Lithuanian Startup & VC Ecosystem — Vestbee’s report

The Lithuanian startup ecosystem is one of the fastest growing in the CEE region and has been continuously characterized by good availability of funding, according to Vestbee’s report. Currently, in Lithuanian there are over 800 startups, with a total of €8 bilion in combined ecosystem value and two unicorns (Vinted, NORD Security). Among biggest funding rounds in 2023 are €18,8 million for Cast AI, €95 million for VCase, and €17,4 million for Ibanera. AIN.Capital looked through the report and shares key points.

Lithuanian startup ecosystem overview: 

• Over 800 startups, with a total of €8 billion in combined ecosystem value.
• The largest investment ever is €250 million in Series F round for Lithuanian unicorn Vinted in 2021. Among investors are EQT Growth, Accel, Burda Principal Investments, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sprints Capital.
• The total amount of investment decreased from €450 million in 2021 to approximately €259 million in 2022. In contrast, the combined enterprise value of startups founded and headquartered in Lituanian has grown 16.8x between 2017 and 2022.

• According to Vestbee’s previous report, Estonia is still a leader in a number of funding rounds across the Baltics. However, during the coming years, Latvia and Lithuania catching up as their pre-seed and seed rounds start to approach Estonian levels.

• In 2022 Lithuania was the 10th country in the world for fintech developments, with Vilnius mentioned as the largest fintech hub in the EU in terms of licensed companies. Among the most popular segments for investments in recent years are ICT & game development, security, life sciences, AI, software, transportation, data science, and more.

VC Funds in Lithuania:

The Lithuanian regional VC firms are most active at early stages, covering 36% of all early-stage funding rounds made in 2022.The most active foreign investors in Lithuania include:

• General Catalyst (USA)
• Accel (USA)
• Network VC (USA)
• Novator (UK)
• Speedinvest (Europe)
• Eurazeo (Europe)
• Piton Capital (Europe)
• OpenOcean VC (Europe)
• OTB (Europe)
• ByFounders VC (Nordics and Baltics)

Top Lithuanian VC firms:

• Iron Wolf Capital, an early-stage VC fund based in London and Vilnius that focuses on startups in AI, IoT, SaaS, deeptech, fintech, marketplaces, with investment ticket from €250,000 to €1 million.
• Practica Capital, an industry-agnostic VC fund with over 10 years of experience and portfolio of 55 strartups. Its initial investment ticket is from €150,000 to €3 million.
• Open Circle Capital, an early-stage technology venture capital firm, focusing particularly on ICT, robotics, and high-tech with a ticket size up to €500,000.
• Contrarian Ventures, Vilnius-based investor, dedicated to mitigating the effects of climate change on our planet. 
• Coinvest Capital, a sector-adnostic fund that combines the benefits of venture capital and angel investors with a ticket size from €500K to over €5 million.
• 70V, a Vilnius-based sector-agnostic VC firm sales accelerator but with a focus on B2B customers.
• Katalista Ventures, an early-stage hybrid accelerator and private fund focused on supporting high-impact startups to grow and scale sustainably.
• Firstpick, a sector-agnostic accelerator and venture capital fund investing in tech companies across the Baltics.
• GamedevFund, an early-stage investment fund aiming to help talented teams in shipping their games by providing knowledge, contacts, and funds. 

Lithuanian Business Angels and Accelerators:

Lithuania is known for its strong community of Business Angels, which has a big impact on the ecosystem as a whole. They mainly focuse on early rounds often in syndicated or along with other VC funds, such as CoInvest Capital or Open Circle Capital. The most famous community of angel investors is Lithuanian Business Angel Network (LitBAN) that has 300 members and in 2022 invested €14.5 million in 21 startups.

Among the most active Lithuanian accelerators are Baltic Sandbox Ventures, Startup Wise Guys, and DÓBRA Impact Venture Studio.

The biggest funding rounds in H1 2023: 

• €18.8 million round for CAST AI, an intelligent cloud-native automation and cost management startup in March.
• €1.3 million seed round for Perfection42, AI-based tech startup in April.
• €4.4 million Series A round for Atrandi Bioscience, a biotech company in March.
• €3 milllion seed round fpr HeavyFinance, a fintech marketplace for reducing carbon emissions in March.
• €4.5 million round for a Saas company Oxipit in January.
• €5 million round for a deeptech startup Genomika in July.
• $8.2 million seed round for Lithuanian-founded web3 security startup CUBE3.AI in August.
• €3 million round for a logtech startup GoRamp in July.
• $100 milllion in a Series B round for a solar tech startup PVcase in July.
• €1.1M in a pre-seed round for marketplace Traxlo in May.