Alliance

Alliance Venture is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in 2001, with headquarters in Oslo, Norway, and additional offices in Palo Alto, California, and Stockholm, Sweden. The firm specializes in seed, startup, and early-stage investments, primarily targeting privately held technology companies that operate at the intersection of information communication technology, micro-technology, material technology, and biotechnology. It also focuses on media, telecommunications, and information technology within the oil and energy sectors. Alliance Venture invests in regions including Scandinavia, the United States, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa, typically committing between $0.2 million and $1.7 million to its portfolio companies. The firm aims for a lead role and board seat in Norwegian investments, while co-investing in other regions without insisting on board representation. With total funds under management of approximately $100 million, Alliance Venture seeks to exit its investments through initial public offerings or trade sales.

Bjorn Christensen

Co-Founder & Partner

Johan Gjesdahl

Managing Partner

Anders Hallin

Partner

Jan-Erik Hareid

Founder & Chairman

Jan-Erik Hæreid

Managing Partner

Bente Loe

Partner

Erling Maartmann-Moe

Partner

Arne Tonning

Partner

Henrik Torstensson

Partner

Lars F. Windfeldt

Member of Advisory Board

Past deals in Norway

Globus.ai

Seed Round in 2022
Globus.ai is a privately held company that specializes in artificial intelligence, machine learning including reinforcement learning. The company's platform makes data available by extraction from a variety of on-premise sources and integration with the cloud infrastructure and predicts the future through state-of-the-art machine learning and simulation, enabling businesses to increase innovation speed, simplify sustainable decision making and reduce data science implementation cost.

Aquabyte

Venture Round in 2022
Aquabyte, Inc. specializes in developing advanced monitoring systems for the aquaculture industry, focusing on enhancing fish farming efficiency through machine learning and computer vision technologies. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco with an additional office in Bergen, Norway, Aquabyte's innovative solutions include a smart camera system that facilitates real-time sea lice counting, biomass estimation, appetite detection, and feed optimization. By providing a comprehensive web dashboard for continuous monitoring, Aquabyte enables fish farms to reduce operational costs and minimize environmental impacts, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and profitable aquaculture sector. The company's commitment to leveraging technology aims to address challenges in food production, making a significant impact on the industry's growth and efficiency.

Equality Check

Seed Round in 2021
Equality Check is a community-based platform based in Ireland that facilitates anonymous employee reviews focused on workplace equality. Users can share their experiences about current or former employers, allowing others to research companies and assess their commitment to equality. The platform not only enables individuals to leave ratings and reviews but also serves as a resource for organizations to identify gender imbalances within their workforce. By leveraging crowdsourced feedback, Equality Check offers evidence-based solutions to help companies improve their practices and foster a more equitable work environment.

Sanity

Series B in 2021
Sanity is a software platform designed for delivering structured content to products and devices. It lets people create completely custom interfaces and content workflows while Sanity’s real-time API lets you deliver content from a single source to any channel, device, or product. Sanity was founded in Norway and has offices in Oslo and San Francisco

Boost AI

Funding Round in 2021
Boost AI AS specializes in developing advanced chatbots and virtual assistants tailored for enterprise applications. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Sandnes, Norway, the company utilizes natural language processing (NLP) algorithms through its James platform to facilitate automated customer consulting services. Boost AI offers a range of modules designed for various sectors, including banking, telecommunications, government, insurance, and transportation. With a workforce of 40 dedicated professionals, Boost AI aims to enhance operational efficiency across diverse industries by delivering innovative virtual assistant solutions. The company's growth has been notable, making significant strides in the Scandinavian market while focusing on improving customer interactions and departmental functionalities.

