Investing in Tech Superheroes in the New Nordics.
Hello October (nearly November),
In early-stage investing, you’re usually there at the beginning of the story. It’s rare to also be at the table when a chapter closes.
This autumn, we got to do it twice. In September we celebrated Custobar’s acquisition with the founders, far too much pizza and a sauna. Then in October, Volatus Aerospace agreed to acquire AISPECO, the Vilnius-built airborne sensor company we’ve backed along the way.
Exits in the New Nordics rarely make big headlines. But they are happening, and each one sends experienced founders, operators and angels back into the ecosystem.
Meanwhile, the beginnings keep coming: bilt.me, AutoAgentti and KineDB joined the portfolio, Zenniz made TIME’s Best Inventions list, and our team spent the autumn in Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Kaunas and Helsinki.
Let’s dive in.
— Superhero Capital
Your sidekick when it matters.
🚀 New Investments Spotlight
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bilt.me team |
📱 bilt.me Raises €615K to Let Anyone Build an App💡 There are over a billion websites but only a few million apps, because apps are hard to build. bilt.me changes that: describe your idea, and its AI agent builds a real native iOS and Android app, with payments, cloud and sharing built in. No code. We’re proud to lead the pre-seed round alongside Markus Villig (Bolt) and Martin Sokk (Lightyear). Welcome to the portfolio, Uku Joost Annus, Kevin Akkermann and Karl Kiilaspää. 🦸 |
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Allan Zimmermann & Axel Löwenhoff,
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🗄️ KineDB Raises €850K to Build a Database That Runs Wherever Software Runs💡 AI is accelerating how much software gets built, but many apps still rely on separate systems to manage data offline and in the cloud. KineDB uses a single database engine that works both on local devices and across backend infrastructure, starting with apps that have to work without a connection. The team is hiring engineers with experience in databases, storage and query engines. We’re leading the pre-seed round alongside NGL Ventures and angels including Jussi Pyörre (CTO, Cactos) and Kristoffer Abell and Jakob Lilholm (co-CEOs, Formalize). |
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AutoAgentti is building a new kind of marketplace for used cars, putting AI at the centre of the buying experience. |
🚗 AutoAgentti Raises €5.4M to Bring AI to Used-Car Buying💡 What if buying a used car felt like talking to an AI instead of scrolling through hundreds of listings? AutoAgentti has just launched that marketplace in Finland, with access to inventory data for almost 20,000 cars. The company raised €5.4M ahead of launch, with Sanoma and Superhero Capital as its main investors. Welcome to the portfolio, Teemu Mäkitalo and the AutoAgentti team. 🦸 |
🏁 Portfolio Exit: AISPECO to Be Acquired by Volatus Aerospace
AISPECO to Be Acquired by Volatus Aerospace
A big milestone for Lithuanian tech: Canada’s Volatus Aerospace has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of AISPECO.
Founded in Vilnius, AISPECO builds airborne sensor systems and flight-management software. About 50 complete systems have been sold across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia. With Volatus, the team gets new room to scale across aerial intelligence, defence, energy and critical infrastructure.
Congratulations to Mantas Vaskela and the whole AISPECO team. From Vilnius to the world.
🍕 And One More: Celebrating Custobar
Can there be a better way to celebrate than with pizza and sauna? 🙂
Last month we shared that Custobar, our 2016 seed investment, was acquired by Ilkka. So that’s exactly how we celebrated: with the founders and plenty of stories from the early days. Custobar started at Startup Sauna, so it came full circle.
Thank you to Juha Törönen, Tatu Kuivalahti, Laura Ek and the whole team for letting us come along.
🦸 Portfolio Milestones and News
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🎾 Zenniz Gen2 Named One of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2026💡 “That was out.” Every tennis player has had that argument, and Zenniz is ending it. Gen2 turns a court into a coach, line judge, stats keeper and videographer in one: 30 audio sensors hear every strike and bounce, and four cameras follow the ball. Clubs and academies around the world already play on it, and this year its line-calling was approved for indoor college competition by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. Now it’s on TIME’s list too. Congrats, Eero Kuusi and the Zenniz team! |
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📚 Guideless Is Looking for Paid Ambassadors💡 Following its €1M pre-seed, Guideless is looking for people in Enablement, L&D, Training and People Ops to help spread the word. Ambassadors use Guideless for free, get a fixed fee, and earn a share of the revenue from their referrals. Know someone who fits? Send this their way. |
🎬 Founders Corner: bilt.me
What does it take to become “the Shopify of mobile apps”?
The day after bilt.me’s €615K pre-seed announcement, we sat down with co-founder and CEO Uku Joost Annus for a new episode of Superhero News.
In about 15 minutes, Uku talks about:
- Taking an app from idea to the App Store without two months of engineering
- The risky bets that keep them ahead, including one Apple could have banned them for
- A 9-person team with an average age of 23, and a founder recruited from a sauna
- Growing 100% month over month, and the €20K lesson from paid ads
As Martin Sokk put it, what he likes most about this team is that they don’t know any of the rules.
Watch the full conversation here.
