Estonia's Pactum wins top award for startups in Europe

DigitalEurope, Europe's technology alliance, presented the Future Unicorn Awards for the seventh time yesterday at an awards ceremony in Brussels. This year's award went to Pactum, an Estonian startup developing artificial intelligence for negotiation. 

Pactum is an Estonian startup specializing in artificial intelligence agents. The startup helps companies automate personalized commercial negotiations. Pactum's customers include, for example, Walmart, Maersk, Henkel, Wesco, Linde and other well-known brands. The company was founded in 2019 by Martin Rand, Kaspar Korjus and Kristjan Korjus.

Since its founding, Pactum has raised five rounds of funding, totaling $55.1M. The last round took place in July 2024. At that time, the company raised $20M as part of Series B. Estonian company Karma Ventures acted as the lead investor. Danish Maersk, Austrian 3VC, English Atomico, German Project A, Estonian Superangel and Hungarian Portfolion also participated in the deal. 

The Future Unicorn Award aims to encourage startups from across Europe that could become future European tech giants. It draws attention to SMEs that have demonstrated success in digitalizing their business processes and offering innovative digital products and services.

Estonian companies have been finalists before, but no Estonian startup has ever made it to the top of the list. According to Kaspar Korjus, CEO of Pactum, this award was a recognition of the hard work and dedication of the team, it shows that innovations of European origin can compete with the best in the world.