Sanity

Series A in 2020
Sanity is a software platform designed for delivering structured content to products and devices. It lets people create completely custom interfaces and content workflows while Sanity’s real-time API lets you deliver content from a single source to any channel, device, or product. Sanity was founded in Norway and has offices in Oslo and San Francisco

Aprila Bank

Series B in 2020
Aprila Bank ASA is a commercial banking institution based in Oslo, Norway, specializing in providing financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and retail customers. Founded in 2018, the bank focuses on developing digital and automated financing solutions, including Aprila Invoice Sales, which allows for the immediate sale of invoices and is integrated with cloud-based accounting systems. With its API-based technology platform, Aprila connects with approximately 130,000 SMEs through partnerships with prominent ERP and accounting software providers, facilitating seamless financial transactions and improving access to funding for businesses in the Norwegian market.

Shoreline

Series A in 2020
We are a fast growing B2B SaaS company providing the Shoreline Platform for simulation and data analytics to optimize and improve the development and management of renewable power plants. Shoreline’s solutions are based on internally developed simulation and optimization algorithms that streamline how operators, project developers, equipment manufacturers and service providers work to develop and construct new projects and manage existing assets. We are an international team with six nationalities, representation in the US, Europe, and Asia, and are now adding people to both the technical and commercial team in an exciting growth phase with venture funding from the US and Norway.

Sanity

Seed Round in 2019
Sanity is a software platform designed for delivering structured content to products and devices. It lets people create completely custom interfaces and content workflows while Sanity’s real-time API lets you deliver content from a single source to any channel, device, or product. Sanity was founded in Norway and has offices in Oslo and San Francisco

Aquabyte

Series A in 2019
Aquabyte, Inc. specializes in developing advanced monitoring systems for the aquaculture industry, focusing on enhancing fish farming efficiency through machine learning and computer vision technologies. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco with an additional office in Bergen, Norway, Aquabyte's innovative solutions include a smart camera system that facilitates real-time sea lice counting, biomass estimation, appetite detection, and feed optimization. By providing a comprehensive web dashboard for continuous monitoring, Aquabyte enables fish farms to reduce operational costs and minimize environmental impacts, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and profitable aquaculture sector. The company's commitment to leveraging technology aims to address challenges in food production, making a significant impact on the industry's growth and efficiency.

Grunt

Venture Round in 2019
Grunt is a developer of an application that enhances the functionality of PowerPoint, focusing on improving the process of creating business presentations. The tool enables users to create impactful presentations by offering easy-to-use charts and tables, while also addressing issues related to data consistency and integration. This allows business professionals to focus on their core tasks and produce high-quality presentations in a shorter amount of time.

Boost AI

Series A in 2018
Boost AI AS specializes in developing advanced chatbots and virtual assistants tailored for enterprise applications. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Sandnes, Norway, the company utilizes natural language processing (NLP) algorithms through its James platform to facilitate automated customer consulting services. Boost AI offers a range of modules designed for various sectors, including banking, telecommunications, government, insurance, and transportation. With a workforce of 40 dedicated professionals, Boost AI aims to enhance operational efficiency across diverse industries by delivering innovative virtual assistant solutions. The company's growth has been notable, making significant strides in the Scandinavian market while focusing on improving customer interactions and departmental functionalities.

Boost AI

Series A in 2018
Boost AI AS specializes in developing advanced chatbots and virtual assistants tailored for enterprise applications. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Sandnes, Norway, the company utilizes natural language processing (NLP) algorithms through its James platform to facilitate automated customer consulting services. Boost AI offers a range of modules designed for various sectors, including banking, telecommunications, government, insurance, and transportation. With a workforce of 40 dedicated professionals, Boost AI aims to enhance operational efficiency across diverse industries by delivering innovative virtual assistant solutions. The company's growth has been notable, making significant strides in the Scandinavian market while focusing on improving customer interactions and departmental functionalities.

