Fortum Takes a Late Seat in Norrsken’s €62 Million Fund

Fortum has joined Norrsken Evolve as a limited partner in a €62 million pre-seed fund that closed in July 2026. The Finnish utility, which generated 99 percent of its power from fossil-free sources in 2025, is buying access to more than 80 early companies. The vehicle had already raised €22 million more than its €40 million target.

Gustav Eilertsen, vice president of Innovation and Venturing at Fortum, framed the move as a way to reach the next generation of firms working on electrification, flexibility and industrial carbon cuts. Johan Attby, a general partner at Norrsken Evolve, said Fortum brings knowledge of how energy is generated, moved and sold that financial investors cannot.

Fortum Arrives After Norrsken Evolve Already Closed

Norrsken Evolve is the pre-seed arm of the Norrsken Foundation, set up in 2016 by Klarna co-founder Niklas Adalberth. The fund grew out of Norrsken’s accelerator and is run by general partners Attby, Alex Bakir and Rebecka Löthman Rydå. It writes initial cheques of €250,000 to €500,000, often aiming for about 5 percent if it leads, and keeps follow-on rights when a later round lifts the valuation by 50 percent.

The money was already in. A first close of €57 million landed on 18 August 2025, with the European Investment Fund and Sweden’s state-owned Saminvest on the limited-partner list. The final close at €62 million was announced on 15 July 2026, 55 percent above the €40 million target. Fortum’s commitment, made through Innovation and Venturing, followed that close rather than filling it.

THE FUND’S YEAR TO A LIMITED PARTNER

1. 18 August 2025: Norrsken Evolve announces a first close of €57 million for its inaugural pre-seed fund.
2. 27 April 2026: Norrsken publishes the Electro Union open letter, calling on the EU to run over 50 percent of its economy on clean power by 2040.
3. 15 July 2026: The fund announces a final close at €62 million and a permanent Amsterdam base.
4. 1 September 2026: Norrsken House Amsterdam opens in the Van Gendt Hallen, a 3,600 m² hall on Oostenburg.
5. 25 September 2026: Fortum joins as a limited partner through its Innovation and Venturing arm.

Weeks after the Amsterdam house opened, the new limited partner was a Nordic generator, not another financial fund. Evolve still lists Saminvest and the EIF, backed under InvestEU, as the names on its public financing line. Fortum’s cheque size has not been disclosed.

What an LP Seat Buys a Nordic Utility

A limited partner in a closed pre-seed fund does not pick the next deal. The managers still write the cheques. What changes is who sits behind them, and who the 80 founders can call when they need a grid fact, a pilot, or a buyer.

Fortum sells power, heat and related services to more than two million customers. In 2025 it generated 42.3 TWh, with nuclear at 52 percent, hydro at 44 percent and wind at 2 percent, and specific emissions of 8 g of CO2 per kWh. That is a working energy company, not a thesis on a slide.

The future energy system will be built through faster innovation and closer collaboration between entrepreneurs, investors and industry. Through this partnership, we strengthen our connection to the next generation of companies developing solutions for electrification, flexibility, industrial decarbonisation, and other critical energy challenges.

Gustav Eilertsen, VP, Innovation and Venturing, Fortum

Attby put the same trade in founder language. Europe, he said, has the talent and the technology to run on clean electricity. Fortum’s value is operational depth: how power is generated, moved and sold.

What Fortum brings is the operational depth that financial investors cannot: real knowledge of how energy is generated, moved and sold. Their backing is strong validation of our thesis, and a genuine asset to every founder we invest in.

Johan Attby, General Partner, Norrsken Evolve

That is the second-order deal. Evolve did not need another euro to reach €62 million. It needed someone who runs plants, hedges Nordic power, and signs industrial supply contracts. Fortum, for its part, gets a look at companies years before they show up as vendors, rivals, or takeover files.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The seat: Fortum has joined Norrsken Evolve as a limited partner through Innovation and Venturing.
• The fund: The vehicle closed at €62 million in July 2026 after a €57 million first close in August 2025.
• The book: Evolve says it has invested in 80 companies, and that 75 percent have raised follow-on capital.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The cheque: Fortum has not published the size of its limited-partner commitment.
• The rights: Board observer seats, information rights and any right of first refusal on offtake have not been described.
• The use: There is no public list of which portfolio firms will get Fortum pilots, PPAs or grid advice first.

Until those points land, the partnership is a scouting pass. Founders should treat it as a door into a Nordic utility, not as a signed offtake.

The Direct Stakes Fortum Already Holds

Fortum did not wake up to startups on 25 September 2026. Venture investing ran under the Valkea Growth Club name from 2020, then moved fully under the Fortum brand on 8 December 2025 as Innovation and Venturing. The unit already writes minority cheques, sits in outside funds, and runs a venture-client contest that ends in pilots.

In August 2025 it put a €1.4 million stake in Fifty Energy, a Swedish firm whose software tries to match low-carbon supply and demand. That is a direct bet on flexibility, the same word Eilertsen used about Evolve. At Slush later in 2025, Fortum’s Spark Innovation Challenge put five finalists on stage and handed the win, and a pilot, to Hylosense, a weather-forecasting app for energy operations.

