The Lightyear app.
Hellyear
Some of the biggest names of the tech scene in Estonia are Lightyear, a startup that, after Europe's answer to commission-free trading spies Robinhood.
London, based in London, develops Lightyear an app with which users can invest in a number of over 5,000 shares, stock market funds and money market funds. It was founded in 2021 by two former wise employees, Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer.
The company will later announce on Thursday that it collected $ 23 million in a new financing round from Nordicninja, a risk capital fund supported by Japanese, based in Europe. Estonian tech entrepreneur Markus Villig, the co-founder of Unicorn Bolt, has also invested.
SOKK, CEO of Lightyear, said CNBC that the company did not necessarily have to collect more money for the company, but decided this due to the caliber of the investors involved.
“People like Markus have built massive companies in many, many markets, and this is something that is really exciting for us because it is so difficult to go to all markets and understand their local dynamics and their need,” he said.
Lightyear is currently active in 25 countries. With the help of Angel investors like Bolts Villig, however, the company can “start” in another five markets “pretty quickly”, said Sokk.
Villig announced CNBC that it could “be a challenge to scale a company in several countries in a heavily regulated sector,” and added that the less developed market for Europe offers sufficient opportunities for disorders.
Other Estonian angel investors who previously supported Lightyear Chief Technology Officer Ott Kaubver and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn.
Estonia is widely considered a prominent technology center in Europe. According to the Estonian investment agency, the country in Europe houses the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe. In the meantime, Estonia's E-Residency program has also enabled foreigners to become digital residents and to start their companies in the country.
The new round appreciates the five-year-old Lightyear with between 200 and $ 300 million, which is significantly higher in 2022 than the evaluation in 2022, when they brought $ 25 million, two people who were familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous because the information was not published.
Push in AI, crypto
In addition to the additional financing, Lightyear also starts new functions for artificial intelligence. AI was a hot investment area for startups after the explosive popularity of generative AI services such as the Chatgpt from Openaai.
One of the functions called “Why did it move” enables users to select a time in a share card and see what happened that day to cause a jump or fall into the stock price of a company. The company also uses AI to provide “Bulle” and “Bär” theses for shares as well as short updates of assets in their own portfolios.
“Ultimately, you will have two models” when it comes to investments, says Sokk: “Self -driving money”, where you ask a AI to achieve certain investment goals, and a “manual transmission” approach to find out different strategies and approaches yourself.
Nevertheless, the market for online plant products is very competitive. Lightyear is confronted with a high competition both through the reigning brokerage services and more modern Tech players such as Robinhood, Revolut and Trade Republic.
However, SOKK insists that Lightyear builds a differentiated product to stand out from the crowd. While competitors like Robinhood benefit from offering risky products such as Crypto and Margin Trading, Lightyear focuses on operating long -term investors, he told CNBC.
For this purpose, Lightyear plans to expand its own crypto product in two months-one that “focuses more on a long-term perspective”.