Another warm beginning of the warm Finnish summer – and another warm welcome to the old Cable Factory for the annual Arctic15 startup-investor conference. This story is the annual “vibes collection” from the Arctic15 floor, backstage, DealRoom meetings, official afterparties, unofficial gatherings and most importantly about HI, maybe with some added AI. (Got carried away with the HI, so wrote …

In the era of AI, Hunome talks mostly about HI   So, at Arctic15 we met many AI companies, and then we met Hunome, more into Human Intelligence, HI, and especially for Collective Sensemaking.  With that, and a bit wider purpose statement of “helping humanity make sense of itself”, I had a pleasure to talk to Dominique  & Mika  from …

Oulu, Finland — The Arctic startup event, Polar Bear Pitching, marked its live return after a hiatus of four years. A sizable crowd gathered at Oulu Market Square, while online viewers from around the globe tuned in to witness ten selected startups take the plunge into the Avanto (Finnish for ice hole), each aiming to impress the panel of judges …

Helsinki — In a stride towards revolutionizing the European hospitality sector, Finnish tech-enabled hospitality operator Bob W has announced its Series B funding of EUR 40 million. This round, led by Evli Growth Partners and joined by growth capital investors and prominent European entrepreneurs, including Taavet+Sten, the investment firm of Wise’s founder Taavet Hinrikus and Sten Tamkivi, Flashpoint, and Supercell’s …

Stockholm — A Swedish deep technology company N-ink is announced as the winner of a science challenge by Voima Ventures, an early-stage investor based in Helsinki and Stockholm. The challenge targeted Nordic and Baltic early-stage startups and research teams with groundbreaking science-based innovations. By winning the challenge, N-ink secures a €1M investment as a convertible note from Voima Ventures. Out …

At a sizable booth, Samar Malik was promoting SAP for startups, emphasizing the company’s wealth of knowledge and expertise. It marked her inaugural attendance at Slush, where she commended the event and its arrangements. However, the genuine slush and sleet outdoors left the London resident a bit hesitant. Sami Vuorenmaa recently established his consultancy, Clarinum Insights, which focuses on helping …

Slush mainstage acted as a platform for company launches and product announcements, and the Media Area right behind the stage had instant Q&A session with the launchers and announcers. What a great concept, hoping this would cover even more of the speakers. One of the launches was Starstuff, that came out of the stealth mode with bells, whistles, Hanna and …

Silo.ai, the Finnish AI Lab, which is Europe’s largest private AI Lab, made some remarkable launches today at Slush 2023 In short, this is concerning a new platform training LLM’s, PORO1 and 2, with deployment for European languages, with keeping the data also in Europe. But NSN had a chance to sit down with Founder & CEO Peter Sarlin quickly, …

The iconic Slush 100 winner is Faircado. The startup is turning e-commerce into recommerce — by making second-hand the most obvious and easy choice of every consumer. Our browser plugin uses AI to automatically find the best second-hand alternatives to what users are looking for online. Making them save time, money and CO2 without effort, and for free.Berlin-based Faircado received …

  At the Slush startup event in Helsinki, Nico Rosberg, the 2016 Formula 1 World Champion, revealed what led him to pass by a lucrative contract extension in the pinnacle of motorsport and transition into an investor. – Nice to be back to my roots, said the 38-year-old to the extensive audience. By a fireside chat with Robert Lacher, the …

For the second year the Slush gaming angle was mostly covered by Nordic Game We had a chance to reconnect with Jacob Riis from NordicGame on his returnal to Helsinki and Slush for 2023, as the Nordic Game Helsinki event took place on Slush day -1 and day 0 at Epicenter. In 2022 the Nordic Game Helsinki event premiered during …

Participated into Slush Media Day 2023, and Tech Trend Predictions 2024 panel to kick off the Slush 2023 official program, and one of the speakers Heikki Aura said something we like: “Hype is good, it’s like a great party” Blockchain Web3 Crypto were Heikki’s pick for the 2024 trend, with a lot of exciting things being built around. Games and …

Failup Ventures, a new globally operating early-stage venture capital fund, has announced the first closing of €30 million of its new early-stage fund of €50 million. Founded by three previous Finnish entrepreneurs – Jesse Heikkilä, Topias Soininen, and Oscar Andersin – Failup Ventures backs early-stage startups with strong, mission-driven teams. Failup’s typical initial investments range from €200k to €1 million …

Slush is on the ground (even if it’s still snow, and frozen right now). Remembering back to the Slush earlydays, there was this saying: “It’s cold and dark outside, and the coolest developers are inside”. Back then the inside meant Kaapelitehdas aka Cable Factory, and a selected venue for after party. These days Slush is on for a week, and …