Funding news:
Alvin, a developer tool for automating data lineage, has raised $6M. Link
Used car sale platform Rebil has raised 27MNOK in a round led by Møller Mobility Group. Link
Mobile door opener Unloc has raised 25MNOk from existing investors. Link ($)
Ludenso, enriching textbooks with AR, has raised 10MNOK in a round led by Ferd. Link
Piql, secure long-term data storage, has raised 10MNOK from existing shareholders. Link ($)
Sunphade, a solar control film for windows, has raised 8MNOK from Kongsberg Innovasjon and others. Link ($)
FeltGIS, software to improve forestry, has raised 4.1MNOK in a round led by First Seed Hedmark. Link
Retail analytics company Recognition has raised 3.3MNOK. Link
Football quiz app FC Quiz has raised an undisclosed amount from Amedia. Link ($)
Civil engineering analysis tool Shapemaker has raised an undisclosed amount in a round led by RunwayFBU. Link ($)
Data visualization tool Everviz has raised an undisclosed amount from Fonn Group. Link
Katapult announced its most recent accelerator batch, with 23 companies including Whee (cargo bike subscription), Hyrex (hydrogen technology for boats), and Zeabuz (software for autonomous ferries) from Norway. Link ($)
Crowdfunding platform Bidra has been acquired by Induct for at least 4MNOK. Link
Other notable stories:
The Norwegian government put forward its budget for 2023 a week ago, and amongst other things they introduced an additional 5% employer's tax (no: arbeidsgiveravgift) for those with annual salaries above 750kNOK. This obviously impacts tech companies with lots of highly educated/paid employees. Link ($)
53 local investors predict Norway's next unicorn. Top three with most votes; Tibber, Easee, Ardoq/Sanity. Link ($)
Fredrik Haga of Dune with another post on the Norwegian wealth tax, and one it's difficult to disagree with regardless of your political leanings. As he puts it (I'm paraphrasing): "two things can be true at the same time; we want a redistributive tax system, and the wealth tax is poorly designed and makes it harder to build global companies from Norway". Link
Introduction to Flow Ventures, a recently launched Haugesund-based investment group focused on ocean-related startups at pre-seed. Link ($)
Share-based incentive software Optio Incentives did 23MNOK in revenue last year. Link
From abroad:
20-minute podcast conversation between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs, only that it's completely generated by AI. Having played around with text-to-image generators based on DALL-E/Stable Diffusion a bit lately (and been extremely impressed), this is yet another proof point something fundamental is changing because of AI. And while the podcast is very impressive, it's also very scary. As Mike Solana put it; "ai generated voice of a person, who did not provide consent, in a podcast saying things that person never said — pretty straightforward evil thing to do". Link
Howard Marks-memo on why forecasts are rarely helpful. Excellent read full of insight and great quotes (I tweeted some), and one that feels especially relevant these times given the level of uncertainty surrounding us. Link
Rex Woodbury on "the Tiktokization of everything", suggesting that the concept behind TikTok's "For You Page" will be adopted by all consumer applications in the years to come. I'm more certain this will happen than I am of whether this is good for society long term. Link
Fascinating Reddit comment on how people are promoted at Google: "Launch, Promo, Abandon". Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Link
Climate crisis tracker: The atmosphere is filling up with CO2. We must avoid a level of 450 parts per million. Current level: 415.1ppm (12 months ago: 414.0ppm, likely to exceed the target in 8-13 years).
Disclaimer: Dune is a Sondo-investment. I have indirect ownership in Shapemaker through prior fund investments.
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