Estonia joined Dealroom's list of top countries - investors in Generative AI startups

Estonia joined the list of countries, which invest in Generative AI startups the most. The Baltic country took the 9th spot. Before Estonia are Sweden, Germany, the UK, Canada, Israel, and other countries. The US is the leader in this list. All the data were accumulated by the data platform Dealroom starting from 2019 till 2023.

During this period, Estonia invested a total of $71,1M. The data were brought as of the end of May 2023. In 2022, it invested $56M, a record for Estonia, compared to other periods. The most remarkable investment of last year was of the Estonian cross-game metaverse avatar platform Ready Player Me. It raised $56M from a group of Baltic and foreign investors, including venture fund Plural, owned by Estonian entrepreneurs Sten Tamkivi and Taavet Hinrikus.

Among top investors, whose portfolios boast Generative AI startups are only three Estonian entrepreneurs. A co-founder of money transfer service Wise Taavet Hinrikus, who participated in 15 investment rounds, took the 17th position. Co-founder of Skype Jaan Tallinn joined six rounds (275th spot), and a founder of software company Teleport and a former Skype executive Sten Tamkivi had six deals (289th spot) starting from 2020.

Dealroom highlighted four Baltic startups among more than 250 Generative AI other companies.

- Founded in 2014 by Rainer Selvet and Timmu Tõke, Ready Player Me is an avatar platform that connects thousands of apps, video games, and virtual worlds in the metaverse, allowing users to create their virtual identities to move from one platform to another. The company uses recognition technology, deep learning, VR, AI, and 3D technology.

- Founded in 2022 by Povilas Skrebutenas, Lithuanian startup Mentum helps in copywriting and creating marketing copies. 

- Latvian company CopyMonkey.ai was established in 2021 by Anton Selikhov, Dmitry Parpulov, and Ekaterina Nevelson. It generates content for e-commerce based on AI or machine learning technology platform. The startup uses natural language processing, machine learning, and deep tech.

-Riga-based Drafter AI was established in 2020 by Oleg Voronko and Platon Mysnyk. It enables startups to build, test and integrate AI/ML features into products in hours instead of months. The startup also uses natural language processing, machine learning, and deep tech.

According to the data up to 10th July 2023, in total, generative AI startups have raised over $22B in funding in the last five years, $15B - in 2023, $4B - in 2022, and $92M - in 2016. The leader in Generative AI VC funding is the US with $20B. Europe takes second place with $1B.

GenAI is a part of AI technologies. It uses Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on large data sets of content media (text, images, audio, video) to create new text, audio, images, and more. These technologies can be implemented in marketing, advertising and sales, media, gaming, graphic design, product design, law, coding, architecture, and much more.

Founded in 2018, Amsterdam-based Dealroom. co is a data provider on startups, growth companies, and tech ecosystems in Europe and around the globe.