Lithuanian BSV Ventures (ex-Baltic Sandbox Ventures) raises $15M

Lithuanian BSV Ventures, which changed its name from Baltic Sandbox Ventures last week, has raised $15M from NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Lithuanian ILTE fund (ex-Invega), which invested under the Accelerator 2 program, and other private investors from Europe.

BSV Ventures has invested mostly from its pre-seed fund since 2022, where the main investors were ILTE and some private LPs. It has already invested in startups from the Baltic countries, Finland and France. BSV Ventures' seed fund will be mostly funded by private investors and the NATO Innovation Fund.

Baltic Sandbox Accelerator was founded in 2018. In 2023, the Baltic Sandbox Ventures fund was launched with offices in Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland. The fund provides investments of up to €125K per startup in the pre-seed stage, and up to €400K in the seed stage. The focus is on early-stage Baltic startups working with deep tech, life sciences, and dual-use technologies. The General Partners are Andrius Milinavicius, Sandra Golbreich, and Erik Bhullar. Since the fund's first closing, it has backed over 30 projects across the Baltics, Finland, and France in areas such as mechatronics, biotech, functional genomics, the future of computing, space technologies, AI, and others. 

ILTE (Investments in the Lithuanian Economy), which changed its name from Invega in September, is a state institution, which provides financial services, such as investing in business projects that add value to the state. ILTE manages a portfolio of €1.4 Bln. ILTE focuses on financing industrial modernization and digitalization projects, renewable energy, infrastructure, agricultural projects, startups, and research teams focused on new product development. The CEO of ILTE is Dainius Vilčinskas.

NATO Innovation Fund is backed by 24 NATO Allies and deploys more than €1Bln in deep tech.