Finland

The industry award winning Nordic Mushrooms product line by KÄÄPÄ Biotech, a Finnish biotechnology startup, has caught the attention of major global nutritional supplement manufacturers. The demand on the wholesale product line has increased rapidly and therefore KÄÄPÄ Biotech is now entering into the Series A investment stage to scale up the production capacity to match the high international demand …

A Helsinki based startup, Crowd For Impact, has launched a crowdfunding platform for impact startups solving global issues. It offers both individuals and companies a chance to support impact projects, and receive responsibly produced goods and services in return. Crowd For Impact is a reward based crowdfunding platform that combines crowdfunding, corporate sustainability and startup funding into a unique tool …

All female founded StemSight is the first human stem cell startup from Finland to receive funding,  announcing a €500000 seed round from Voima Ventures. Stemsight aims to help over 12 million people suffer from corneal blindness regain their sight.   The all female-founded team, based in Tampere, has announced a new seed round from the DeepTech fund Voima Ventures and Avohoidan …

Pibox is a centralized/all-in-one remote collaboration solution developed for working with creative collaboration. It is used daily by the head of a production, music producers, managers and sound engineers. Now, Pibox has raised € 150,000 in funding from the Pitchdrive fund and several angel investors. Pibox was launched in 2018. The solution first raised interest among music producers, sound technicians …

The Finnish commerce experience scale-up Nosto has aquired Stackla, a visual content marketing platform for user-generated content. The acquisition is Nostos first acquisition and marks their entrance into the Australian and Southeast Asian markets.  By Uday Radia AI-powered personalized shopping Nosto, a Finnish commerce experience scale-up which helps retailers deliver personalized digital shopping experiences, has acquired Stackla, a global visual …

Summer of 2021 is closing in, and as the world is seeing a surge in optimism with the influx of vaccines, Kiuas, the #1 startup accelerator in Finland, brings exciting news about expansion. Kiuas today revolves around the startup accelerator programs, and with the changing world, it makes to evolve the flagship program, Kiuas Accelerator, to the next level as …

Getting through the Nordic winter is trying at the best of times. The previous months have provided few hours of sunshine but an infinite amount of “recommendations” (it is to date not legal for the Swedish government to e.g. enforce a lockdown) formulated in almost as many ways as there are media outlets. The Nordics are the societies in the …

Since launching its report on who funds whom in the Nordics, together with partners like Startup Sweden and NVCA, the team at Unconventional Ventures have been busy. They recently launched the UV Syndicate, giving everyone the opportunity to co-invest in, by UV vetted, startups at pre-seed and seed stages. Today they announce the first digital accelerator targeting underrepresented founders based …

Finnish startup Flowrite, building an AI-powered writing tool on OpenAI’s GPT-3, has closed a pre-seed funding round of €550,000 from Europe’s leading early-stage investors Lifeline Ventures and Seedcamp, joined by angel investors including Unity founder David Helgason. Flowrite is among the first companies globally to launch and raise funding for a product built on top of OpenAI’s language model GPT-3. …

Linear, a company focusing on the digitalization of real estate brokerage, has closed €1.1 million in seed funding.  The company, founded in 2018, offers an AI-driven  digital ecosystem to facilitate the housing trade. They will use the latest funding round on future growth and expansion to new markets. Linear offers realtors a comprehensive SaaS (Software as a Service) automation tool for …

There was a bullish attitude among attendees at this year’s online version of the Arctic15 startup event that investment in Northern European startups was picking up despite a second wave of COVID19 across the region. With one of the main themes of the event being cross-border angel investing, several new angel investment syndicates were established to boost funding opportunities for …

New report on Japanese Investments launched last week at Slush shows that when it comes to Japanese investments going in to the Nordic regions, Finland & Estonia is leading.  The report was made by Innovation Lab Asia, Nordic Ninja VC and Copenhagen Capacity. According to the report, since 2013, 22 of the 36 Japanese investments going into the Nordics has …

A new coalition of European startups, unicorns, think tanks, and trade associations has launched a manifesto for startups and innovation at Slush. This manifesto, arguing for a ‘digital future for Europe’ is a direct response to the European Commission’s plans to regulate European tech.  This comes as the new EU Commission has received final approval from Members of the European …

Finland’s Enfuce secures €10 million from Maki.vc to launch a sustainability service, MyCarbon Action, a service for banks and financial service providers to help customers track their carbon footprint per purchase. Finnish payment service provider Enfuce has today announced its new funding round of €10M, led by the early-stage VC firm Maki.vc and including venture debt from Nordea, LähiTapiola, and …

Today, there are more banking options available than ever before. VertaaEnsin is on a mission to consolidate all financial products in one platform. “Financial products constitute the largest part of our monthly expenses. What is interesting, is that consumers are very familiar with comparing flights and other easy-to-understand products and services. We like making informed decisions regarding our purchases. However, …

This month, the first VC in the Nordics focusing purely on startups with a background in deeptech and science launched.  Headed by serial entrepreneur Inka Mero, Voima Ventures targeting a final closing of €50 million and has already announced commitments at €40 million. The fund’s press release states that their mission is to build a strong bridge between the scientific …

Serial entrepreneur Inka Mero launches Voima Ventures, the first VC fund in the Nordics with a focus purely on startups with deep tech and science background The first VC in the Nordics focusing purely on startups with deep tech and science background was launched officially today. Voima Ventures’ cornerstone investors are VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and European Investment …

The Media Honeypot series of events started in Helsinki in 2016. Now, three years, and several events later, it the go-to event for media startups.  Heikki Rotko, the founder of Media Honeypot, says that Media Honeypot was born out of a desire to connect startups with their business partners to create the media we as customers deserve. The aim of …

Nordic Startup Bits sat down for an interesting talk about the foodtech startup scene at SLUSH in December with Accelerace’s Investment Manager, Business Accelerator and Head of Venture Scouting Martin Holmboe. Accelerace is the Nordics’ leading startup accelerator and pioneering in the corporate – startup matchmaking space. Martin has many years of experience as a food entrepreneur and we were …

The founder of the startup Colive wants to use premium Cypriot olive oil to spark global conversations about peace. He connects family farms on both sides of the UN Buffer Zone to create the first product in what he hopes will be an entire line of culturally significant ingredients and foods to encourage cooperation. That idea secured him the Startups4Peace …