Stealth no more

work in progress

• This will be fun to watch.. two founders, in Skuodas (5000 people total). 0 to $136M in 9 years (Burga).

• The marketplace dream, founders in Lithuania keep having.. so I tagged the ones I anticipate to hear from, with new milestones or funding. See these companies everywhere – from Vinted NYC ads, to Ovoko listed as one "to watch", Saltz hiring all across, Eldorado needing multiple talents in Vilnius, CGtrader performing strong, Traxlo landing in Leeds...
• What about SaaS startups, when markets crashed? Don't simplify this to vibe coding and "will my CRM get replaced by Lovable"? B2B revenue durability crisis is real, according to Lemkin: "Churn rates haven’t spiked. That’s important. But new customer growth has slowed because markets are tapped out and CIO budgets are being redirected toward AI. For seat-based SMB companies like HubSpot and Monday, it’s worse: every renewal conversation now starts with “we only need 90% of the seats we had last year.” Beware if you're just building and workflow, or UI. "Moat around "nice UI + integrations" is paper-thin when an AI agent can bypass the UI entirely".
• Baltic Startup Report – and 5 things that got us surprised about the data. Overall, directionally Baltics are trending up, especially so in Lithuania and Estonia is bouncing back nicely. Hope this exit chart will keep driving upwards:

• Hardware, is both fun and hard, as most things in life. So we celebrate all teams and founders pushing their respective technologies developing R&D in the Baltics. Here 8devices released Maca 2. AISPECO had a defining year, unlocking US with 3X revenue growth there. Alvydas Zabolis have been running Eksma Optics for the last 6 months, and will begin an aggressive expansion program. Fieldy is wearable company that ships like software team should.
• Defence is also often hardware. Impressive – Luna Robotics team found a way how to detect and land balloons with any FPV drone. byRokas in Zurich building robotics. TD Autonomy testing in Finland. Lendurai receives development grant from the Ministry of Defence. Estonia also launched pre-accelerator – Defence Business Lab.
• Stablecoins and decentralization. Trending upwards, as we know, Rizon is accelerating, Ogvio doubled their user base, and Axiology – much anticipated – landed a strong 5M EUR seed round.
• Sports people, despite this deep winter. Walk15 team member Tautvydas is in Italy – representing Lithuania at Winter Olympics! Mediatech to sponsor National Swimming Team. Soccer unites – FPRO guys invest and support Footy Labs. Motifind focused now on vertical SaaS for coaches.
• People moves. Pulsetto brings in Ignas Brazdauskas as the new CEO, to furhter scale the brand. Testlio is also transitioning – Summer Weisberg is new CEO. Aivaras is now Head of Engineering at Eskimi. Iohan gets promoted to CFO at Contrarian Ventures. Povilas is up for new CMO / VP Growth / Head of Growth roles.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
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]
Ace Waves [Enterprise ready AI agents for CS, hiring]
Surfshark [Top 50 among fastest growing in EU, hiring]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Eldorado.gg [world’s largest in-game trading marketplace, hiring]
Saily [eSIM data for international travel, hiring]

rounds and capital

• Axiology closed EUR 5M seed round, led by Exponential Science, e2vc and Coinvest Capital, was joined by new investors TIBAS Ventures and Plug and Play Tech Center. Also supported by the previous investors like BSV Ventures, NGL Ventures and others.
• Interesting turn – Veriff acquires Vespia, end-to-end KYB platform, and brings their second ever employee, Julia, back to the team!

three questions

Thrilled to have Audrius Zujus sharing on what's next. He is building in stealth for defence, after an impressive run of launching and scaling Argyle.

What are you building now – and what is your thesis?

My thesis is that there are three crises approaching the West: the semiconductor supply chain collapse, the end of traditional encryption, and the shift to global, space-based communication in warfare.

Most people don’t realize that the reason drones were so useful in the Ukraine war is because Starlink enabled video feeds back to command centers. The next decade of defense will be defined by the proliferation of Starlink-like technologies.

However, the drone components used by both sides of the conflict are actually made in a single country—one that potentially has discovered weakened ECC and influenced the NSA to remove ECC encryption from the CNSA 2.0 list. Why does it matter? Any sovereign actor must be able to control the full stack: hardware, encryption, compute, and comms.

We are building foundational infrastructure tools to address these issues and enable distributed, sovereign deterrence infrastructure.

What draws you into defense?

Doing meaningful work in the defense industry is, at the very least, good real estate insurance for assets one might have in the country.

But jokes aside, I have always been attracted to topics requiring deep technical knowledge and building foundational infrastructure. What can be more foundational than making sure you defend everything else you build?

How do you want to approach company building after scaling Argyle?

The most important part of any company is people. As much as we love technology and like to talk about it, we have to remember that we are doing all of this for somebody.

Nobody exists in isolation. People strive to be useful and make an impact based on their core values and beliefs. As long as you get the right people with the right values, the technology—however complicated—falls into place.

I believed that when scaling Argyle to 100+ people in engineering in 10 months, and I believe it now. The only difference is that when you start over, you get the joy of building it all from scratch again.

roleplay

brand + design

w/ rokas from achoo

• Software is about to drown in noise. AI will do to SaaS what the iPhone did to photography. Average output quality will go down. Consumer expectations will follow. When everyone can generate anything, most go wider. What cuts through is deeper.
• Standing out in 2026 means unnecessary care. Real-world events and quality artifacts. Analogue imperfection. A bunch of small, unnecessary decisions. Terrain's VC Invitational basketball tournament for founders at Barclay's Center: custom jerseys, professional refs, an announcer shouting "he's found product market fit with the rim, ladies and gentlemen!”. Parallel announced their AI-focused fundraise with a typewritten letter on hand-stamped paper. Good design shows that you’re being taken care of.
• Which apps or websites feel well made to you? Not necessarily beautiful - just considered. Curious what passes your bar. Thanks! 🙏 (editor@philomaths.tech)

founder's guide

• The AI GTM gap – vertical specific tools are crushing, but what else for more broader use, besides Clay?
• If fundraising, especially in LT – look beyond VC funds to find more people to talk to. Superangel database should be handy, too.

further insights

• Mindaugas, CTO at Vinted, reflects on 2025 in his blog
• Google's 52x AI Growth

ecosystem

• Realities in LT – somebody vibe coded tax optimization tool