Led · Seed · May 2026

BirdyChat provides a messaging app purpose-built for external professional communication, using professional email addresses as usernames so users need not share personal phone numbers. Founded in 2025 and based in Riga, the company has an eight-person team and a 50,000-person waitlist in Europe. Its approach leverages the EU’s Digital Markets Act to integrate with major platforms such as WhatsApp, enabling messaging from a work identity. AI productivity features are central to the product roadmap, and the new funding will be used to build a web app and add those AI capabilities. The founders say they aim to address diversity in hiring as the company scales. Founder Rolands Mesters previously built Nordigen, which was acquired by GoCardless in 2022, and he raised the current round without a pitch deck.

Participated · Series B · Mar 2026

Giraffe360 provides an integrated platform that pairs proprietary capture hardware with AI-powered software to create complete property media kits from a single visit. Its system generates HDR photography, virtual tours, LiDAR-based 2D and 3D floor plans, video content, property websites, virtual staging, and social media assets. By consolidating capture-to-delivery workflows into one system, the company aims to accelerate time-to-market for listings and improve listing quality while supporting photographers and real estate agents in growing their business. The company plans to continue developing its AI capabilities and expand product features and geographic operations following the Series B. The article does not disclose revenue, user metrics, or founding year.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2026

Saltz provides a browser- and mobile-based platform that consolidates supplier catalogues, purchasing, payments, and logistics for the food-service industry. By eliminating traditional intermediaries, the service gives restaurants clearer pricing and simpler procurement workflows. The marketplace currently spans 20 countries and offers chefs access to thousands of fresh and frozen meat and seafood SKUs from vetted suppliers. Saltz’s founding team previously built B2B marketplaces at Oberlo and Shopify and identified the food sector’s lack of infrastructure for direct, cross-border trade. With its new capital, the company intends to accelerate European expansion and enhance the technology underpinning international transactions. Hiring across engineering, product, sales, and operations is also planned as the platform scales.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2025

Algori is a Madrid-based purchase and behavioural data platform serving the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector. It collects physical and digital receipts through its consumer apps and uses a proprietary AI classification engine to transform every line item into SKU-level, retailer-specific data. The resulting dataset gives manufacturers and retailers timely visibility into full basket composition, store-level pricing shifts, purchase missions and shopper leakage, filling the gaps left by traditional household panels of 4,000–20,000 participants. Customers use Algori’s insights to inform distribution, pricing, promotions, assortment and category strategies across increasingly consolidated European retail markets. The company plans to expand its shopper panel into Poland, Germany and France, followed by Latin America, while also broadening behavioural data collection and rolling out new AI-driven insight tools. Including the latest growth capital round, Algori has raised a total of €7.5 million to date.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2025

Aerones develops patented robotic systems and AI-driven solutions for inspection, maintenance, and predictive services for wind turbines. The company serves major operators and its customers represent over 50% of global wind power capacity, including NextEra, GE, Vestas, Enel and Siemens Gamesa. Led by CEO Dainis Kruze, Aerones combines robotics, AI and manufacturing to deliver remote and automated turbine services. The company plans to expand globally, boost R&D in AI and robotics, scale manufacturing, and enhance predictive maintenance for the wind industry. Recent public funding milestones include a €4M grant from the EU Innovation Fund in 2024 and a $30M funding round in 2023, reflecting ongoing capital support for growth. Aerones develops and deploys patented robotic systems for wind turbine operations, focusing on inspection, maintenance and leading-edge blade repairs. The company plans to produce and deploy the world’s first wind turbine blade leading-edge repair robot sets using EU grant funding. Its services include external and internal blade inspection, lighting protection checks, ultrasound, painting, ice-phobic coating, cleaning, and leading-edge repairs. Aerones says its robotic technology performs crucial tasks 3x–6x faster and yields up to 10x fewer idle stay days than conventional methods, and it operates in more than 27 countries. The firm aims to cut repair downtime dramatically (targeting repairs within 18 hours and a 67% reduction in downtime) and to support the transition to renewable energy. Financially, Aerones secured a €4,416,000 grant from the EU Innovation Fund for a project with a total budget of €7,360,000, and it raised €27M in growth capital just over a year earlier in a round co‑led by Lightrock and Haniel. Founders Dainis Kruze and Janis Putrams lead the company from Riga, Latvia. Aerones offers a patented modular robotic solution that delivers a full suite of wind-turbine services including external visual and internal blade inspections, lighting-protection and ultrasound checks, painting, ice-phobic coating, cleaning, and leading-edge repairs. The company began offering basic inspection services in 2019 and has since expanded its capabilities to comprehensive maintenance and repair work. Aerones serves customers that represent roughly 50% of the world’s wind power capacity, including NextEra, GE, Vestas, Enel and Siemens Gamesa. The company is led by CEO Dainis Kruze and maintains a European headquarters in Riga, Latvia, and a North American headquarters in San Jose, USA. Aerones raised $30M in funding and plans to use the capital to grow technical and sales functions, increase the number of robot service teams, and expand into new markets. No revenue or other financial metrics were disclosed in the article. Aerones is a startup focused on developing robotic systems for cleaning wind-turbine blades. The company announced a $9 million fundraising to support development of those cleaning robots. The article frames the financing as targeted toward product development rather than reporting operating metrics. Public commentary quoted in the article praised the team and the concept of applying robotics to such maintenance tasks. Other commenters raised broader points about rising costs in green energy and suggested alternatives like self-cleaning or low-soiling blades. Aerones has shifted from using large industrial drones to a ground-based robotic system for wind turbine inspection and maintenance. The system combines a computerized winch, a robotic arm, and a small fleet of ground robots to perform tasks such as close-up photography, laser scanning, lightning conductivity tests, blade and drainage-hole cleaning, and coating application. Its design enables a two-man crew to service multiple turbines per day, including some nighttime and low-temperature operations. Aerones says the ground system is more stable and effective than its prior drone approach and has already been piloted in the U.S. and Europe. The company is Y Combinator–backed and moved from Latvia to the San Francisco Bay Area. The new funds will be used to further develop the robotic system and expand further into the U.S. market.