Stockholm-based Starhive, a flexible IT asset and service management provider, has secured $5M (approximately €4.5M) in pre-Series A funding led by Ventech.
Ventech is a well-established early-stage venture capital firm in both Europe and Asia with a strong digital focus.
With its dual structure platform, Ventech has dedicated funds for Europe (Paris, Munich, Berlin, Helsinki & Stockholm) and Asia (Shanghai and Hong Kong).
Since its inception, Ventech has raised nearly €1B and has realised over 320 investments (including Vestiaire Collective, Prewave, Ogury,
As a part of the funding round, Ventech’s Joel Uddén will also be joining the Starhive board.
Existing investor node.vc also participated in the round.
Ventech VC’s Joel Uddén says, “Starhive is addressing a significant gap in the IT management space by bringing AI to asset management, an area that has remained largely manual and inefficient. The ability to predict asset needs, optimise allocation, and reduce costs through AI-driven insights gives Starhive a clear competitive advantage. With businesses
increasingly looking for smarter, more adaptable IT solutions, Starhive is well-positioned to scale rapidly in a market that is ripe for innovation. This investment is an opportunity to be part of the future of AI-driven enterprise efficiency.”
This funding announcement comes just seven months after the company’s seed round in September 2024, when the startup raised €2.7M.
Fund utilisation
The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of AI tools for businesses – reducing waste, improving resource planning, and enhancing overall operational efficiency.
The company will use the funds to integrate different AI capabilities, including conversational AI, into IT asset and service management.
This allows teams to analyse and interact with vast amounts of data in real-time.
This will help businesses in simulating future scenarios, reallocating underused assets, and ensuring software licenses are used efficiently, helping businesses cut costs and optimise resources.
Struggles with IT asset management
Many organisations struggle to track IT assets like laptops, servers, and software licenses, often relying on outdated spreadsheets or rigid systems.
“Companies struggling with IT asset management often face fragmented systems, making it difficult to gain a holistic asset overview. Without integration, data remains siloed, leading to inefficiencies. Many also encounter rigid vendor systems with too many mandatory fields or limits on customisation, restricting flexibility,” says Tommy Nordahl, Starhive CEO & Founder, to Silicon Canals.
Additionally, IT teams must handle other data like service catalogues, contracts, vendors, regulations, and employees, which are often scattered and not centralised.
All of this leads to unnecessary spending, underused resources, and delayed decision-making.
IT support and maintenance suffer from similar inefficiencies, with teams working reactively rather than proactively.
“To overcome these challenges, businesses need a flexible, integrated, and user-friendly IT asset management adds solution that ensures accuracy, efficiency, and smarter decision-making,” Nordahl.
How does Starhive solve it?
Founded in 2022 by Tommy Nordahl and Mathias Edblom, Starhive is an IT asset and service management platform that utilises AI to transform how businesses manage their IT resources.
The Swedish company combines predictive analytics with AI-driven insights to help IT teams optimise asset allocation, reduce costs, and streamline workflows.
“Our first ambition in AI is to provide deeper insights into asset utilisation. The next step is to enable simulation, where the customer can simulate outages, shortages, and different kinds of business events to see how they will impact their IT and business operations,” adds Nordahl.
Starhive has improved its no-app builder, allowing IT teams to create custom applications.
They also offer a range of tools for managing assets and services to help businesses tackle their ongoing challenges.
“Our no-code app framework is a direct response to customers telling us that the User Experience (UX) of competing solutions simply doesn’t cut it. To improve the adoption rate, a modern User Interface needs to be designed with the specific user group in mind – especially for business teams. You cannot use IT terminology for a business team; it doesn’t work,” says Nordahl.
Starhive uses AI for asset management, unlike other solutions that mainly focus on service management.
This allows IT staff to ask AI for recommendations instead of analysing data manually, making decision-making quicker and easier.
For example, users can request alerts when warranties are due to expire or when other critical conditions are met to get ahead of potential problems.
“We’ve taken this one step further where we enable customers and partners to build pixel-perfect, on-brand frontend applications for people to request new assets, report faults, or go beyond asset management,” he adds.
This change from reacting to predicting problems helps reduce waste, improve planning, and boost overall efficiency.
The founding duo brings 40+ years of combined industry experience, having also co-founded Mindville in 2012, an IT asset and configuration management company acquired by Atlassian in 2020.
Starhive’s current team of 17 includes 9 former employees from Mindville.
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