A little known startup from Lithuania just landed $3 million to solve a problem most of us ignore until it is too late. WhiteBridge AI wants to change how we find, verify, and trust the information that shows up about real people on the internet. And some of the sharpest early stage investors in Europe are betting big on its vision.
What WhiteBridge AI Does and Why It Matters
1 WhiteBridge AI develops an AI-powered platform for researching and verifying publicly available information about individuals. Think of it as a search engine, but instead of searching for websites or products, you search for people. 1 The platform aggregates data from social media, news sources, and other online records, organizes it, and provides structured reports that include career history, social media activity, behavioral insights, and publicly reported events.
The problem it tackles is real and growing fast. 3While large amounts of information about people already exist online, it is often fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to verify. As digital content becomes easier to manipulate, determining what is accurate and trustworthy is becoming increasingly challenging.
In a world drowning in deepfakes and manipulated content, knowing who you are really dealing with is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity.
WhiteBridge AI people search engine seed funding round 2026
Inside the $3M Seed Round
6 WhiteBridge AI has raised a €2.6 million ($3 million) seed round. 6 The round was led by FIRSTPICK VC, with participation from First Degree, NGL.VC, Scalewolf.VC, BADideas.fund, Nectolabs, Plug and Play, and several experienced angel investors.
This is not the first time FIRSTPICK backed this team. 2In October 2024, the company raised $500,000, also led by FIRSTPICK, with Scalewolf, First Degree, and Nectolabs participating in that earlier round.
The lead investor itself is riding a wave of confidence in the Baltics. 18FIRSTPICK is launching a new €25 million fund to invest in early-stage Baltic startups, focusing on founders who may be overlooked by traditional VC criteria. 18Drawing on seven years of experience investing in nearly 100 Baltic startups, FIRSTPICK has seen the market consistently underestimate the kind of talent they’re looking for.
FIRSTPICK Managing Partner Dmitrij Sosunov made the reasoning behind this bet crystal clear. 1“What sold us wasn’t just the market. They’re quick, practical, and they ship. In a fast-moving AI space, that’s the advantage,” he explained.
Here is a quick snapshot of the funding:
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Round Type | Seed |
| Amount Raised | $3M (€2.6M) |
| Lead Investor | FIRSTPICK VC |
| Key Participants | First Degree, NGL.VC, Scalewolf.VC, BADideas.fund, Nectolabs, Plug and Play |
| Previous Raise | $500K (October 2024) |
| Headquarters | Vilnius, Lithuania |
The Team Behind the Platform
2 Founded in 2024 by Tomas Martūnas, Irmantas Motiejūnas, Justinas Barauskas, and Paulius Taraškevičius, WhiteBridge started as a digital footprint auditing and reputation monitoring tool, aggregating, verifying, and organising publicly available information about individuals across dozens of online sources.
Co-founder Tomas Martūnas did not hold back about the gap they spotted in the market.
4 “Most people don’t realize how much information about them is already circulating online, and even fewer understand how it can shape their personal and professional opportunities. With WhiteBridge, we’re here to bring clarity and control to that chaos,” he said.
What makes this team stand out is speed. They went from founding to seed round in roughly one year. 13The platform is already trusted by 23,000+ professionals. That kind of early traction is rare, especially for a startup based outside the usual Silicon Valley spotlight.
How Businesses and Individuals Can Use It
6 WhiteBridge launched as a platform for digital footprint audits and reputation monitoring, aggregating and verifying public data from multiple sources. 6 The company has now embarked on a bigger mission: creating a people search and research engine for anyone needing to quickly verify another person’s story with context, not guesswork.
The platform delivers full reports in roughly two minutes. 12By harnessing AI to sift 100+ live data sources in real time, WhiteBridge delivers identity reports in minutes and at a fraction of the cost of traditional checks.
Here are the key use cases:
- Sales and partnership prep: Teams get verified context about prospects before meetings, going beyond basic LinkedIn profiles.
- Vendor and partner validation: Organizations can check potential business partners for red flags and build trust.
- Third-party screening: Quick background context on digitally active adults.
- Personal reputation monitoring: Individuals can see what shows up about them online and respond early.
6 The platform offers behavioral analysis, career analysis, dos and don’ts, search results analysis, data privacy analysis, and reverse face search analysis. 11 WhiteBridge says its AI people search is fully legal and privacy compliant. The company only uses publicly available information and complies with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.
A Booming Market With Massive Potential
WhiteBridge is entering one of the fastest growing tech sectors on the planet.
29 The global identity verification market size was valued at $13.75 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow from $15.84 billion in 2026 to $50.58 billion by 2034. 31 An estimated 42.5% of detected fraud events now leverage generative AI, which forces organizations to deploy multi-layer defences that spot synthetic IDs and deepfake voices in real time.
The urgency is undeniable. 35Over 1.1 million cases of identity theft were reported in the U.S. in 2023 alone, according to the FTC.
The rise of deepfakes and AI-generated content has turned online trust into one of the biggest challenges of our time. 33The identity verification market is projected to rise from $14.1 billion in 2026 to $42.8 billion by 2036, and this robust expansion is driven primarily by the proliferation of generative AI that has made hyper-realistic deepfakes easy to create.
WhiteBridge sits at a unique intersection. Unlike traditional identity verification companies focused on KYC for banks, it tackles the broader and largely untapped space of everyday people research. Think hiring managers, sales teams, investors doing founder due diligence, or even individuals checking a new business partner.
9 The $3 million raised will be strategically deployed to accelerate product development, enhance its AI capabilities, and scale its operational infrastructure. 6 The company plans to expand the number of data providers it connects to and invest in better ways to ensure data provenance, integrity, and explainability, so users can understand not only the outcome, but also the signals behind it.
In a digital age where anyone can fabricate an identity in minutes, WhiteBridge AI is building something the world desperately needs: a way to know the truth about the people we deal with, both online and offline. For the four founders in Vilnius, this $3 million seed round is just the starting gun. The real race to fix trust on the internet has only just begun. We would love to hear your take on this. Do you think AI powered people search tools are the future of online trust, or do they raise privacy concerns that we should worry about? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
