Lithuanian Businesses Worth Knowing About

Lithuania, one of the three Baltic countries, boasts one of Europe’s most developed startup scenes and is attracting talent from all over the globe. According to Invest Lithuania, the country ranks first in the EU concerning licenses issued.

Inga Langaitė, head of the Unicorns Lithuania association, says 2024 is poised to usher in significant shifts within the Lithuanian startup ecosystem.

If you are thinking about investing in Lithuania, here are some noteworthy Lithuanian businesses worth knowing about.

Lithuania’s Most Popular Businesses And Startups 

1. Vinted - $200M Valuation

You probably live under a rock if you haven’t heard of Vinted. Founded in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas as a website to clear out their closets in Vilnius, Vinted has grown exponentially to be Europe’s top C2C marketplace where users buy and sell secondhand clothes. 

In the UK alone, nearly a quarter of the population (16 million users) use the platform. The company is even challenging more established rivals like eBay and Depop. 

• Vinted has over 80 million members spread throughout North America and Europe

• Vinted’s first app was a collaboration between Vinted and Lithuania-based app-building company Lemon Labs

•  France is Vinted’s biggest and most thriving market

• Vinted attained unicorn status in 2019, becoming the first Lithuanian company to reach this milestone

2. Cast AI -$99M Valuation

Cast AI is a leading autonomous Kubernetes management platform that reduces and helps optimize costs for customers running cloud-native apps in Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.

They also specialize in automating disaster recovery and optimizing DevOps. Although Cast AI’s management is headquartered in Florida, their AI product, an infrastructure engineering robot for business, is developed in Vilnius, Lithuania. 

• In 2023, Cast AI raised $20 million and $35 million in March and November to develop the Kubernetes cost optimization solution

• Cast AI's founders, Laurent Gil, and Yuri Frayman, are known for their successful software ventures, some of which they’ve sold to companies like Oracle and Google.

3. Heavy Finance -$14.7M Valuation

Laimonas Noreika founded Heavy Finance as a peer-to-business crowdlending platform that offers loans to European farmers. The company, operating from Vilnius, connects investors and farmers needing financing to shift to regenerative farming or expand their farms.

What’s great about the platform is that all their listed loans have land or heavy farm machinery as their security. 

• HeavyFinance aims to remove one gigaton of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050

•  In 2023, the company received a $3.3 million investment from Practica Capital

4. Omnisend - $1.57M Seed Round

After two unsuccessful attempts at building a world-class business, Rytis Laurinavičius finally got it right in 2014 when he started Omnisend, a leading e-commerce marketing automation platform. Since then, the company has grown without external debt, a rare accomplishment in the e-commerce sector.

Omnisend’s team of 200-plus experts has developed a range of products in use by 100,000+ e-commerce businesses spread across 130 countries. 

•  While the company is headquartered in Vilnius and Kaunas, most of its clients hail from the US

• The average pay at Omnisend is €5,500, quite a decent wage even by Europe’s standards

5. Amlyze - $1.08M Pre-Seed 

The Vilnius-based company offers clients a sustainable solution to simplify compliance and reduce financial and white-collar crime. Amlyze operations in the fintech sector look very favorable, with the volume of international transfers projected to grow exponentially. 

• Amlyze has secured $1.08 million in pre-seed funding to develop anti-financial crime solutions

• Amlyze is now working with Savy, a p2p lending platform, and has partnered with Plumery to strengthen anti-financial crime prevention

Conclusion

Lithuanian businesses are thriving. The Lithuanian unicorns mentioned above only represent a tiny fraction of the country’s vibrant business ecosystem but demonstrate its extraordinary resilience and growth trajectory amid global challenges.