The Nordic

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 term “Crowddroning” means to unleash thousands of drones and their operators to provide ultra high resolution Earth observation data from every corner of the earth. This way, the collected data supplements the underused information the numerous satellites have to offer. The data itself is ready-to-analyze high-resolution data, straight to any server so the clients of GLOBHE can focus on …

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 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 Nordic countries have adopted a vision to become the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030.   Bolstered by the ambitious climate goals set by the region’s governments,  startups have been tackling all manner of the green transition from smart farming to recycling, and are now leaders in sustainable technologies. At Oslo Innovation Week’s Climate Demo Day at …

It is often argued that the Nordic Model offers an environment where value-driven innovation can flourish, meaning innovation that improves society by creating value for all stakeholders in an ethical and responsible way.  Anchored in a liberal market and a strong societal structure,  the Nordic Model is reputed for creating more ethical companies that seek to improve society for the …

Oslo-based SNÖ Ventures has launched its second fund to  invest in visionary Nordic entrepreneurs and connect the Nordics  with the US and broader Europe. The new fund targets $100M to invest  in early stage, high-growth Nordic tech companies with the potential to disrupt,  create or capture large markets through transformative technology or  solutions.  By Kremena Tosheva  SNÖ Ventures is led …

The Copenhagen-based Nordic accelerator Urbantech Program, hosted by BloxHub, has announced the 10 most promising and innovative sustainable technology startups for their 2021 batch. This announcement comes after a global search for urbantech startups. According to the UN, up to 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050. This creates major challenges and calls …

According to reports from, European Capital,  Danske Bank and i5invest, European VC and PE funds have been substantially gaining ground despite Covid-19, and a substantial margin in the Nordics are focusing on investments in energy and sustainability. Norway, Denmark, and Lithuania have a particularly strong focus on investments in these areas in 2021 compared to the rest of Europe, and …

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 …

Home to the first Bitcoin lottery and other blockchain-powered online games, the Northern European region is no stranger to the iGaming industry. In recent years, the Nordic countries have become some of the most successful in the entire European gaming industry. So, let’s take a closer look at the Nordic iGaming market today and how it might fare in the coming …

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 …

Statistics show we have collectively stigmatized randomly phoning someone up and as a result, over the past decade, the number of texts sent monthly have increased with 7,700% and US smartphones users allegedly receive and respond to 5x more texts than phone calls. We have built handheld walls against direct interactions at the same time as social platforms have moved …

All male founding teams still get 92.9% of external capital in the Nordics, to build and expand their startups. However, a new report from Unconventional Ventures shows us how a shift towards a more equal distribution of capital can be accelerated.  Unconventional Ventures is a Nordic early-stage investment firm that invest in scaleable tech startups at the pre-seed and seed …

#HacktheCrisis was a hackathon initiated by Garage48 in Estonia in March 2019, where teams built solutions for the Covid-19 crisis over a long weekend.  The event went global, with hacks held in over 68 countries.  In some cases, the hacks were record breaking – in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the #HacktheCrisis became the biggest hack ever recorded.  A record-breaking global …

Countries all over the globe incline to hiring developers for startups as their business model as it is a modern, proactive, and effective solution in the business world. With remote employees that work for your project from around the world, you get maximum efficiency and cut costs considerably. But can this scenario be applied to startups in the Nordic countries? …