BalticVC

Estonian basketball fan engagement platform Scorestars is shutting down after four years of operation. According to co-founder Marek Kesküll, after changing their line of business, they failed to attract their first paying customer fast enough, which made it impossible to continue operations.

The Defense Fund, managed by the national fund SmartCap , has invested  €10M in Darkstar , Estonia's first defense technology venture fund. SmartCap's investment of €10M in the Darkstar venture fund will act as an anchor investment, and private investments will bring the total size of the fund to €25M.

Four Estonian space technology startups, Babayte , Spiral Hydrogen , MS Forest and Energy Risk Service, will receive funding of €240K - €60K each. Half of the funding will come from the European Space Agency ( ESA BIC Estonia ) and the other half from the cities, depending on the location of the startup.

Estonian startup CryptoSwift has raised €510K in a pre-seed round. The round was backed by early stage investors Startup Wise Guys , Tenity , DEPO Ventures and a group of business angels. CryptoSwift will use the funds raised to expand its team and accelerate the adoption of its platform in the EU.

Estonian electric cargo bike manufacturer Vok Bikes has raised a $6M investment. The Series A funding round was led by SQM Lithium Ventures . Existing investors Metaplanet , Specialist VC , Sunly and SmartCap also participated.

Estonian medical technology startup Lifeyear has raised €1.3M from venture funds Verge HealthTech Fund , Tilia Impact Ventures , PurposeTech and Estonian business angels. The company received another €1.5M in technology development grants from the Estonian government. Lifeyear will use the raised funds to launch its digital platform for cardiac care in selected UK hospitals.

Estonian design startup Flowstep has received $2.6M in Seed funding. Supernode Global led the funding with participation of Adesso Ventures , Angel Invest , Dnipro VC , Iron Wolf Capital , Tera Ventures , Specialist VC and business angel Anton Borzov.

The Estonian venture fund Plural invested in Metaview, a UK-based artificial intelligence startup looking to modernize the recruitment process. Metaview raised $35M in a Series B round led by Google Ventures . Other investors in the company included Vertex Ventures US , Seedcamp , Coelius Capital , True Equity and angel investors Victor Riparbelli and Barney Hussey-Yeo.

The Estonian venture fund Plural participated in the financing round of the German defense startup Helsing in the amount of €600M. Other investors of the company are Prima Materia , Lightspeed Ventures , Accel and General Catalyst .

Estonian venture company Yolo Investments has completed raising €100M for its flagship Fund II. The fund raised €50M of external capital and another €50M from Yolo Group. It has 23 investors. Yolo Investments announced the launch of a new fund in 2023. 

Estonian Karma Ventures participated in a €10M round for Finnish SaaS company Swarmia . DIG Ventures and business angels also participated in the round, including Romain Huët (Open AI’s head of developer experience) and Cal Henderson (co-founder and former CTO of Slack).

  Estonian programming school //kood opened its offices in Ukraine and Kenya with the support of the Estonian Service for International Development ( ESTDEV ). In Ukraine //kood cooperates with Zhytomyr Polytechnic University, and in Kenya the partner is GreatWell Training College in Nairobi. 

Estonian energy startup Gridraven has signed a contract with Finland's national grid operator Fingrid . Gridraven's software will increase the capacity of the country's existing transmission lines by 30%.

  Plural , a venture capital firm founded by Estonian entrepreneurs, has invested $8.5M in technology startup Sunrise Robotics .

Pactum , a developer of AI agents, has raised around €47M in a Series C, organized by Insight Partners .

The fintech company Wise , founded by Estonians Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, has decided to transfer the main listing of its shares to the New York Stock Exchange. The company has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2021. According to the plans, Wise shares will be listed on two exchanges.

Tallinn-based Lendurai , a dual-use technology startup, has raised €5.57M. The round was organized by the Expeditions Fund with the participation of HCVC and Vsquared Ventures .

Venture funds Plural and Superangel participated in a $20M Series A round for UK technology company Labrys . Other investors included AlbionVC as well as existing investors. Labrys will use the proceeds to further develop its proprietary Axiom platform.

Telia Eesti has bought Estonian IT company Iglu , with which it has cooperated in developing several mobile solutions, including the Mobile-ID service. Now, in addition to telecommunications, IT and cybersecurity services, Telia will now be able to offer software development capabilities to customers through Iglu.

Marko Kaseleht, co-founder and former head of Estonian defense startup SensusQ , has joined digital transformation company Nortal . At Nortal, he will serve as senior vice president of defense, while at SensusQ he will remain only as a shareholder and member of the supervisory board.