BalticVC

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. 

Estonian venture capital fund Plural , together with Antwerp-based investment company Hummingbird, has led a round for US startup Karman+ . Other investors in the startup include French fund HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey, founder of technology company Lookout, and other business angels. US startup Karman+ has raised $20M for its mission to mine space resources from near-Earth asteroids. 

Alpha3D , an Estonian company developing an AI-powered 3D content creation platform, has acquired a Dutch AI-powered game development platform MoonlanderAI . 

Swedish lending company Clar   has acquired an Estonian fintech startup Fiizy . This is an exit for Nordic Secondary Fund , which invested in Fiizy in 2021. 

Estonian technology company Cybernetica  and the government of Benin have signed a multi-year contract to modernize digital services in this West African country. 

Developer of robotics and autonomous systems Milrem Robotics has unveiled the HAVOC hybrid-electric robotic combat vehicle (RCV) at IDEX 2025 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In addition, the company signed an agreement with the UK-based Pearson Engineering on the development of unmanned ground vehicles for specific applications in the MENA region. 

Estonian blockchain startup Solid World will be shut down . Its founders are developing a new project, Soldera , which promises to use artificial intelligence to reduce administrative costs for renewable energy producers. In December, Soldera raised  a seed round of over €2M from investors, with David Hinrikus and Lemonade Stand contributing.

Finance, Freedom, Fellows ( fff.club ) announced that it has acquired shares of SpaceX stock, the space corporation founded by the planet's richest man, Elon Musk.

Startup Estonia presented data on Estonian startups for the year 2024.

  Parcelsea , a developer of parcel vending machines and smart mailboxes, has sold its business to Ukrainian company Jetbeep. As a result of the deal, Jetbeep will receive the startup's intellectual property and customer contracts, while the Parcelsea team will join the new owner. 

Yesterday, the Tartu County Court declared  the car rental startup Liigu bankrupt.

  In the TechChill  startup and technology competition, Latvian startups received  investment offers for €610K.

Estonia's e-residents opened 4,818 new companies in 2024, an average of 400 new companies per month, which is an absolute record in the 10 years of the program's operation. 

Latvian AI startup Trace.Space has raised $4M in seed funding. German company Cherry Ventures led the round, joined by Riga-based Outlast Fund , as well as previous investors American Nebular, Austrian Fiedler and Estonian Change Ventures . 

Estonian company DriveX has raised €1.2M to further develop its windshield damage detection technology using artificial intelligence. 

In 2024, funding for startups in the Baltic countries decreased. However, the situation stabilized somewhat in the second half of the year. This is the conclusion reached by Change Ventures and FIRSTPICK in a new report on startup funding in the Baltic States for the second half of 2024. 

Estonia-based Startup Wise Guys has become one of the investors to invest €876K in Madrid-based startup Breakevent , an AI platform for the music industry. 

The American subsidiary of the Estonian AI startup Gridraven  has raised financing in the amount of €4M from leading European venture funds, including 42CAP and Icebreaker.

Tallinn-based PARSIQ   has announced the launch of the $3M Reactive Network Developer Fund, a program aimed at supporting various projects, mostly dApps. 

Estonia has retained its status as the leading EU country in AI for the second year in a row, scoring 15% more points than Germany, the runner-up in the Startup Ecosystem Awards. France, Switzerland and Romania also made it into the top five. Estonia ranks 6th place in the world country ranking.