Norway is a country known for its mysticism and natural beauty; and despite the fact that it has a relatively small population, of only around 5.4 Million, it is a country rich with innovation, boasting a number of impressive startups. Norwegian startups benefit from a government that attempts to create a startup-friendly business environment nationwide. Additionally, startups in Norway also benefit from active involvement from a range of local and foreign investors. This allows startups to effectively grow from nothing, into very profitable, tech-led businesses.
To illustrate the point about access to investment and mentorship opportunities, there are more than 178 Venture Capital Funds operating across the country, with a combined portfolio of more than 1500 companies. Additionally, the earliest stage of a startup is arguably its most critical and Norwegian startups can get access to vital help at this stage also, with 20+ early stage accelerators and incubators available to provide their expertise.
The Norwegian government, as previously stated, takes an active role in nurturing the Norwegian startup ecosystem. One such example is the government program Innovation Norway. This program provides enterprising young Norwegian startups to improve their professional networks, allowing them to get access to capital and supporting them with recruiting new talent. This supportive approach helps to make Norwegian startups more profitable and competitive.
1. Calluna Pharma
Year Founded: 2024
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Farzad Abdi-Dezfuli, Jonas Hallén
Calluna Pharma is a Pharmaceutical startup in Norway that was founded very recently in 2024 and maintains its headquarters in Oslo. If you struggle with chronic fibrosis and inflammation, Calluna Pharma is attempting to create treatments designed for you. Achieved by safely leveraging selective antibodies which can be used to defend against a range of afflictions, improving outcomes for you as a patient and allowing you to continue freely living your life.
Medical research is expensive and supporting capital is almost always needed. Calluna Pharma completed a Series A funding round in January 2024, which allowed it to secure 75 Million Euros to continue its research and provide more life-changing treatments.
2. OTee
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 1-10
Founders: Henrik Pedersen, Radek Janik
OTee is a Norwegian startup that provides a platform to support you with your industrial automation. Founded in 2022, it has grown steadily and currently provides a platform to create a virtual control system for your industrial machinery and processes. Any coding edits and requirements can be automated and monitored in real-time to identify the effectiveness of any of these changes. This allows you to save a significant amount of money and man hours.
Software development is a continuous and expensive process; as a result, in the early-stages, it is common to seek funding to accelerate product development before having a large customer base. This is the case for OTee, which raised 1.25 Million Euros to further its product roadmap and provide a more attractive solution to customers.
3. PortalOne
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Bård Anders, Stig Olav Kasin
PortalOne is a Gaming startup in Norway that was initially founded in 2018 and has seen good growth in that time. It aims to provide you with a new entertainment experience, combining the fun and functionality of gaming, with the added experience of having a gaming-related show playing inside, giving you a new level of immersion whilst you kick back and enjoy the fun.
PortalOne has experienced significant growth; and developing a hybrid platform is a capital-intensive exercise. As a result it should come as no surprise that it most recently raised $60 Million in a Series A round in 2022 to continue building the platform and create a better experience for its users, which requires new internal hiring and large-scale purchasing.
4. Two
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Andreas MjeldeI
Two is a Norwegian startup specialising in the FinTech market. It has grown rapidly since 2022 and has created a frictionless solution for you as a B2B e-commerce provider. Two allows you to easily and simply embed payment gateways into your checkouts, with compliance and security at the heart of this. Additionally, you can also build Business BNPL into your workflows, giving your customers another way to pay and increasing your revenue potential.
Investors have clearly been impressed with Two's strong financials and business model. In March 2023, a round led by Shine Capital and Antler allowed Two to raise 18 Million Euros. This funding has been used to acquire new talent and facilitate an acceleration in growth for Two.
5. Vespa.ai
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Trondheim, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Jon Bratseth
Vespa.ai is one of Norway's most exciting startups outside of Oslo, headquartered in Trondheim. It provides you with an AI-powered search engine that supports you with applying and creating your own AI-based applications. This is achieved through allowing the storage of endless quantities of data, with lightning fast capability to search through that data and then apply it within your AI program.
