- Fortum is now a limited partner in Norrsken Evolve’s €62 million pre-seed fund.
- More than 80 European founders have been assisted by Norrsken Evolve since 2021, and 75 per cent of them have then secured additional funding.
- This is the second energy technology investment that Fortum has made via this company; previously, it took a direct share in the nuclear startup Steady Energy in January.
Fortum, one of Europe’s largest energy companies, became a limited partner in Norrsken Evolve by investing through its Innovation & Venturing division. This summer, the fund reached €62 million, exceeding the original target of €40 million.
Norrsken Evolve is a pre-seed fund managed by the Norrsken Foundation, an impact investing organisation based in Stockholm, which was founded by Niklas Adalberth, co-founder of Klarna, in 2016.
The fund, which is headed by Johan Attby, Alex Bakir, and Rebecka Löthman Rydå, makes investments of up to €500,000 in 20 to 30 companies every year. These companies operate in fields such as renewable energy, health tech, robotics, AI infrastructure, biotechnology and advanced materials.
Since the beginning of its accelerator phase, Norrsken Evolve has supported more than 80 companies, and 75 per cent of them have secured additional funding.
Fortum has carried out one pre-seed investment before this. In January, its Innovation & Venturing division invested €2.1 million directly in Steady Energy, a Finnish company that develops small modular nuclear reactors for district heating, and granted the startup access to Fortum’s nuclear expertise.
The investment in Norrsken Evolve provides analogous advantages at the portfolio level. Rather than backing a single company, Fortum gains exposure to a small number of founders selected from among the thousands of startups assessed each year.
What Fortum brings to the table
For the founders of Norrsken, the value lies in operational terms, not merely in financial ones. Fortum provides energy to more than two million customers and is responsible for low-carbon power generation, heating, and cooling in the Nordic region.
“The future energy system will be built through faster innovation and closer collaboration between entrepreneurs, investors and industry. Through this partnership, we strengthen our connection to the next generation of companies developing solutions for electrification, flexibility, industrial decarbonisation, and other critical energy challenges,” says Gustav Eilertsen, vice-president of Innovation & Venturing at Fortum.
In Attby’s view, the partnership serves both as a sign of confidence and as a means of funding: “Europe has the talent and the technology to power its economy on clean electricity, and our founders are building the companies that will make that happen. What Fortum brings is the operational depth that financial investors cannot: real knowledge of how energy is generated, moved and sold. Their backing is strong validation of our thesis, and a genuine asset to every founder we invest in.”
Part of a bigger electrification push
The partnership aligns with Norrsken’s “Electro Union” campaign, which aims to achieve 50% electrification of final energy use in the EU by 2040.
According to PitchBook data, in the first quarter of 2026, Europe overtook North America for the first time in terms of the value of climate tech venture capital deals, with Europe at $6.6 billion compared to $5.5 billion in North America. However, most of this growth was driven by a small number of large deals, not by the pre-seed rounds that Norrsken Evolve backs.
Early-stage financing in Europe remains limited; for instance, Norway’s StartupLab raised a €32 million fund earlier this year and also highlighted a shortage of early-stage capital.
Through this investment, Fortum gains access to Norrsken Evolve’s deal flow and to the connections of future developers of grid hardware and storage. It will only become clear over the next few years, as the portfolio develops, whether this accelerates commercialisation for the founders or provides Fortum with a new strategic perspective.
