These are 9 fast-growing tech startups in Helsinki in 2020

Helsinki has built a reputation of being an important and influential innovation tech startup hub in Europe. It is home to the open-source project Linux, which is widely used across the world, Slush, one of the key events in Europe, and Supercell, one of the tech companies with a valuation of over $10 billion.

Fast-growing Helsinki tech startups

The Finnish city’s success is a result of contributors including accelerators, support organisations, universities, and events. Also, big tech players such as HMD Global, Wolt, Small Giant Games and many others play an important role in the success of Helsinki. And, this is what a recent Dealroom report about Helsinki tech startups has detailed and here we have curated a list of some fast-growing tech startups in the city.

Robocorp

Founder/s: Antti Karjalainen, Teppo Koskinen, Jouko Ahvenaine, Sampo Ahokas
Founded year: 2019
Funding: €10.6 million

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the hottest technologies of recent years as it automates complex manual workflows within large organisations. In an attempt to capitalise on the same, Robocorp intends to bring open-source and RPA together. The company is built on the open-source Robot Framework project developed as an open-source software testing environment.

A few months back, Robocorp secured nearly €4.52 million funding from Benchmark, Slow Ventures, and Firstminute Capital among others. The startup aims to use the investment to expand its team and continue scaling its cloud product and also aims to build the underlying open-source community.

Sensible 4

Founder/s: Jussi Suomela
Founded year: 2017
Funding: €6.3 million

Finnish startup Sensible 4 is a pioneer in the autonomous driving tech pioneer. It specialises in vehicle automation systems that can manage during extreme winter conditions. The company intends to resolve the challenging weather and limited sensor visibility that are major problems faced by driverless vehicles. Sensible 4’s solution is the first that enables self-driving in snow, heavy rain, and fog.

Earlier this year, Sensible 4 secured nearly €6.3 million Series A funding led by NordicNinja VC, a deep tech fund backed by Japanese tech companies and ITOCHU, one of the largest trading companies in Japan. With this fund, the company intends to expand across the European and Asian markets.

Mainframe Industries

Founder/s: Kjartan Emilsson, Thor Gunnarsson
Founded year: 2019
Funding: €9.4 million

Mainframe Industries is a Nordic game studio that builds a massively multiplayer online title. It has offices in Helsinki and Reykjavik is building an MMO title designed from the get-go for streaming platforms such as Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia. Its focus appears to leverage cross-play with more consistent experiences on various devices and this is possible with cloud streaming.

In March this year, Mainframe Industries raised €7.6 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowtiz along with participation from Play Ventures, Sisu Game Ventures, Maki.vc, Riot Games, and Crowberry Capital. With this backup from some big names, the company intends to get support in its quest to build a robust mobile game that meets the expectations of console and PC gamers.

Aiven

Founder/s: Hannu Valtonen, Heikki Nousiainen, Mika Eloranta, Oskari Saarenmaa
Founded year: 2016
Funding: €46.4 million

Helsinki-based cloud tech startup Aiven has built an automated cloud operations platform that turns open-source distributed data systems into cloud services. It lets developers focus on core products instead of the underlying infrastructure. Aiven provides a platform, which abstracts all complexities of operating open-source data technologies for users and lets them focus on business applications.

In February 2020, Aiven bagged nearly €33.5 million Series B funding led by Institutional Venture Partners along with Earlybird and other investors. The fund will let Aiven expand to the US, strengthen its business in Boston and opening an office in San Francisco. Also, the company will focus on investing in product development.

Leadoo MT

Founder/s: Mikael da Costa
Founded year: 2018
Funding: €3 million

Leadoo helps SMEs and startups to get leads via their websites. It does this by making website content more engaging, personal, and interactive. The company realises that traditional websites have either poor or no conversion points and offers a highly personalised alternative solution such as customer service bots, custom branding, recruitment bots, and lead generation bots. Last year, Leadoo expanded its presence with a second office in London. And, the lead generation martech startup helps tackle average website rates for companies.

Swappie

Founder/s: Jiri Heinonen, Sami Marttinen
Founded year: 2016
Funding: €41.8 million

Swappie is the online store selling refurbished smartphones that intends to give people a way to upgrade their phones that is high quality, affordable, and environmentally friendly. As consumers become more aware of the environmental impact that their purchasing decisions have, there is an increased demand for high-quality refurbished smartphones. And, this is where Swappie ensures to empower individuals to make sustainable choices while they buy smartphones.

A few months back, the Finnish company secured nearly €35.8 million Series B funding from various investors including Inventure, Lifeline Ventures, Reaktor Ventures and Tesi. This funding will be used to accelerate Swappie’s international expansion and to support the company’s rapid growth.

Supermetrics

Founder/s: Mikael Thuneberg
Founded year: 2013
Funding: €43.5 million

Supermetrics helps over half a million marketers and analysts move data from popular marketing and ad platforms like Facebook, Google, and HubSpot to their favorite analytics, reporting, and data warehouse platforms. Supermetrics helps over half a million marketers and analysts move data from popular marketing and ad platforms like Facebook, Google, and HubSpot to their favorite analytics, reporting, and data warehouse platforms. This way, they can get to know what is performing and what isn’t.

This Finnish data integration platform raised €40 million funding led by Highland Europe with participation from IVP, OpenOcean, Amit Agarwal, chief product officer at Datadog, and Ilkka Paananen, chief executive of Supercell. It is planning to use the investment for its next major expansion phase including the integration of data warehousing to the marketing sector.

Silo.AI

Founder/s: Johan Kronberg, Peter Sarlin, Tero Ojanperä, Ville Hulkko
Founded year: 2017
Funding: €10 million

Silo.AI is one of the largest AI solution and service providers in the Nordics. It services clients across four continents. The company based out of Helsinki believes strongly in the future of human-centered AI solutions and provides scalable expertise in computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing. The portfolio of Silo.AI includes major clients that support the Finnish airline Finnair. Back in mid-2019, this company landed an investment of €10 million from Business Finland. It intends to use this investment to grow its team to over 60 and progress further.

Ultimate.ai

Founder/s: Jaakko Pasanen, Markus Rautio, Reetu Kainulainen
Founded year: 2017
Funding: €7.6 million

Ultimate.ai uses its proprietary deep learning technology to enable customer service automation in all languages across, email, chat, and social. It guides team members with considerable answer recommendations for human-to-human communications and increases productivity by 30%. Back in late 2019, Ultimate.ai secured over €7.5 million from European Innovation Council, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and Maki.vc and intends to take its business to the next level.

Stock photo from Oleksiy Mark/Shutterstock