Anything related to Artificial Intelligence is an attractive potential investment opportunity and requires significant funding. Vespa.ai has proven itself adept at securing this, with a $31 Million Series A raise in November 2023 highlighting that investors believe that Vespa is creating a tool that provides immense value to its Fortune 500 clients.
6. Plaace
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Snorre Jordheim Myhre, Tobias Martinsen
Plaace is a data analytics startup in Norway that has been building an essential system for physical businesses. With its platform, you're able to identify key indicators that can be essential to your property decision-making in your business, such as footfall and demographic indicators of visitors to an area, augmented with key information about the demographic makeup of the area itself. This allows you to optimise your locations for your community, whether you're a shopping mall, retail store or something else.
Plaace has done exceedingly well to build its platform and achieve its current levels of growth; however, it has sought strategic mentorship and 885,000 Euros in funding to accelerate growth in the Nordics. This funding round was secured in January 2024, with RunwayFBU as the primary investor.
7. Dune Analytics
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Alexander Svanevik, Lars Bakke Krogvig
Dune Analytics is one of Norway's most exciting crypto-related startups, having been founded in 2018, near the start of the crypto boom. It allows you to generate analytical reports, easily share them with your team in a visual manner and query the information contained within. This allows you to track more than 750,000 insights and community dashboards ranging from cryptocurrencies, to DeFi and NFTs. This can be deployed across more than fifteen blockchains.
Dune Analytics has required a large amount of funding to sustain its growth trajectory and hire the talent it needs to succeed. This has culminated in three startup funding rounds, where collectively it managed to raise a total of $79.4 Million. The largest volume of this was raised in February 2022, when Dune achieved investment worth $69.4 Million.
8. Aigonix
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Arif Shafique
Aigonix is a Norwegian startup that has experienced rapid growth, having only been founded last year. ERP can be a nightmare, especially with slow and clunky systems. Aigonix has created a solution to this problem, by allowing you to leverage a range of ERP data in real-time. The benefit for this is that you can then build out your business-facing applications with this solution, allowing for an improved and unified experience across your entire business, without needing to code.
Despite Aigonix increasing its headcount rapidly since 2023, it has not yet sought any external startup funding. If its management team wants to facilitate aggressive growth or international expansion, then it is almost a certainty that startup funding would be required to bring this to fruition.
9. Morrow Batteries
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 101-250
Founders: Jon Fold von Bülow, Pal Brun, Terje Andersen
Morrow Batteries is one of Norway's most exciting and well-funded new startups. It innovates and manufactures new lithium-ion battery technology to speed up the transition to green energy making them more energy efficient and therefore sustainable. This allows you to get much more value for money on the batteries you buy, as well as giving you the satisfaction of knowing you're helping the planet.
As stated Morrow Batteries has been incredibly-well funded since 2020. This is due to the fact that green investments are incredibly attractive and Morrow Batteries has the capability to rapidly speed up green-power adoption. These factors have allowed it to raise a total of $185 Million in funding, from three separate rounds. Siemens was also a leading investor for Morrow Batteries.
10. CHOOOSE
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Andreas Slettvoll, Martine Kveim
CHOOOSE is another example of Norway's strength in CleanTech startups. Its platform allows you to use a range of integrated tools across the entirety of your business to inform your customers about their habits and emissions, whilst also getting access to a range of carbon offsetting services to support your Net-Zero ambitions. Finally, if you need to report for compliance or ongoing business purposes, you can generate actionable reports with key insights easily.
CHOOOSE has managed to convince its investors that its platform has the capability to reduce business carbon emissions and help them to educate their customers about their impact on the environment. This conviction is reflected in the fact that during January 2023, CHOOOSE managed to raise $15 Million in investment to support expansion into different countries.
11. Wattif EV
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Bergen, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Kåre Nystad, Morten Rørvik
Wattif EV has been on a mission in Norway to drive the adoption of EV vehicles and help the country to meet its Net-Zero targets. As a car park owner, you have an incentive to include EV charging points within your car park, as you open up a rapidly expanding market for yourself. Additionally, Wattif EV can support office, housing developments and much more for you. You also get a range of funding options to ensure that you can make the most of the opportunity.
