Venture Faculty: the startup ecosystem is robust in early 2023

  • 2023-02-08

The month of February has arrived and the ecosystem continues to be active and is getting warmed up for the upcoming startup season, says the new monthly newsletter of Venture Faculty, focusing on corporate services, legal support, investments and startup consulting.

Industry News:

- The Latvian Startup Law support reached a total of EUR 2,85 million in the previous year, up from EUR 228 thousand in 2021, showing a significant increase. In addition to that, the ecosystem participants in an open letter called for the Ministry of Economics to increase the total available support for each of the startups to EUR 400 thousand.

- The finalized Latvian Startup scene report for the previous year is finally here! The report now also includes the largest round for the year - $38.9 million for Aerones, making a total of EUR 92 million in the scene. Read more in the summary.

- Good news for the Latvian startups willing to raise some funding - a new fund called “Merito Partners” has been announced. The fund is led by three experienced entrepreneurs and investors Mikus Janvars, Martins Baumanis, and Aigars Kesenfelds who already have raised EUR 17 million from 30 investors, and are planning to reach EUR 50 million. Read more in the press release.

- Latvian fintech lender SunFinance has announced another expansion, this time to the Philippines, marking it as the second largest market within the company's coverage. Read the official press release to find out more.

- A Latvian Startup SimpleCharge is looking to turn light poles into charging stations for Electric Vehicles. The startup already attracted the funding from European Regional Development Fund, and now is looking to add seed financing to that and expand further in the Baltics, Romania, and Croatia. Read more in Latvian here.

- Latvia continues the digital transition, this time it is the national airline AirBaltic, which will be equipped with Starlink internet - available free of charge. This will make it the first airline in the whole of Europe to have such internet accessibility. Read the release.

- The applications for LIAA pre-business incubator have been announced, and they will be open from March 1 to 20. Apply through www.business.gov.lv. If you want to read the full press release, click here.

- Riga Tech girls received a grant of EUR 250 thousand from Google.org, the charitable arm of Google. The grant will allow 11 thousand of people to acquire and improve their digital skills. Read more in the article.

Latest deals: 

- A Japanese company Play Inc. has acquired Latvian SIA Veset. The company develops a SaaS platform for broadcasters, media-content owners, and service providers looking to create linear TV channels. Read more in the article.

- Latvian InDemo has attracted a pre-seed investment of EUR 500 thousand. We already informed you that the startup is developing an investment tool, which will allow retail investors to invest in mortgages. Read more about it here.

- Estonian Regtech startup Salv raised EUR 4 million. The startup offers an all-in-one AML platform, and the capital will help in the further development of the product, an international expansion. Read more here.

- Co-one, an AI startup from Tallinn just announced its EUR 4,2 million seed round. The startup offers data labeling services for AI companies for securely labeling data. Read more in the article.

- Another startup from Tallinn, which specializes in EV charging solutions for customers and businesses, VOOL just announced a EUR 1.7 million funding round. The investor lineup, in addition to Specialist VC, SWG, and other known investors, included the former president of Estonia. Read more

- Lithuanian startup specializing in AI called OxpitAI just raised a EUR 3.5 million round. The startup develops software in radiology, enabling AI to diagnose sickness and do the reporting tasks. Worth mentioning is that the sole investor was a Taiwanese VC fund, Taiwania Capital. Read more about that in the article.

Venture Faculty 

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