Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Investments, Technology

Margus Uudam, the Head of Investments of an investment company Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), that was set up by the four developers, said that while ASI has made about a half of its investments in Estonia, it had no projects in Sweden.

Uudam noted that the company had invested about 160 million kroons in various business projects.

"The objective is to grow it to 400 million kroons in a few years," said Uudam.

In Scandinavia, ASI has so far invested only in Finnish company Senseg that develops new technology for touch screens.

According to Uudam, when ASI finds a possible investment object, it would attempt to enter the company at a early phase by invested between five million to 20 million kroons: "While generally between 50 to 60% of such investments fail, but we aim to change that."

Last year ASI invested 30 million kroons in various projects, noted Uudam.

ASI belongs to Jaan Tallinn, Toivo Annus, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu who earned over 1.5 billion kroons four years ago by selling Skype to eBay.

Among others, ASI invested last week in such Estonian upstarts as E-Geen, DailyPerfect, Programeter, but also in Lognex (Russia), Versita (Poland), Drimki (France, Wahanda (UK), AirDio (Taiwan) and Mendeley (UK).

ASI ended last year with a loss of 253 million kroons. Its investment portfolio amounted to 1.2 billion kroons at the end of the last year.

Two-thirds of the loss came from fall in share prices, which was mostly the eBay stock received as part of the Skype sale.