In early June, the American trading platform Robinhood Markets received all necessary permits to complete the acquisition of the cryptocurrency exchange Bistamp. This makes the exchange, founded 14 years ago by Slovenians Damian Merlak and Nejc Kodrič, one of four Slovenian companies whose owners are listed on the world's second largest stock exchange Nasdaq. In addition to Robinhood, these are Bragg, Teads (acquired by Outbrain) and Sportradar. What all four have in common is that the Slovenian departments play an important development role in the group.

They develop online games for the Canadian group

The largest team among them falls under the umbrella of the Canadian group Bragg Gaming, which develops technological solutions and content for online gambling. They deal with services for online casinos, bookmakers and lotteries in more than 30 countries. Bragg gained Slovenian knowledge by acquiring the company Oryx in 2018, and since then the company has been expanding rapidly. It was founded by Matevž Mazij, who is now the CEO of the Bragg group and a member of its board of directors.

The Slovenian part, which consists of three companies, in addition to Oryx, Oryx support and Oryx marketing, is led by Simon Dudnjik. At the end of last year, it had 356 people, this year the number of employees has risen to 371. As Dudnjik told Forbes Slovenia, the Slovenian team is responsible for product development, support for corporate functions and support for their customers.

“Slovenia is a strategic location for our group, in which they intend to invest in the future, and we will employ various profiles,” explains Dudnjik. They will be looking for product and development experts, especially software developers and data experts in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as various profiles for corporate functions, from lawyers, financiers to salespeople.

This year, they also set up a separate team for artificial intelligence, as Dudnjik estimates that the human resource pool in this field in Slovenia is good. According to Gvin, the average salary of all three companies in 2023 was around 3,600 euros gross.

All three Slovenian companies together had around 28 million euros in net sales revenue last year, according to Dudnjik, most of which is sold to the parent company.

The entire group had 102 million euros in revenue in the last financial year, which is just under a tenth more than in 2023. The net loss was 5.1 million euros. Share prices are currently hovering around four dollars, having gained a quarter of their value this year.

The central engineering center of the Swiss multinational
The Sportradar team, which is part of the Swiss multinational specializing in sports data analysis and digital services for sports organizations, media, bookmakers and casinos, also has more than 300 employees. The Slovenian team, led by Luka Ferlan, plays a central role in the development of their key products and technologies in the group with more than 3,900 employees. The Ljubljana office is their largest engineering center and one of the key strategic locations out of a total of 29 offices in 20 countries around the world.

“Our team in Slovenia uses top-notch knowledge to develop technological solutions that not only drive the sports industry, but also actively contribute to the integrity of sports with advanced systems for detecting and preventing fraud,” they say in Sportradar. The Swiss multinational has been connected to Slovenia since 2012, when they took over the then company Klika, which developed software. Before that, they collaborated with them on projects and solved some problems for them. The Swiss were satisfied and later bought the Slovenian company, which at the time had 40 employees.

The Slovenian part of Sportradar develops complex backend systems, mobile applications with real-time sports data processing for bookmakers and media around the world.

“Our artificial intelligence department, consisting of almost 50 engineers and continuing to grow, is focused on developing advanced algorithms and analytical tools that process huge amounts of sports data in real time,” they add in one of the leading technology companies in the world of sports. Their products, solutions and tools support the company's key business segments, they add.

The largest part of the team are profiles from the fields of software engineering, data science, artificial intelligence development and quality assurance and information security.

Similar to the case of Bragg, the Slovenian part of Sportradar generates almost all of its revenue within the group and not on the market itself. The group had record revenues of 311 million euros in the first quarter, which is 17% annual growth. They ended last financial year with 1.1 billion euros in revenue and 34 million euros in profit. Their stock is currently trading around $28, having grown by almost two-thirds this year.

The average salary in the Swiss multinational's Slovenian team in 2023 was €4,588 gross, according to Gvin data. There is no data on operations for last year yet, but in 2023 they had €25.3 million in net sales revenue.

Knowledge from Slovenia makes a billion predictions per second
An important role in the Nasdaq member is played by the Outbrain team (or after the Teads merger), which took over the Slovenian start-up Zemanta in 2017. It is a global content recommendation platform that also bought the omnichannel video platform Teads for a billion dollars last August. The two companies combined 20,000 direct advertisers with 10,000 premium media environments, covering more than 50 markets and reaching more than two billion monthly users, they wrote at the time of last year's acquisition.

In February, the company's name was changed to Teads, and since June this year, it has also been listed on the Nasdaq technology exchange under this name, while the Slovenian part still needs to be renamed to be unified at the group level.

We have an engineering and innovation department for new product development and a team for technical operations and support for global business functions, explains director Andraž Tori, who is the group's senior vice president and chief scientist, to Forbes Slovenia.

"Some of Teads' key advertising products that are performed on a global level are being developed in the Slovenian part. These contain some of the most demanding technological approaches. We develop systems that make a billion artificial intelligence-supported predictions every second," he explains. The Ljubljana team has 120 employees - software engineers, data scientists, product managers and designers.

The average salary in 2023 was 4,163 euros gross, and the share price on Nasdaq is around 2.6 dollars and has lost 62 percent of its value this year. In the first quarter of this year, they had 286.4 million euros in revenue and a loss of 54.8 million dollars. The Slovenian part of the company publishes its business data for the previous year in September, so only data for 2023 is available. At that time, they had nine million euros in net sales revenue.

Bitstamp also officially under new ownership
Bitstamp has not yet published its financial data for last year. They ended 2023 with 14.4 million euros in net sales revenue and had 152 employees. Their new owner, Robinhood, did not answer our questions about the role of the Slovenian part of the team. According to data from Gvin, employees earned an average of 6,800 euros gross per month in 2023. According to data from Ajpes, Bitstamp is run by Bernice Emma Smith and Miha Vidmar.

When Robinhood acquired the cryptocurrency exchange last year, the purchase price was estimated at around 200 million euros, they wrote that they would gain clients in the EU, Great Britain, the US and Asia, and they are particularly looking forward to acquiring institutional clients.

“The acquisition of Bitstamp is an important step in the growth of our crypto business. Bitstamp is a trusted and long-standing global exchange that has demonstrated resilience to various market cycles. By seamlessly combining user experience with security across different geographies, the Bitstamp team has built one of the strongest reputations among retail and institutional investors in the crypto industry,” said Robinhood Crypto CEO Johann Kerbrat in early June, when the acquisition was approved.

Robinhood shares have gained 153 percent this year and are currently trading at around $94.4.