Wattif has been classed as a "Soonicorn", highlighting its rapid growth and huge confidence from investors. This confidence has manifested in Wattif managing to secure a Series C Funding Round in January 2023. This round allowed it to secure $54.2 Million, much needed funding to facilitate its expansion and plan to acquire a large volume of new customers.
12. Kosli
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Mike Long, James Logan
Kosli is a Norwegian startup that was founded in 2022 and currently makes itself at home in Oslo. It provides you with a solution that allows you to track and securely store the state of all of your internal software. This then allows you to be identified of any unauthorised changes to your software solutions, making compliance much easier by providing you with an early warning system. The best part is you can integrate it with all of the business tools you could possibly need, getting started in only a few minutes.
Creating a tool with so many integrations and ensuring that it can keep up with the demands of these integrations and provide real-time information requires a lot of technical expertise and investment. As a result of this, Kosli immediately sought funding shortly after being founded. Achieved in November 2022, this investment totalled $3.1 Million to support product development and initial market penetration.
13. Tings
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 1-10
Founders: Johan Jøsok, Sondre Selbæk.
Tings is an incredibly unique Norwegian startup. Founded in 2022, it has created an app where people can go onto it and sell things that they don't want anymore to someone else on the app that wants to buy them. Additionally, if you have an item that you love but would otherwise throw away, you can get tips on how to fix it yourself, find the materials you need and if that fails, you can find professionals who can do the job for you, ensuring that your item doesn't need to go to waste.
Tings is a very ambitious startup with a sustainability driven business model and this makes it very attractive to investors. This has been evidenced by the fact that it has managed to secure a funding round led by Spintop Ventures and supported by other investors. During this Seed Round, it managed to raise 15 Million NOK.
14. Ignite
Year Founded: 2017
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Sigbjørn Nome, Børge Langedal
Ignite is simplifying the entire supply chain process. Supply chain maintenance can be incredibly taxing, on both manpower and resources. Despite this, you still have obligations to ensure that your supply chain is compliant with the latest regulations. Using Ignite, you can group everything about each of your suppliers under one platform, including their risk profiles and how much you are spending with each of them. This allows you to identify clearly your position with each supplier you work with.
To facilitate further expansion into the Nordics and to provide an improved platform for its users, external funding has been needed to supplement current commercial revenue. This was successfully achieved in September 2023, during a Series A round where Ignite secured $7.1 Million.
15. Neat
Year Founded: 2019
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 101-250
Founders: Simen Teigre
Neat is one of Norway's premier video technology startups, creating better devices to connect with other people and team members across the world for any modern workspace. You can get a range of powerful webcams and audio devices to ensure everything you say is completely understood at all times, as well as having home and commercial office spaces designed to maximise your productivity, with devices being able to be easily integrated.
Due to the massive size of Neat and its huge growth since 2019, it has raised significant startup funding to get to this point in its development. Its most recent funding round took place in 2021 and was a key driver for this growth, with 25.3 Million Euros being raised, with Zoom also investing.
16. Whereby
Year Founded: 2017
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Ingrid Ødegaard
Whereby is not just another video calling startup, although it does offer download-free, high-quality audio and video calls using the same link every time. This makes everything more hassle free for you and your clients. The huge thing is that by using Whereby's API, you can embed video calling into your own products, adding a different dimension to the value you can provide for your clients. You can also customise most parts of your user experience, using an intuitive set of controls.
The development of Whereby's API and SDK, along with attempting to gain market share against titans such as Zoom, Google and Microsoft has required large capital injections. An example of this is Whereby's most recent funding round, which took place in 2021 as part of a Series A round. This Series A generated $12 Million.
17. AiBA
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Gjøvik, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Patrick Bours
AiBa is a platform with a mission that is incredibly important in the modern day. Children now more than ever are exposed to harmful interactions with predators online and distressing content, yet social media sites and chat rooms can be great places for interaction with friends. To stamp out issues of distressing content and predators on your platform, you can use AiBA to leverage the power of AI and monitor any communications on your platform. You can also set it to automatically alert the authorities if there are suspicions of grooming. This improves your own compliance standpoint also.
