Funding

This piece is part of the Slush Chronicles series, “Founders Unplugged,” where we interview founders and key personnel of innovative companies, to hear their thoughts on the event we’re attending or dive into other spontaneously chosen topics. Slush 2025 founder: Jukka Tuhkanen, HIIL I ran into Jukka Tuhkanen, Director of Sales and Partnerships from Hiil, a wood “startup” transforming waste …

Slush100, the annual race for the 1 Million and all the glory, is on again at Slush2024 The Slush 100 competition offers a €1 million equity investment for its winner, backed by Cherry Ventures and General Catalyst. Open to early-stage startups founded in 2021 or later, with less than €2M raised, it emphasizes Europe and North America. The top 20 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

  The most coveted pitching competition is the iconic Slush 100. The winner will get an equity investment from the leading early-stage funds in Europe: Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, and Northzone. These iconic funds have backed historic companies like Meta, Stripe, Airbnb, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Salesforce, Instacart, and Klarna. The race is on and the original amount …

The eternal flame was ignited in 2008 in Helsinki with a one-day affair made up of around 250 people. Since that the event has grown by leaps and bounds, our goal has stayed the same: the focus is on how best to serve startup ecosystems across the world. As the founders and present employees of Slush organization want to inspire …

Last week I had a pleasure to join the 2nd ever NORDEEP 2023 Summit, to see and hear what’s happening in Deep Tech scene within the Nordics. The opening keynote insights were given by Risto Siilasmaa, and that paved the way for this 2 days conference for a good crowd of attendees mainly from Finalnd and other Nordic countries. Risto …

The world’s leading startup conference Slush has decided to revoke the prize funding valued of 1M€ for Immigram, the Slush100 pitching competition winner after its alleged connections to Russia and Russian experts who want to exit their homeland. The company has also a presence in Russia. Immigram and its founders Anastasia Miroljubova and Mikhail Sharonov have created a platform, which …

The world’s largest start-up festival, Slush will take place in Helsinki on November 16-17, but Slush isn’t just the official single event. Slush Week, running from Nov 14-18, is loaded with a good variety of Side Events. Plus, and even no Slush Pass will be needed to access many of these events. Side Events are the perfect way to get …

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 …

The Norwegian medical startup projects HoloCare and Illumie were present at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Robert Stigliano After a cancellation in 2020, and an online-only version in 2021, South by Southwest was back this year to it’s full, pre-pandemic glory, showcasing the trends and technologies influencing our collective future. One of this year’s themes was imagining society in …

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 …

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 …