Lithuanian AI startup Sintra today announced $17 million Seed funding to double down on its mission of empowering small businesses with simple-to-use AI helpers.
Founded just over a year ago, Sintra has grown from a weekend project to a $12 million ARR business serving over 40,000 paying customers globally.
The company’s platform offers small business owners AI-powered helpers capable of handling core tasks like social media, customer support, and administrative work by integrating directly with tools such as Facebook, Gmail, and Google Calendar.
I spoke to CEO Chris Sidlauskas to learn more.
A founder story unlike any other
The team’s story began in 2018 in a garage in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Chris Sidlauskas (16) and Rokas Judickas (15) ran a marketing agency for local small businesses.
With no prior experience, they helped entrepreneurs build websites and run social media, learning sales, design, and business through hands-on work. The garage became a hub for young talent, many of whom later became professionals in tech and marketing.
After a few years, Sidlauskas built a successful e-commerce growth agency, scaling US brands and generating over $100 million in revenue for clients. But by 21, he left it all, sold his shares, bought a yellow van, and went searching for meaning across Europe.
The first idea for what would later become Sintra came during that trip — in a small pit-stop apartment in early 2023 — after noticing the rising demand for ChatGPT prompts.
Sidlauskas and a friend launched a Notion-based product over the weekend. It went viral. Sales poured in. Sintra was born.
Coping with intense customer demand, the original team regrouped to double down on the value proposition for SMBs and rebuild the product from scratch. They tested out Sintra Helpers — a set of 12 simple AI teammates — and the idea immediately resonated. Rokas returned to lead product design. Vasaris Kaveckas, a self-taught engineer who began coding games at 15, joined to lead development.
After months of work and one final sprint, Sintra 2.0 launched publicly on May 15th, 2024.
Sidlauskas shared:
“We were running out of money and ideas. Traditional tools just weren’t exciting — business owners didn’t want another generic app.
Then we had this “stupid idea”: what if we started with character first, not tooling? We built these cute, specialised AI helpers with personality.
We didn’t expect much, but people loved chatting with them more than using typical SaaS tools.”
The team combined its vector database “Brainy AI” layer, which holds business context—and launched the platform.
“We had about one month of runway left. The launch exploded. People loved it.
We planned to test 12 agents, expecting users to niche down. But 90 per cent opted in for all of them. That shifted our focus to building an integrated “office out of the box” for SMBs.”
It turned into a viral launch. Within 57 days, the product hit a whooping $1 million in ARR — and hasn’t slowed since.
Real intuitive help, not just another software product
Sintra’s customers are mostly US-based small business owners, especially in the service industry.
They are often solo operators or teams of two or three.
Sidlauskas notes that while many AI startups market themselves as replacements for staff, “we don’t want to replace people—we want to serve those who can’t afford to hire real staff in the first place.”
“What small business owners need isn’t just another software product—they need assistants that provide real help – and that feel natural and intuitive.
We’re building AI teammates that help people turn their work into play.”
Small businesses traditionally lack the tools to scale successfully
Small businesses account for 44 per cent of global GDP, yet more than 45 million still operate without adequate digital infrastructure.
Most rely on spreadsheets, legacy software, or consumer apps ill-suited for business needs. Sintra aims to change that by offering an “AI business in the box”—a platform where small business owners can onboard a team of AI helpers in minutes, not months.
Each helper is powered by Brain AI, a secure and horizontally shared intelligence layer that learns a business’s unique context over time, enabling increasingly autonomous action. From responding to messages to generating marketing content and helping with operations, Sintra’s Helpers are designed to work like teammates, not just tools.
The company’s most popular use case to date is social media via its agent “Soci”.
Sidlauskas explains that Soci has access to a business’s context, can connect to their social channels, and generate and schedule posts.
“She even asks for review and approval when needed. All interactions run through chat, inbox notifications, and our context layer, Brain AI.”
With AI-first products, usage is non-deterministic. People often explore unexpected paths. “That’s why we now focus on three core vectors”:
- Context – knowing what information matters most.
- Agent tooling – giving agents the ability to act on context.
- Simplification – making it dead simple to use.
I was interested in how the company stands out in a crowded space. Sidlauskas contends:
“We want to be close to our customers’ customers.
All their content, websites, social media, and inbound communication lives in Sintra. The more context we have, the better we can serve them. There’s a lot of hype in this space, but we’re focused on building a genuinely useful product.”
Earlybird VC led the round, with participation from Inovo, Practica Capital, and prominent angel investors.
“Sintra is building the most intense AI product team out of Lithuania,” said Andre Retterath, General Partner at Earlybird.
“They’re tapping into a massive underserved market with relentless product execution and a clear vision.”
Global impact can start from a garage in Lithuania
Sintra is proudly built in Lithuania—a country of under 3 million people with one of the oldest living languages in the world and a history shaped by resilience. From a past marked by occupation and exile, Lithuanians inherited not capital, but grit.
For the Sintra team, this mission is personal. It's about showing that global impact can start from a garage in Vilnius. It’s about building something lasting, not just for today, but for future generations.
Sidlauskas asserts that this round isn’t just about funding.
“It’s about showing that we can build globally relevant products out of Lithuania. We thought about relocating to San Francisco, but there’s so much talent and ambition here in Europe. We need to think bigger and take more risks.”
“When we first saw Sintra – 2 months after commercial launch, we thought it was just another AI agent with traction off the charts. It was interesting to spend a day with the team in Vilnius. During this day we knew we wanted to invest – the vibe and intensity of Silicon Valley in a modest apartment in Vilnius felt magical.” said Michal Rokosz, Partner at Inovo.
Sintra is currently available via iOS and web, with pricing starting at $39/month.The company will be using the capital raised to expand the product and engineering teams.
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