Aquabyte

Seed Round in 2018
Aquabyte, Inc. specializes in developing advanced monitoring systems for the aquaculture industry, focusing on enhancing fish farming efficiency through machine learning and computer vision technologies. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco with an additional office in Bergen, Norway, Aquabyte's innovative solutions include a smart camera system that facilitates real-time sea lice counting, biomass estimation, appetite detection, and feed optimization. By providing a comprehensive web dashboard for continuous monitoring, Aquabyte enables fish farms to reduce operational costs and minimize environmental impacts, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and profitable aquaculture sector. The company's commitment to leveraging technology aims to address challenges in food production, making a significant impact on the industry's growth and efficiency.

Swarm64

Series B in 2018
Swarm64 (swarm64.com) provides accelerators for relational databases that enable real-time analytics of high velocity data. Swarm64’s team is world-class in delivering FPGA acceleration and real-time database design. Founded in 2013, Swarm64 is backed by leading Norwegian and German venture investors. Swarm64 is a Norwegian company with operations in Berlin, Germany.

Aprila Bank

Venture Round in 2017
Aprila Bank ASA is a commercial banking institution based in Oslo, Norway, specializing in providing financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and retail customers. Founded in 2018, the bank focuses on developing digital and automated financing solutions, including Aprila Invoice Sales, which allows for the immediate sale of invoices and is integrated with cloud-based accounting systems. With its API-based technology platform, Aprila connects with approximately 130,000 SMEs through partnerships with prominent ERP and accounting software providers, facilitating seamless financial transactions and improving access to funding for businesses in the Norwegian market.

Northern.tech

Series A in 2017
Northern.tech AS develops security software for connected devices. The company offers Zener, a distributed software defined firewall (SDF) solution which protects data and application locally; Mender, an open source remote software updater for embedded linux devices; and CFEngine, a configuration management and automation framework that configures system services, ensures file content and integrity, deploys application updates, manages processes, and ensures system compliance. The company caters to banks, automotive, semiconductor, telecommunication, financial technology, oil and gas, and transportation and logistics industry. The company was incorporated in 2008 and is based in Oslo, Norway with an additional office in Palo Alto, California.

Shoreline

Seed Round in 2017
We are a fast growing B2B SaaS company providing the Shoreline Platform for simulation and data analytics to optimize and improve the development and management of renewable power plants. Shoreline’s solutions are based on internally developed simulation and optimization algorithms that streamline how operators, project developers, equipment manufacturers and service providers work to develop and construct new projects and manage existing assets. We are an international team with six nationalities, representation in the US, Europe, and Asia, and are now adding people to both the technical and commercial team in an exciting growth phase with venture funding from the US and Norway.

Scrimba

Seed Round in 2017
Scrimba is a coding course platform with over 120K monthly active students. It's based on a new video format that makes the screencasts fully interactive for students, and easier to create for teachers.

MemoScale

Venture Round in 2017
MemoScale AS develops erasure coding and data protection solutions for data storage systems. It offers Erasure Coding C-library that enables users to encode and decode data; recover drives and nodes using proprietary codes with reduced recovery traffic; detect and correct errors; and integrate the solution into data storage systems. The company also provides Erasure Coding Plugin for CEPH that enables users to encode and decode data; detect and correct data reads; replace alternative erasure code plugins for CEPH; and Erasure Coding Plugin for SWIFT and Erasure Coding Plugin for HDFS that are erasure coding and data protection solutions. The company was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway.

Xeneta

Series B in 2017
Xeneta AS, founded in 2012 and based in Oslo, Norway, specializes in web-based solutions for the global shipping industry, focusing on containerized ocean freight. The company offers two primary products: Xeneta Insights, tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises, and Xeneta Intelligence, designed for larger volume shipping companies. Its platform provides users with access to over 45 million spot and long-term contracted freight rates across more than 160,000 trade lanes, enabling them to benchmark their shipping costs effectively. By delivering real-time pricing transparency and data-driven insights, Xeneta helps businesses identify, understand, and optimize their freight rates, ensuring they remain competitive in the dynamic shipping market.

