Lithuania as a gateway to the EU for AI companies: building an evidence-based investor offer

Problem

Context

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) sets one rulebook for artificial intelligence (AI) across all 27 Member States. It applies to any company that places an AI system on the EU market, wherever it is based.

The rules are still taking shape. The Digital Omnibus on AI moved the main high-risk obligations to December 2027 and August 2028. It also gave every Member State until August 2027 to set up an AI regulatory sandbox. With the same rules and tools everywhere, countries compete on how easy they make it for AI companies to enter and grow.

At the same time, the investment landscape is changing fast. AI companies are growing and scaling at a pace few other sectors have seen, and many of the most dynamic ones are based outside the EU. The EU has so far found it hard to attract them from third countries, and no Member State has yet established itself as the obvious entry point. That position, the gateway through which AI companies come into the EU, is still open, and Lithuania has the opportunity to claim it.

Several countries are already moving. Spain opened its AI sandbox in 2025: 12 high-risk AI systems from six sectors went through it, and its supervisory agency AESIA has turned the results into 16 practical compliance guides. Finland and Estonia have agreed to develop their sandboxes together.

Challenge

The global market for AI companies is growing rapidly, but AI investment into Lithuania is still small. Lithuania wants to change that. Its national AI strategy sets the goal of becoming a “gateway to Europe” for AI, and the ambition is to build a foreign direct investment (FDI) value proposition so strong that Lithuania becomes the first EU country that comes to mind for the leaders of expanding AI companies.

The base is there: in 2025, IT development projects accounted for 28% of the jobs planned by foreign investors attracted by Invest Lithuania. The country has also moved early: its AI Act authorities were designated in January 2025, the Innovation Agency Lithuania runs an AI regulatory sandbox (Ministry of the Economy and Innovation) and LitAI, a €130 million AI Factory, is being set up.

The key questions remain open: what can a company use in Lithuania today, what comes later, and why choose Lithuania over another EU country?

Goal

The goal of the project is to build an evidence-based offer for foreign AI companies and recommend what must change for Lithuania to become their gateway to the EU.

Participants

2026/27

Kristina Černiauskaitė

2026/27

Egidijus Kurapka