- Wave Ventures, a Helsinki-based VC firm run entirely by investors aged 25 and under, has closed its third fund at €10M, a fivefold increase from its previous €2M fund.
- Alongside the close, Wave is launching a €240,000 grant program for Nordic founders who are pre-idea, pre-revenue, and pre-funding.
- The firm’s thesis: the AI era is producing a generation of young builders; the Nordics risk losing to the US; and Wave wants to write the first cheque before anyone else knows its name.
The investors making bets on the next generation of Nordic founders are, on average, younger than the founders they back. Every member of Wave Ventures‘ investment team is 25 or under. Its LPs include the founders of Supercell, Wolt, and Bolt. And today, Wave closed its third fund at €10 million, five times the size of its last one.
“We’ve grown the fund 5x and turned a student-led vehicle into a professional fund that competes head‑on with older VCs. They respect us because we’re first in with €100k tickets — and we can show we actually move the needle,” says Johannes Korpela, CEO of Wave Ventures, to Tech Funding News.
Nordic pre-seed median round sizes have held steady at €1M, but the market’s ceiling has shattered, and competition to find the best founders first has sharpened accordingly. Wave’s argument is that the AI shift is producing a new kind of builder: younger, faster, thinking in systems rather than features. It wants to be the first institutional name on their cap table, before anyone else knows who they are.
From a student club to a pre-seed fund
Wave has backed more than 50 companies since it launched in Helsinki in 2016, frequently writing the first institutional cheque and investing in nearly 80% of VC-backed Finnish startups led by CEOs under 30.
Its portfolio includes Inven, which went on to raise an €11.2M Series A, and Tzafon, whose pre-seed was the largest in Swedish history at the time. In 2024, Wave backed three of the five Nordic companies accepted into Y Combinator. Fund III companies The Token Company, Tenet Industries, and Librar Labs have since joined the accelerator, too.
Wave’s previous fund was €2M. Fund III is five times that, and the firm now writes cheques of up to €300,000, backing 10 to 20 early-stage teams per year across the Nordics and Baltics. It used to run as a student-led fund. That description no longer fits.
The bet on AI-native founders
That cooperation only goes so far. Wave’s core claim is that it sees deals the others don’t, because it’s embedded in the communities where the next wave of founders is still deciding what to build.
“They have grown during the AI era. They’re thinking through the system. We believe the next Wolt and Supercell will be built by these young individuals. And the Nordics have to double down on this talent now, so we can stop those really potential individuals from going abroad,” notes Korpela.
Brain drain is the unstated risk behind the whole thesis. Without an early backer, the most ambitious young Nordic founders head to San Francisco or London, where capital is thicker, and networks run deeper. Wave’s answer is proximity: be younger, closer, and faster than any competitor.
It isn’t the only one targeting the earliest stage. Lifeline Ventures, which backed Wolt, Aiven, and Supercell, writes conviction-first cheques with a similar philosophy. Inception Fund raised €21M to back AI-first technical founders at the inception stage. ByFounders covers the same New Nordics geography with a larger cheque size.
Wave’s edge, if it holds, comes from being in rooms where those funds aren’t — university group chats, hackathons, Slush corridors — before the founders have a deck.
Backing founders before they have an idea
The €240,000 Wave Rebellion Grant Program, launched alongside the fund, takes the firm’s logic further than any VC program in the region has gone before. It targets founders who are pre-idea, pre-revenue, and pre-funding. Ten founders across the Nordics will receive grants and partner credits from AWS, Anthropic, Lovable, Modal, and Verda. No equity. No obligations.
“Some of the most exceptional founders don’t fit neatly into existing startup programs, accelerators, or university tracks. Venture capital often relies on pattern matching, but the best founders rarely look obvious before their breakouts. The Rebellion Grant is our way of supporting them earlier,” adds Korpela.
The fund is backed by operators from Spotify, Wolt, Bolt, Oura, Nokia, Supercell, GANNI, and Voi, as well as European early-stage VCs and family offices. Follow-on investors in Wave’s portfolio include Speedinvest, Cherry Ventures, and byFounders.
“Wave keeps finding the founders behind them before anyone else does. That track record is why I wanted to back this fund,” says Fredrik Hjelm, co-founder and CEO of Voi. Four Wave alumni have since been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
The deeper question, as Wave’s fund size grows and more capital chases the same earliest-stage founders across the Nordics, is how long the proximity edge holds. At some point, being young stops being a differentiator and starts being just another credential.
Wave is betting it won’t reach that point before the next Supercell walks through the door.