Fuse

Series A in 2017
Fuse specializes in mobile app development and full stack development, providing a comprehensive suite of services that includes advisory and concept development. Founded by experienced professionals in mobile graphics, the company aims to enhance the app and user experience creation process for both designers and developers. Fuse offers a cutting-edge user experience tool suite designed to bridge the gap between prototyping and actual development, facilitating a more seamless transition from initial design concepts to functional applications.

Eventum

Seed Round in 2016
Eventum Norge AS is a company based in Oslo, Norway, that operates an online marketplace for booking conference and event facilities. Founded in 2013, Eventum simplifies the process for organizers seeking venues for various events, including corporate gatherings and private celebrations. Through its platform, eventum.no, the company provides an efficient online booking system that allows users to find and secure spaces for parties, conferences, meetings, and other occasions. This service aims to enhance the event planning experience by making it easier to locate and book suitable venues.

Arundo Analytics

Venture Round in 2016
Arundo Analytics, Inc. develops analytics products that analyze data from the client’s assets and predicts the likely failures to enhance their operations. The company’s analytics solutions allow clients to make operational and maintenance decisions. It primarily services asset intensive industries with big data and machine learning products in the United States. The company was incorporated in 2015 and is based in Houston, Texas with additional offices in Palo Alto, California; Oslo, Norway; Stockholm, Sweden; and London, United Kingdom.

Swarm64

Series A in 2015
Swarm64 (swarm64.com) provides accelerators for relational databases that enable real-time analytics of high velocity data. Swarm64’s team is world-class in delivering FPGA acceleration and real-time database design. Founded in 2013, Swarm64 is backed by leading Norwegian and German venture investors. Swarm64 is a Norwegian company with operations in Berlin, Germany.

Arundo Analytics

Seed Round in 2015
Arundo Analytics, Inc. develops analytics products that analyze data from the client’s assets and predicts the likely failures to enhance their operations. The company’s analytics solutions allow clients to make operational and maintenance decisions. It primarily services asset intensive industries with big data and machine learning products in the United States. The company was incorporated in 2015 and is based in Houston, Texas with additional offices in Palo Alto, California; Oslo, Norway; Stockholm, Sweden; and London, United Kingdom.

poLight

Venture Round in 2015
poLight ASA, headquartered in Horten, Norway, specializes in developing advanced photographic lenses for consumer devices and industrial applications. The company focuses on micro-optics autofocus components, particularly for mobile phone cameras, wearables such as smart glasses and watches, and various industrial uses including medical and retail sectors. Its flagship product, the Tunable Optical Lens (TLens), mimics the human eye and allows for efficient autofocus capabilities. The technology is based on proprietary methods that utilize deformable polymers, offering compact size, low production costs, and high optical quality. In addition to TLens, poLight provides ASIC drivers that manage voltage supply to these lenses, enabling precise focus adjustments. The company operates across Europe, Asia, and the United States and was founded in 2005.

Xeneta

Series A in 2015
Xeneta AS, founded in 2012 and based in Oslo, Norway, specializes in web-based solutions for the global shipping industry, focusing on containerized ocean freight. The company offers two primary products: Xeneta Insights, tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises, and Xeneta Intelligence, designed for larger volume shipping companies. Its platform provides users with access to over 45 million spot and long-term contracted freight rates across more than 160,000 trade lanes, enabling them to benchmark their shipping costs effectively. By delivering real-time pricing transparency and data-driven insights, Xeneta helps businesses identify, understand, and optimize their freight rates, ensuring they remain competitive in the dynamic shipping market.

Fuse

Seed Round in 2015
Fuse specializes in mobile app development and full stack development, providing a comprehensive suite of services that includes advisory and concept development. Founded by experienced professionals in mobile graphics, the company aims to enhance the app and user experience creation process for both designers and developers. Fuse offers a cutting-edge user experience tool suite designed to bridge the gap between prototyping and actual development, facilitating a more seamless transition from initial design concepts to functional applications.

