Breakout of AI mold

work in progress

Drones. They completely changed warfare, and now finally giving Ukraine the edge they needed. Reinis to introduce RAW Low Cost Interceptors, scalable high-speed platforms designed for modern operational realities. Latvia is making smart procurement agreement to keep up with drone tech and support local tech (Origin Robotics is one to watch). Career advice from Vytenis Buzas.

What to build, what matters, what moats? Been thinking lately, and this from Johan resonated:

"Being exposed to rockets like Lovable can probably make all of us a bit blind to the broader AI hype cycle right now, but looking across some of the deeper funds we are in, the companies that keep standing out are often harder to understand, more operationally messy, more capital intensive and have much longer feedback loops.

They don’t fit the old venture pattern recognition particularly well.

But if they work, they don’t just improve software workflows. They reshape parts of how the real world actually operates.

That feels like an important shift that still gets far less attention than the faster-moving AI stories dominating most of the conversation right now.?

So we took on a little challenge. Find less-known, bootstrapped / little funding type of startups / scaleups in the Baltics, that are growing nicely, have strong moats, and likely - a lot of potential. Coming on LinkedIn first next week.

New products + new startups. Last week for Evaldas at Vinted Go - another Vinted alumni turns builder, keep an eye on Guideless. David is working on smth called M11, and believes that now the biggest gap right now isn't more frontier models - it's good open-source coding models that enterprises can self-host on their own compute. Simonas with RootDock - platform to launch and run multiple storefronts. Stanislovas built learning and development platform for organizations - Aksusnet. Tyku8 building various products. Eimantas builds a card solution to every problem. And here is Kaspar, he is 19, just did his national school maths exam and pitching for pre-seed funding for his company Renderable at Latitude59.

Outliers. Oura, Finnish smart ring maker, files confidentially for IPO - could be around 10B valuation. One of their early investors are… Metaplanet, or Jaan Tallinn from Estonia. As a reminder, he also led early round for DeepMind, and later - series A for Anthropic, which just closed series H at almost a trillion (!!!) valuation. We asked Claude to model the cap table and it suggests that Metaplanet might have about 3% stake at.. 30B valuation (not clear if profits are capped, secondaries done, ESOPs and etc). Big bets by Plural, too: now leading Orbital Industries' $50m Series B round.

Be like Pavel. Pavel Ahafonau spent five years trying to learn Lithuanian. Nothing worked. Then in early 2020, with a government language exam looming and a newborn at home, he did what engineers do when they can’t find the right tool: he built one.Five months later, he passed the exam on his first try. That tool became WRD – a mobile-first, AI-powered language learning accelerator that, according to the company, has crossed two million users, surpassed $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue, and grown 3.5x in six months.

Milestones done, and others to hit. 59% in our poll think that Hostinger will be the next one to reach 1B annual revenue. Oxylabs now growing "almost triple digit % YoY” which is crazy. InRento crosses 100M in financing - took only 11 months to go from €50M to €100M!

Winners. Granarium Technologies - 100% Renewable power storage - wins Latitude59 this year!

sponsors

Cloudvisor [now offering stress-free migration from any cloud to AWS]
Hostinger [online presence accessible to everyone worldwide, hiring]
Google For Startups [cloud credits up to $350K, faster growth]
Oxylabs [Step into the world of web data gathering]
VIALET [Business accounts for growth, hiring]
Surfshark [Top 50 among fastest growing in EU, hiring]
Eldorado.gg [world’s largest in-game trading marketplace, hiring]
Saily [eSIM data for international travel, hiring]
InRento [Investments in real estate projects with income, growth, and impact]

rounds and capital

Kopa.ai, an agentic AI platform for e-commerce teams, has raised €2 million in seed funding co-led by XTX Ventures and Practica Capital, with participation from Inovia Capital and angel investor Etan Ilfeld.

• We were told Kopa serves 2000+ customers, has established several larger partnerships, and has also reached commercial stage with over $2 million in ARR, including revenue from sister business Profit Koala.
• Gabriele brings XTX Ventures to the Baltics, as their first deal, hope they will continue (Rytis has several portcos with Dig), Balnord led Astrolight round (another Gabriele in the team); we have full list of Lithuanians in venture abroad for you.

Backoffice raises €150K from FIRSTPICK and Lost Astronaut to bring restaurant and hospitality operations under one roof.

More in venture world

• byFounders easily secured Fund III - 130M is ready for deployment, reach out if early stage and ambitious (Magnus and Ugne)
• New Venture studio in Estonia: TooEarly Ventures.
• Rita Sakus on Siena Secondary TV channel

roleplay

Wix made a global 20% staff cut – sorry to hear, but talk to Tomas and hire these great people.

three questions

brand + design

Kind of same. Because everyone is using the same models, AI-generated code and design default to looking the same. It is incredibly difficult to build something that feels distinct using just live coding. Hint, hint: betting that high-taste interactions that break out of the standard AI mold will become more valuable than ever.

The Illusion of Absence. Thrive, Benchmark - some iconic VCs don't do brand and marketing, it seems, at all. But, “The anti-brand is a specific set of conditions - network density, concentration philosophy, partners with owned distribution - that most firms do not have and cannot manufacture.”

NordProtect becomes Coveron aims to offer comprehensive all-in-one scam protection services in United States.

founder's guide

Don't just make another pitch - share your obsession

further insights

Fascinating researched differences on how AI narratives and stories differ from human writing

Ben Evans with his new deck well worth our time

ecosystem

Andris is educating Latvians how tech can drive the economy and growth. But it's probably not easy to to imagine until you get to see one massive success story.