Developing this type of platform to integrate with external platforms and monitor traffic has required internal expertise and other external resources at great expense. As a result of this, it should not come as a surprise that AiBa sought funding from Firda, StartupLab, Wiski and Antler. This investment in June 2022 totalled 7.5 Million NOK, which has allowed it to sustain its rapid expansion.
18. Favrit
Year Founded: 2019
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 51-100
Founders: Edwin Fjeldtvedt, Jan Austad, Kristian Øvsthus, Nuno Sitima, Øystein Skiri
Favrit is making your life smoother and easier as a hospitality business owner. One of the things that causes a lot of problems for you in these businesses, is your POS system. It can be slow, not picking up signals and this creates a problem for your customers. With Favrit, you can rest assured that you're using a system that is fast, seamless and on better terms than a lot of other providers in the market, which can charge excessive fees for use of their POS systems.
Developing a new POS system that works efficiently and effectively, as well as growing a team to market the product and manage the large amounts of customers and payments requires a large amount of money. As a result of this, shortly after launch, Favrit managed to raise 11.7 Million to accelerate its product development for POS and hire a great team. It then sought investment again in January 2023, when it raised 4 Million.
19. Skyfri
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 101-250
Founders: Pratik Ghoshal, Aslan Shamsutdi, Murshid M. Ali, Petter S
Skyfri is a Norwegian startup that was founded in 2021 and operates from a headquarters in the capital city of Oslo. It operates in the solar market and offers you a platform that allows you to make the most of your solar assets. By using this platform, you can increase your production by around 5% and stack 50% more revenue by identifying and eliminating issues with the support of the software.
CleanTech is a very attractive investment proposition in Norway, which is a world-leader in renewable energy. As a result of this, Skyfri has had a great advantage in securing startup funding. Over two rounds of funding in the last three years, it has managed to raise $5 Million to improve its solar platform and to continue growing its team of industry leaders.
20. Laiout
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 1-10
Founders: Cristiano Coretti, Isak Buhl-Mortensen, Wouter Merkestein
Laiout is one of Norway's up and coming PropTech startups, with it providing a unique solution for architects, property managers, property developers and more. With Laiout, you get the ability to create a fully functional building floor plan in as little as four clicks. This can reduce the amount of time spent on floorplanning tasks by 80%, meaning you can focus on other aspects of your job. You can also include any furniture into your designs and make edits throughout the process.
Laiout managed to successfully secure early-stage funding shortly after being founded to help bring its concept of floor planning support software to fruition. This took place in a February 2022 Seed Round and on top of the $1.2 Million raised, Laiout secured the strategic input of some incredibly savvy investors such as SF Ventures, Antler and more.
21. Enode
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Oslo, Norway
Size: 11-50
Founders: Henrik Langeland, Thorvald Thorsnes, Nikolai Heum
Enode is a Norwegian startup that was founded in 2020 and is currently based in the city of Oslo. It aims to solve one of the big problems faced by energy companies, achieving true integration with your customer's devices and this then allows you to help them to cut their energy bills through usage reduction and reduce their carbon output. It is currently trusted by some of the world's most recognised energy retailers, such as E.On, TotalEnergies and OVO.
Enode's founding team have proven success in securing investment to further their ambitions. The evidence for this is that in the last four years, Enode has taken part in three funding rounds, which has yielded a return of $17.4 Million to Enode.
FAQs
What Are The Strongest Startup Industries In Norway?
The startup industries that are experiencing the most growth and success in Norway are CleanTech & Energy, Hardware and IoT Technology.
How Much Funding Do Norwegian Startups Raise?
Finding national statistics for funding raised is difficult, however, total early-stage funding in Oslo startups between 2020 and 2022 was $869 Million, slightly below the global average.
How Many Tech Startups Are There In Norway?
Currently, it is estimated that there are around 3000 tech startups in Norway, with 1800 in Oslo alone.
