New strategy from TESI

The Finnish Industry Investment Ltd (TESI) unveiled a new strategy to the Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs.

During the years 2025 - 2029, the governmental investment bodies of Finland (such as the Climate Fund) will be combined into TESI. This means that the yearly investment capital available to TESI will increase by about 250M annually.

At the same time as the total investable capital is increasing, the focus is also shifting. The share of direct investments in the past 4 years has been about 25%. That share is supposed to be increased to over 60%. This is at the same time as the focus in their LP work is shifting towards funding bigger, over 100M, funds.

This means that the smaller funds of Finland are at risk of dying off.

In my opinion, this is a good move. Finland has become a bit of a micro VC nation. Focusing the funding on specific sectors and bigger funds allows successful Finnish startups to grow bigger than before with Finnish capital and it forces the unsuccessful startups to die off faster, allowing the founders to either find the next better working idea.

 
- Roope Ripatti

Exciting news 

YC summer batch demo day stats

The most striking trend? The dominance of AI. A staggering 67% of startups in this batch are categorized as AI companies. Just three years ago, this figure stood at a mere 13%.

More than half of the companies (55%) have a founder with a Master's degree or Ph.D. Also, 72% of the startups include a founder with a computer science background.

54% of startups sporting two co-founders. This is similar to previous years

Interestingly, nearly half (48%) of the companies include at least one second-time founder.

Location-wise, Silicon Valley's gravitational pull remains strong, with 67% of the startups based in San Francisco.

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News from Oura

Oura is the global leader in smart ring technologies started in the northern city of Oulu in Finland.

In the latest news, they unveiled the newest smart ring generation. The rings look amazing, which is not a surprise after the Finnish ex-Apple designer Miklu Silvanto joined the team in the summer.

On top of a new ring generation, Oura had a massive deal done with the US military. It will supply the Defence Health Agency with 96M worth of rings and additional services.

OpenAI news

OpenAI finally released its real-time voice model, but because of the EU AI act, we will have to wait a bit more to access it through ChatGPT. You can access the real-time API if you have a paying OpenAI developer account.
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OpenAI also unveiled its Canvas tool. A new way of writing text and code with the help of an AI
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Finnish Startup News

Synergi raises a 2M seed round!
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Timma is acquired by EG, a Danish startup.
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Upcoming stuff

Mon 14.10.

Wed 16.10.

Parvi Cube Hackathon (Lappeenranta)

Thu 17.10.

Sat 19.10.

Help needed

Wednesday is looking for new actives and core team members for the year 2025!

If you are curious about helping women and non-binary people in the startup ecosystem, go check their roles out!

Fuck shit up!

-Roope