Why We Invested a Million in This Company

And what it says about Nordic AI startups

Author

Peter Juel Jensen
July 05, 2024

Pioneer AI: Checking the Nordic AI Pulse

Welcome to Pioneer AI’s newsletter, The Nordic AI Pulse.

We are a Nordics-focused AI investment fund.

We track, share, and analyse information and insights on Nordic-related AI news, deals, and trends in the newsletter.

📚 In This Issue:

  1. Why We Invested a Million in This Company

  2. Nordic AI News Roundup

  3. Cool Tools and Companies

  4. Please “Steal” This Startup Idea

  5. Nordic AI Funding News

  6. Podcast Insights

  7. Upcoming: Nordic AI Events You Shouldn't Miss

Why We Invested a Million in This Company

The Alvenir Team

Pioneer AI is happy to announce our investment of a million Danish Kroner in Alvenir. The company’s leadership team, mature technology, and huge market potential were three reasons for investing. We’re very excited about the growth journey ahead.

We spoke with co-founder Martin Carsten Nielsen about Alvenir, its technology, and what made them say yes to Pioneer AI.

What is the history and focus of your company?

Martin: We are a spinoff from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). While there, we pioneered the work on AI-powered language processing, which forms the basis for our company and solutions. Research and moving the technology forward remain core pillars. We see ourselves as a data provider or AI service provider. Our focus is on providing solutions to high-compliance industries like finance, but the solutions have much broader use cases.

Could you outline your technology and solutions?

Martin: Sure. In essence, the starting point is advanced speech recognition powered by AI. Our proprietary systems transform speech to text. We have developed several advanced AI tools that can further process the text.

You mentioned a focus on sectors like finance. What is the strategic reasoning behind that?

Martin: Finance has high accuracy and compliance requirements. Even with the Danish Jantelov in mind, we would say that our solutions offer unique precision levels. So, targeting industries like finance makes sense for us.

The industry also presents a microcosm of what we see across other spaces when talking to companies.

Many want to get started, but the question of precision and exact use cases needs to be answered, as does AI solutions' ability to meet future regulations and compliance requirements. Here, we are a lap ahead, so to speak, and provide service levels that ease companies' ability to meet current and coming requirements.

We have always focused on privacy by design and a risk-averse approach that matches these industries well.

What is a use case you would point to for the finance space?

Martin: Take conversations between a financial advisor and their client. These exchanges are typically transcribed, and a resume is sent to the client. The financial advisor also often needs to enter specific information from the conversation in other systems.

Here, we provide time and cost savings by automatically taking care of many parts of the process through AI. Say that we save an average of ten minutes of work per call performed. That quickly adds up. Simultaneously, we enable the financial advisor to focus more on good conversations and dialogue with clients and prospective clients.

Are you looking to expand beyond that?

Yes, definitely. While much of our initial focus is on finance and our home market, we also look abroad and to other industries. 

When looking to transfer your systems and expertise, are there specific areas that need to be addressed? One area could be the unique characteristics of different languages.

Martin: That is an excellent question. All languages have unique features that can complicate speech recognition. For example, Danish has many silent letters, double consonants, and similar sounds.

From an AI language modelling and language deciphering standpoint, this raises questions like where in the process stream to transcribe or translate different elements and input. If you are a nerd about this, like we are, this is part of the fun of developing tools like ours.

Your work, the technical level of your solution, and its huge potential across industries deeply impressed us. That was core to our investment decision. What made you decide to collaborate with Pioneer AI?

Martin: The primary reasons we said yes were the personal relationship, your commercial experience and network, and your enthusiasm for what we are doing. Said slightly differently, we felt you ”got it," were enthusiastic about our technology and solutions, and understood our strengths and where you could add extra value and insights.

The investment will be spent on commercialisation and building out our market presence. In this context, your help and network have already led to introductions and meetings with potential customers.

At the same time, we plan to extend our features and the solutions portfolio.

What do you think? Any comments or thoughts? Let us know via email or contact us on the Pioneer AI LinkedIn page here. 

🎙Nordic AI News Roundup🎙

Exploring some of the biggest AI-related news in and about the Nordics. 

