lovable growth team. Helery Pops joins Arbonics for part-time role. Lukasz joins Flanco as Country Manager in Poland.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
Hostinger [making online presence accessible to everyone worldwide, hiring]
PayPal [Global integrated payments solution]
Oxylabs [Step into the world of web data gathering]
VIALET [Business accounts for growth, hiring]
Presto Ventures [investing in startups – security, defense, aerospace]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Superangel [Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A for tech companies]

rounds and capital

• Iron Wolf Capital has launched its newest EUR 100M early-stage Baltic deep tech and AI fund. Targeting 25 early-stage companies across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Baltic diaspora. Already backed by ILTE
• Aerones from Latvia secured $62 million in capital co-led by Activate Capital and S2G Investments (“S2G”). They are world’s leading provider of robotic inspection, maintenance, and AI-driven solutions for wind turbines and great win for early investors like Change Ventures and Mantas Mikuckas. Hiring.
• Samphire Neuroscience raised $5M seed led by Inventure, along with Fortify Ventures and APEX, as well as follow-ons from our supporters from day one SOSV, AfterWork Ventures, Seaside Ventures, FIRSTPICK, Ayuh Ventures, and some angels.
• FPRO, home-based football training app with 140k+ customers already, receives EUR 2M investment from Tesonet. Moving fast is the keyword here.

• Estonian Lendurai secures €5.57M in seed funding to scale autonomous UAV. Led by Expeditions Fund, with participation from HCVC and Vsquared Ventures.
• In the UK, but originally Estonian fintech Wise is going to list in the US – another blow for the London Stock Exchange.
• Telia Eesti AS acquires Estonian software company Iglu OÜ
• Yet again there was a small grant instrument run for building prototypes in software – EUR 60k, covers 100% costs, with a total tiny 310k budget. Firms that seem to have secured these are Vocali, RedTail, Liūdnas AI, and some more.

three questions

Kasparas Jurgelionis, Founding Partner, Iron Wolf Capital

What were your most interesting learnings from the first run - backing 20+ startups in the Baltics?

Our biggest learning was confirming our strategic decision to focus deeply on the Baltics and the highly innovative teams emerging here—backed now by concrete data showing that deeptech in this region represents a strong investment thesis for decades to come. An outstanding indicator is that 25% of our portfolio companies are on the trajectory of achieving double-digit million ARR this year, significantly outperforming expectations.

Another key insight was understanding the necessity of being ambitious not just in our investments, but in our own team’s development. As a result, we've doubled our size, expanded diversity with multiple nationalities and a balanced gender ratio, and enriched the team with global operating and investment experience from tech hubs like San Francisco, London, and Berlin. Combining this global expertise with deep local insights is truly our superpower.

What do you think will be your investment edge in this market? 

We backed visionary teams building femtosecond lasers, cutting-edge spectroscopic tools, industrial robotisation and transformative AI applications long before deeptech and AI became the holy grail of VC. We are building the edge in our domain through experience and now much deeper pockets. We also focus our efforts in mobilising the Baltic deeptech community through such initiatives as the regular deeptech breakfast events across the major hubs or the annual Deeptech Report that we publish together with our partners. We are also always open to new initiatives and collaboration opportunities so if there are ideas how we can help - give us a shout!

In terms of themes, do you expect AI to dominate? Will IWC be active in life sciences and dual-use?

About half of our first fund’s portfolio had a strong AI component, and we expect AI to remain central—both as a core technology and as a powerful enabler for groundbreaking deeptech solutions, from space applications to use-cases on Earth. Life sciences including techbio will also play a meaningful role, complementing our strategy. And given that dual-use overlaps strongly with deeptech, we’re definitely active in that area, continuously scouting for innovations with both global commercial and regional strategic potential.

founder's guide

• How to measure AI fluency in your org and set expectations – Zapier model
• Masterclass by Vinod Khosla on how to effectively pitch to VCs (video)
• On Building a Founding Team
• You'd better be AI-native if raising any venture capital these days

• How AI is changing UX/UI. Interfaces will fundamentally shrink
  (not the newsletters, though – philomaths can only grow)
• SEO isn't dying. It's evolving into TV ads.
• As B2B founders know already, Open AI moved towards Enterprise
• Five AI startup ideas that are getting crowded in CEE
• What software business will AI kill? Surely MVPs and simple workflows are in trouble, since the cost of producing these drops to almost zero, so you'd better have some moat. What will survive? (by David Peterson)

products that embody some expertise that is very difficult to reverse engineer (e.g. deeply technical niche vertical software) or core pieces of infrastructure (e.g. systems of record or databases/data infra). I think there will also be an opportunity to build the platform on which a lot of this new LLM-prompted code is written. Perhaps the systems of record will own this themselves, but that might also look like an AI agent platform that enables users to orchestrate agents to do work for them across existing systems of record.

• For Angel Investors – just be patient.

roleplay

further insights

• Media. What types of media has a chance to survive AI storm? David from Angular thinks these could the directions, otherwise will be synthesised by AI:

• Talk with Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe
• Sweden is renting prison space (and service?) from Estonia, for 600 prisoners. Will pay EUR 8,500 MRR per guest.
• Impressions don't mean much on LinkedIn
• Geoff Mulgan wrote a blueprint for those inspired by DOGE – how to make it better, how governments should and could actually streamline.
• Delicate situation for All-in pod when Musk-Trump split (no pod)

ecosystem

• Tech is best positioned to reap all the benefits of AI-native automations, thus hiring is muted.
• Estonian coding school is expanding into Ukraine and Kenya.
• In the Baltics, we are thrilled when finding 10 founders working in stealth...

• Reading all the new and exciting EU "startup roadmaps", expecting major change, but then headlines remind us... Governments can't run tech too far.