Baltic startup scene report: €1.3B in funding and 3 unicorns in four months of 2022

The Baltics — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — is one of Europe’s most exciting startup regions. For the last ten years, its startup ecosystem has grown from nonexistence to over 5,000 startups, including 12 unicorns. FIRSTPICK, a Vilnius-based early-stage venture capital fund, prepared a report on how the first four months of 2022 looked for the Baltic startup scene. AIN.Capital publishes a brief overview of the Baltic startup scene report 2022 with the key facts. 

• The Baltics startups have closed 57 deals and raised €1.3 billion in investments in the first four months of 2022. This is €0.5 billion higher than the amount raised during the same period of the previous year.
• According to the Baltics startup scene report 2022, most of the deals happened in the e-commerce, software, and FinTech sectors.

• During the period from January till May 2022, seed deals dominated — there were nine pre-seed, 28 seed, six Series A, six Series B, and later deals closed.
• At the same time, the average size of seed and Series A rounds have increased compared to the same period in 2021: seed — from $900,000 to $1.6 million, Series A — from $8.7 million to $25 million.
• Series A and later rounds were executed every month. The tendency shows that the ecosystem is transitioning from seed to Series A and later companies. The largest deals were the following:
  • $100 million Series C raised by Estonian identity verification startup Veriff in January 2022;
  • €9.1 million secured by Estonian enterprise forensics platform Binalyze in February;
  • $45 million Series D closed by Estonian developer of an AI-based CRM Glia in March;
  • $100 million raised by Lithuanian cybersecurity firm Nord Security in April.
  • $65 million Series A closed by Lithuanian fintech kevin. in May.
• Three startups closed Series A rounds within only eight months from their seed:
  • Vilnius-based fintech kevin. has secured $65 million;
  • Estonian e-commerce compliance platform Eurora has raised $40 million;
  • Tallinn-based Montonio Finance has raised €11 million.
• In the first four months of 2022, three new unicorns appeared on the Baltics startup scene: NordVPN, Glia, and Veriff.
• According to the report, 75 different foreign funds participated in funding Baltic startups including Tier 1 funds Index Ventures, Tiger Global, Burda Principal Investments. OTB, Accel, OpenOcean, and ff Venture Capital were the most active ones.