  • Is ChatGPT going to be your personal trainer? This Norwegian researcher and elite athlete coach says it is possible. [NO] (Forskning.no)

  • Denmark’s Radio has assembled an entire TV series looking at artificial intelligence. [DK] (DR)

  • Five Swedish high school students have developed an AI-powered tuition platform, and millions of fellow students follow them on social media. [SE] (DI) (Paywall)

  • Denmark launches sandbox to explore the regulatory boundaries of AI solutions and help speed up AI development. [DK] (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen)

  • Norway’s first group of university students with a bachelor’s degree in AI graduate. [NO] (NRK)

  • The finance industry has been invited to give input on the future of AI. [SE] (FI)

  • Danish scientists use AI to spot cancer with a new method hailed as ‘a game changer’ for cancer treatment. [DK] (TV2)

  • Why Sweden ‘has the potential to be an AI leader.’ [SE] (Telekomidag)

  • The competition for Norway’s one billion kroner earmarked for new AI centres is intensifying. [NO] (Universitetsavisa)

  • Danish companies can use AI to maximise exports and revenues. [DK] (DI)

🛠️Cool Tools & Companies🛠️

Highlighting some of the great Nordic AI tools and companies out there. 

  • Sonolink from Finland is a Generative AI that can amplify every voice.

  • aiXceed from Sweden offers specialized AI solutions for businesses, focusing on education, AI adoption, and managed AI services.

  • Avail from Sweden transforms data into business opportunities with AI and analytics, focusing on brand identity and marketing solutions.

  • Skillscanner from Norway AI-powers recruiters and HR ability to get to know hundreds of candidates with voice-based mini-interviews.

💵Please “Steal” This Startup Idea💵

Want to build the following (if you do, we might invest in you)?

Introducing DataPure AI, the AI-powered data-quality tool. DataPure AI audits and enhances datasets, identifying inconsistencies, filling gaps, and standardising formats. This process boosts the accuracy and reliability of any AI models or systems that companies wish to deploy. Business moats include proprietary data enhancement technology and deep expertise in AI model training.

🚀AI Funding News🚀

Select Nordic AI deals, investments, acquisitions and insights. 

Congratulations to all of the founders and teams!

Pioneer AI’s top Nordic AI funding insights and highlights:

This week, we want to talk a bit more about our investment in Alvenir.

Our decision to collaborate with and provide funding to Alvenir starts with the company’s impressive team and its cutting-edge speech recognition technology.

We believe that the technology and associated AI-powered solutions have immense potential.

Alvenir's AI solutions streamline processes, allowing professionals to dedicate more time to personal service and customer relationships without compromising data security or compliance requirements.

We view AI’s ability to give people more time to focus on what we as humans do best - and tend to enjoy most - as one of its core strengths. That view contributed to making this investment a natural fit.

The investment also exemplifies where we see a lot of potential value in- and much of the future of - the AI startup ecosystem.

Startups are delving deeper into technological innovation, better industry focus for their solutions, and crafting robust growth strategies that lead to early ROIs.

Pioneer AI takes pride in fostering these developments by providing financial support, strategic guidance, and collaboration.

We believe that this holistic approach ensures that the companies Pioneer AI invests in, like Alvenir, are well-equipped to navigate their growth journeys and achieve lasting success in an ever-evolving industry space.

🎧Listen To🎧

Nordic AI news and analysis for your ears.

  • Prompt [DK] - Has Europe missed the AI ​​train, which now only stops in China and the US?

  • In Good Company - The Norwegian Wealth Fund podcast speaks to Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, about the latest advancements in AI, its economic impact, and the importance of responsible scaling.

  • AI Sweden Podcast [SE] - Courageous leadership is key to successfully implementing AI. However,, Swedish CEOs show less commitment to AI compared to other countries. Do Swedish leaders have what it takes?

📅Training, Meetups & Conferences📅

Conferences

  • July 18-19: ICAIAE 2024: Scientific conference for exchanging and sharing experiences and results of using AI for education. [Copenhagen, Denmark]

  • August 20-23: Robophilosophy Conference 2024: Social robots with AI: prospects, risks, and responsible methods. [Aarhus, Denmark]

  • October 14-18: Process Mining Conference 2024: Industry and scientific conference on process mining. [Copenhagen, Denmark]

  • October 18: IMA AI Conference: The 50th International Management Assistants Conference will examine the state of the industry and potential disruptions by AI. [Stockholm, Sweden]

  • October 21-22: Nordic AI Meet: Symposium early-career AI researchers to network, collaborate, exchange ideas, and form a Nordic approach to building AI solutions for the societal good. [Helsinki, Finland]

  • October 21-23: D3A: The Danish Digitalization, Data Science and AI brings together a diverse audience to explore the latest trends and research in AI. [Nyborg, Denmark]

Meetups

Do you know an event, meetup or similar that you think should be on the list? Let me know!

Got an AI story or insight from the Nordics? Share it with me!

Reply to this email or connect on LinkedIn.

Until next time,

Pioneer Venture AI,