Novelda

Funding Round in 2014
Novelda AS is a semiconductor company based in Kviteseid, Norway, that specializes in ultra wideband (UWB) technology. Established in 2004, the company develops components and application-specific integrated circuits for high-resolution impulse radar and short-range communications. Novelda's product offerings include the Novelda R1, a hand-held UWB radar evaluation system that analyzes reflections from electromagnetic pulses to provide three-dimensional information about surrounding objects, including their distance and velocity. Additionally, the company provides CMOS impulse radar transceiver development kits and antennas, catering to various applications such as low-power wireless communication, radio frequency identification, and radar systems. Novelda's technology is particularly noted for its use in medical and industrial high-precision sensors, as well as wireless healthcare applications, and is recognized for its effectiveness in Human Presence Detection, enhancing user experience and security in consumer electronics while promoting energy efficiency in building automation.

Fuse

Seed Round in 2014
Fuse specializes in mobile app development and full stack development, providing a comprehensive suite of services that includes advisory and concept development. Founded by experienced professionals in mobile graphics, the company aims to enhance the app and user experience creation process for both designers and developers. Fuse offers a cutting-edge user experience tool suite designed to bridge the gap between prototyping and actual development, facilitating a more seamless transition from initial design concepts to functional applications.

poLight

Series B in 2011
poLight ASA, headquartered in Horten, Norway, specializes in developing advanced photographic lenses for consumer devices and industrial applications. The company focuses on micro-optics autofocus components, particularly for mobile phone cameras, wearables such as smart glasses and watches, and various industrial uses including medical and retail sectors. Its flagship product, the Tunable Optical Lens (TLens), mimics the human eye and allows for efficient autofocus capabilities. The technology is based on proprietary methods that utilize deformable polymers, offering compact size, low production costs, and high optical quality. In addition to TLens, poLight provides ASIC drivers that manage voltage supply to these lenses, enabling precise focus adjustments. The company operates across Europe, Asia, and the United States and was founded in 2005.

MemfoACT

Venture Round in 2010
MemfoACT has proprietary technology for upgrading of biogas and separation of other gases. MemfoACT AS was founded in August 2008, as a joint venture between NTNU Technology Transfer (TTO) and the entrepreneurs professor May-Britt Hägg, PhD Jon Arvid Lie and PhD Arne Lindbråthen. The company core business is gas purification, with focus on biogas upgading to fuel quality using a novel carbon molecular sieve membrane. This membrane is capable of performing the separation to spec with acceptable recovery in a single stage setup. This gives this membrane a significant advantage in this process compared with competing polymer membranes.

Ping Communication

Venture Round in 2010
Ping Communication AS develops Internet products. It offers analog telephone adapters and integrated access devices that support video, data, telephony, and wireless, including a firewall, as well as ethernet, cable, and ADSL. The company was founded in 2007 and is based in Oslo, Norway.

Encap AS

Seed Round in 2010
Encap AS offers desktop authentication solutions. The company provides two-factor authentication and legally binding digital signatures for secure applications. It caters to banking institutions, technology integrators, and financial institutions. Encap AS was founded in 2008 and is based in Fornebu, Norway.

poLight

Venture Round in 2009
poLight ASA, headquartered in Horten, Norway, specializes in developing advanced photographic lenses for consumer devices and industrial applications. The company focuses on micro-optics autofocus components, particularly for mobile phone cameras, wearables such as smart glasses and watches, and various industrial uses including medical and retail sectors. Its flagship product, the Tunable Optical Lens (TLens), mimics the human eye and allows for efficient autofocus capabilities. The technology is based on proprietary methods that utilize deformable polymers, offering compact size, low production costs, and high optical quality. In addition to TLens, poLight provides ASIC drivers that manage voltage supply to these lenses, enabling precise focus adjustments. The company operates across Europe, Asia, and the United States and was founded in 2005.