Finland

Few years ago the tagline (and the hashtag) for #Arctic15 was #FindTheOne. Nowadays it has evolved to #ActionMatters, and at this years LIVE comeback, it was really in the center of the activities. Arctic15 happened in the beginning of June in Helsinki, Finland, where the sun was shining, and a decent groups of over 1000 likeminded souls gathered again at …

The revenue of the member companies of the Finnish Startup Community, founded a year ago, has grown by 62 per cent from last year. The combined revenue of the companies was EUR 3.5 billion in 2021. The growth is expected to remain strong in 2022. “The majority of the revenue of our member companies comes from exports, so the importance …

The Arctic15 Helsinki takes place on June, 7-8, 2022. Before the unforeseen pandemic hiatus, the event attracted over 1500+ Startups, VCs, CVCs, Angels, and Investors to get together. For this year, the arranging committee has some realistic numbers drafted: “We aim for 300+ investors, 450+ startups, 150+ corporates, a maximum of 2000 attendees and again – the name of the …

Although R&D investments in Finland will continue to grow, some brutal challenges are looming in the future. R&D investments in Finland will continue to grow, driven by public funding. Finnish companies will continue to increase their product development investments in Finland also in 2022. Growth will be accelerated by the green transition, the advancement of digitalisation and the growth of …

Silo AI, one of Europe’s largest private AI laboratories, published a comprehensive market review of the use of artificial intelligence in Nordic countries. The Nordic State of AI report, which will be published annually with the Finnish Artificial Intelligence Center and other Nordic artificial intelligence organizations, provides a comprehensive overview of the Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish artificial intelligence markets …

Climate change is already strongly changing our environment and the global  food security is beginning to halter. Finnish startup Kuva Space aims to help farmers in precision farming as well as bio asset owners, businesses  and governments get better insight for making effective decisions towards  sustainable farming, carbon binding and reduction of climate effects. Kuva Space is an early-stage spacetech …

Photodetector company Elfys raises €3M  to ramp up the production for the growing  wearable market that are more energy efficient. The round is lead by deeptech investor Voima Ventures, whose portfolio includes the successful Oura Ring. Photodetectors are sensors of light most commonly used in devices such as  smartwatches or any other worn devices. Now with an increasing number of …

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 …