🧠 Superhero Thinking: what our team has been writing, saying and recommending
✍️ If You Built It in a Weekend, Why Can’t Your Customer?
AI has made building cheap: what used to take a team months, one person can now ship over a weekend. So where did the moat go?
Our Venture Partner Ivo Remmelg, a hardware founder and angel investor, argues it didn’t disappear: it moved into data, trust, integrations, certifications, distribution and the ability to carry your customer’s risk.
His question for every founder: If a well-funded competitor with the best AI tools started today, what could they still not copy within 12 months?
🎙️ Gytenis on the Mic
Our Partner Gytenis Galkis joined three podcasts this autumn. One line from each:
- The Startup Blender (#72): “We use AI” isn’t a pitch. It’s like bragging that you use electricity. Distribution is the moat now. 🎧 Spotify · Apple Podcasts
- aulium: You don’t have to start a company to be an entrepreneur; you can buy one. Europe’s succession crisis is an overlooked opportunity. 🎧 Listen
- Founders Unchained: what matters at seed stage when almost anyone can build an MVP, and why chasing a unicorn isn’t the only way to build a strong fund. 🎧 Watch
📈 Signals from the New Nordics
Three numbers we kept coming back to this month.
🛡️ $1.2bn: Finland’s defence-tech funding in 2026
Finland has fewer people than London, yet it out-raised the entire UK in defence tech this year. Only Germany raised more in Europe. One breakout company can move a whole country’s number: ICEYE, which started as an Aalto University student project, raised €1bn this summer. Across Europe, defence-tech startups raised $2.6bn in all of 2025 and $7.4bn by September 2026. Funding is the easy part to count; the real test is products customers deploy at scale.
🇪🇪 68%: Wise and Bolt’s share of Estonia’s TOP 30 value
Estonia’s 30 most valuable tech companies are worth €1.3B less than a year ago, mostly because Wise and Bolt lost ground. Beyond them, the top companies grew by roughly a third. Blackwall became Estonia’s newest unicorn (€221M to €1.03B), and seven defence-tech companies made the list. We’d love to see that 68% shrink, not because Wise and Bolt get smaller, but because the next generation gets bigger.
🤖 +12.5 points: Lithuania’s one-year jump in business AI use
The Nordics are among the EU’s heaviest AI users: Denmark 42%, Finland 37.8% and Sweden 35%, against an EU average of 20%. The Baltics are behind but moving fast. Lithuania’s jump was one of the three biggest in the EU, and Estonia already sits at 34%. We read it as a map, not a ranking. Baltic founders: some of Europe’s most AI-ready customers are right next door.
🌍 An Autumn Across the Ecosystem
A few places we showed up since our last edition
🇱🇹 Investor Camp & Startup Fair, Vilnius. The week opened with a networking cruise on the Neris and a Korean BBQ dinner we co-hosted with Vendep Capital (planned to end at 21:00; people stayed until 22:30). At Startup Fair, Gytenis judged the Pitch Battle semi-finals. Congrats to winners Halide Energy, 3P-DEFENCE and UVIRESO. [A few moments]
🇫🇮 Nordic Business Forum, Helsinki. While part of the team was in Vilnius for Investor Camp, our Partner Audrius Milukas joined a strong delegation of Lithuanian businesses and entrepreneurs in Helsinki. He brought back five lessons for founders. Our favourite: ask whether a decision is a hat, a haircut or a tattoo, and move fast on the hats. [Read more]
🇱🇻 SHIPYARD AI Season 2 finale, Riga. “Latvia is picking up,” was Gytenis’s verdict after seven founder meetings in one day. Of the 24 teams that started the season, 9 are making money and 4 are raising. [Feel the vibe yourself]
🇪🇪 Lock in & Build hackathon, Tallinn. 86 builders, 33 teams and 29 working prototypes in one weekend. Ivo mentored and judged, and went from mentoring one team to three. Congrats to winners CFO4NGO, Cerberus and Tapback. [See the moments]
🤝 Founder Dynamics & Founder Breakups, Finnish Startup Community event. Mia’s takeaway: plan for the unicorn, prepare for the rain. Put shareholders’ agreements, IP and leaver terms in writing while things are still good. [Read more]
🌱 Finsif Responsible Investment Guide. Our Compliance Officer Mia was part of the working group behind Finsif’s updated guide, now out in English and Finnish. [Read the guide]
Plus: the BIO-RED Hackathon in Kaunas, the LitBAN Pitch Event, Finnish PE-VC Summit 2026, Tesi Portfolio, Turku Startup Prize and more.
📅 Coming Up
🛠️ 12–15 November: Unfair Weekend, Vilnius. A four-day AI hackathon at ISM University. Ralfas will join as a mentor. Learn more.
🚢 20 November: SHIPYARD AI Season 3 applications close. The season starts in January 2027. Building with AI in the Baltics? Apply here.
🚀 The Mission Continues
If you’re building something bold in the New Nordics – venture-scale, AI-native, and unfairly ambitious – reply with MISSION.
— Superhero Capital
Your sidekick when it matters.