We assisted global venture capital firms Eight Roads Ventures, Storm Ventures and Notion Capital in the largest Series A round in Lithuania and one of the largest in the Baltics to date. Eight Roads Ventures and Storm Ventures co-led a USD 30 million investment in Interactio, the leading remote interpretation platform based in Lithuania.
Funding from high-profile venture capital firms and renowned angels
Eight Roads Ventures (who have Alibaba, AppsFlyer and Neo4 among their portfolio companies) and Silicon Valley-based Storm Ventures (investors in Pipedrive and Talkdesk) invested in Interactio, along with Notion Capital, Practica Capital and Change Ventures; and renowned angels such as Jaan Tallinn, one of the co-founders of Skype, and Young Sohn, ex-chief strategy officer of Samsung.
This funding will support the exponential growth Interactio has achieved during the pandemic, which has accelerated the demand for remote interpretation platforms.
Interactio grew twelvefold between 2019 and 2020
Interactio works with the world’s largest institutions (including the European Parliament, the European Commission and the United Nations) and corporations (including BMW, JP Morgan and Microsoft) to provide real-time multilingual interpretation services for remote or hybrid meetings. The platforms allow to host participants and interpreters who can either be in the room or joining remotely. With Covid-19 acting as an additional catalyst, Interactio grew twelvefold between 2019 and 2020, while being profitable. In 2020 alone, the company hosted over 18,000 meetings with 390,000 listeners in more than 70 countries.
“Interactio is a disruptor in a multi-billion dollar market, dominated by services-based incumbents that has remained undisrupted for the last decades. With its innovative product, this team is revolutionising how language interpretation is being used by global businesses and institutions. We have known Henrikas Urbonas and his team for many years and have been impressed by what they have achieved so far. We are excited to support the team in building this new category of remote interpretation platforms,” explains Lucile Cornet, Partner at Eight Roads.
Our services and the project team
We assisted the clients with Lithuanian law matters related to this investment, including legal due diligence, drafting and negotiating agreements, and other matters. Withers acted as international legal counsel on this project.
Our team, led by partner Laimonas Skibarka and counsel Jonas Kiauleikis, consisted of counsel Stasys Drazdauskas, senior associates Almina Ivanauskaitė, Aurelija Daubaraitė and Irma Kirklytė; and associates Jurgita Tekorienė, Lukas Vaišvila and Sidas Sokolovas; as well as legal assistant Barbora Bernatonytė.
“This record venture capital investment confirms that the Lithuanian startup ecosystem is increasingly gaining more confidence from international investors,” comments Laimonas Skibarka.
Largest Series A rounds in Lithuania
Source: crunchbase.com and other publicly available information
