Icelandic early-stage investor Frumtak Ventures has raised a $87 million fourth fund – Frumtak IV in a single close. The fund was oversubscribed and is a successor to 2021’s $57 million Frumtak III.
This fund comes at a time when the international attention is flowing to Icelandic companies and uplifting an emerging innovation sector renowned for its resilience.
Iceland’s startup ecosystem now boasts the highest invested capital per capita of all Nordic countries. A 2023 report from the Icelandic Angel & Venture Capital Association, Framvís, in collaboration with KPMG, found that foreign investment in Icelandic startups was up threefold year over year.
Focus areas
The fund focus until now was to back B2B SaaS startups at the seed or Series A stage. With the recent closing of its Fund IV, Frumtak Ventures eyes further potential in doubling down on opportunities at the intersection of software, AI, and deeptech in industries playing on Iceland’s historical strengths in areas such as ocean tech and logistics, healthcare, travel, energy, climate, and gender equality.
Portfolio of investments
Headquartered in Reykjavík, Frumtak Ventures is a VC firm run by serial entrepreneur and managing partner Svana Gunnarsdottir along with general partners Ásthildur Otharsdóttir and Andri Heiðar Kristinsson.
Below is the portfolio of investments made by Frumtak Ventures:
Sidekick Health: This startup receives its first investment in 2017. It works with five of the world’s largest healthcare companies and has strategic partnerships with industry behemoths including Pfizer, Bayer, and Eli Lilly.
Controlant: This company received its first investment in 2011 and is currently ranked by the Financial Times as one of the Top 25 fastest growing companies in Europe.
Other high growth Frumtak Ventures portfolio companies include Treble, a sound simulation and spatial audio technology; Plaio, a visual planning solution for the generic pharma industry; 50skills, a hiring software and tool for onboarding, cross-boarding and offboarding; Abler, a sports management tech and Alda, workplace culture inclusion software solution.
Frumtak Ventures co-founder and managing partner Svana Gunnarsdóttir said: “Frumtak Ventures was founded by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs. We’re proud of our portfolio companies: their success validates our belief that Frumtak Ventures offers a unique toolkit to empower ambitious founders to thrive and scale their companies. Iceland has endured and thrived in spite of challenges, both man-made and natural, and we have correspondingly developed expertise in several homegrown industries – as well as learned to future-proof them by embracing innovation. Frumtak IV will be supporting the next stars from these sectors as a sector-agnostic fund. I’d like to thank our investors, new and existing, for their continued support. We are proud to have closed four funds in 15 years and provided support to some of Iceland’s most successful companies, and the Frumtak Ventures team is excited to deploy Frumtak IV within the Nordic ecosystem, helping support the next wave of winners.”
Our thoughts about Frumtak Ventures
With Frumtak Ventures’ successful $87 million fundraise and focus on AI and deeptech, Iceland’s robust startup ecosystem is poised to benefit significantly. Frumtak’s proven track record and strategic focus on Iceland’s strengths will likely yield continued success and innovation.