Further back, Fortum was an anchor investor in Valo Ventures Fund 1, a Silicon Valley climate vehicle, with a €150 million commitment over ten years from 2018. Stefan Sonnerstedt, a senior investment manager in the unit, has said Fortum only invests where it can add something besides capital. An LP seat in a Stockholm pre-seed fund is that idea taken earlier: before a company is ready for a €1.4 million cheque, while it is still a €250,000 line on Evolve’s cap table.

FORTUM’S VENTURING STACK

The Evolve seat is the earliest slice of that stack. Direct stakes such as Fifty Energy come later, when a product can plug into Fortum’s own platforms. Spark is a customer trial. Valo is a global look. Pre-seed is where Fortum now wants to be in the room while the idea is still cheap.

Eighty Companies Gain a Path to Nordic Power

Evolve says it has already invested in 80 companies, and that 75 percent of them have raised a later round from other investors. The book is not a pure energy fund. The mandate covers climate, health, resilience, robotics, materials and security. Several names in and around the portfolio are, even so, the sort of firm a Nordic generator actually meets in a control room or a port.

ENERGY-FACING NAMES IN THE NORRSKEN ORBIT

• Spiral Hydrogen: An Estonian team building green hydrogen kit at the Port of Rotterdam, a Dutch co-investment Evolve has already made.
• Super6: A supercapacitor company on Evolve’s early roster and among the Electro Union letter’s signatories.
• Jälle: A materials firm working on battery waste, also on the letter.
• Bubble Robotics: Underwater robots for infrastructure and climate work, backed by Evolve and listed on the letter.
• New Dawn Bio: An Amsterdam company growing wood-like material without felling trees, Evolve’s first institutional cheque in the Dutch market.
• Rye Energy: A portfolio founder Evolve puts on its own site as a face of the programme.

Those firms do not need Fortum’s money for a seed round. They may need a harbour, a heat network, a flexibility market, or someone who already holds nuclear and hydro and knows what a TSO queue looks like from the inside. Evolve’s Dutch sleeve is small, about €3 million, or 5 percent of the fund, aimed at five to eight companies. Fortum’s Nordic footprint is the larger door.

Fortum’s own project list is the other half of that door. Its public-affairs brief cites 800 MW of ready-to-build wind and solar by 2026 and about 8 GW in permitting across the Nordics. It already sells long-term carbon-free power purchase agreements to industry. A pre-seed founder who can ride that offtake, or even get a serious meeting about it, has something a financial LP cannot print.

Europe Still Burns Oil for Most of Its Energy

The partnership is being sold as electrification. The continent’s fuel mix still says otherwise. In 2024, Eurostat’s energy publication put electricity at 23 percent of final energy in the EU. Petroleum products were 37 percent. Gas was 20 percent. Direct use of renewables that never became electricity was 12 percent, derived heat 5 percent, and coal 2 percent.

EU FINAL ENERGY IN 2024

• Petroleum products: 37 percent of final energy, still the largest slice.
• Electricity: 23 percent, the figure the Electro Union campaign wants to more than double by 2040.
• Gas: 20 percent, the other imported fuel the letter wants to squeeze.
• The 2040 ask: over 50 percent of the economy on clean, domestic electricity.

Cleaner power on the grid is not the same as wiring the economy to that grid. Renewables supplied 47.5 percent of EU electricity in 2024. That is a generation story. The consumption story is still oil in tanks and gas in boilers. Norrsken’s letter says about 90 percent of the economy can be electrified with kit that already exists, and that the electricity share has barely moved in more than a decade. Eurostat’s 23 percent is that stall, written as a statistic.

Fortum’s Nordic system is further along on the generation side, which is why its LP seat has bite. Hydro and nuclear already dominate its output. The hard work it describes in its own electrification brief is demand: industry that will not switch without a buyer for low-carbon steel and aluminium, taxes that still treat power as a cash cow, grids that cannot invest ahead of load, and hydrogen rules that freeze nuclear-backed supply out of electrolysis. Pre-seed software and hardware will not clear a permit queue. They might, with a utility in the fund, get a faster hearing.

Norrsken’s Electro Union Letter Lists No Utility

On 27 April 2026, Norrsken VC, Norrsken Evolve and the Norrsken Foundation published an open letter that asked the EU to become the world’s first electro-continent. The concrete ask is a target to run over 50 percent clean domestic electricity by 2040. Signatories run from H&M and Oatly to Einride, Flower, the Energy Transitions Commission and a long tail of climate funds and startups, including several Evolve companies.

We call on the EU to adopt the vision of becoming the world’s first electro-continent, making the EU the Electro-Union by setting a robust target to run over 50 percent of its economy on clean, domestic electricity by 2040.

Norrsken Electro Union open letter, 27 April 2026

The letter’s economics are blunt. Industrial power in the EU, it says, costs about twice what American plants pay and about 50 percent more than in China. In the first 30 days of the war in Iran, it says, the EU paid an extra €14 billion for fossil imports. Wind, solar, hydro and nuclear, it argues, cannot be switched off by a foreign supplier. Fortum is not on the published signatory list. A Nordic generator that already runs 99 percent fossil-free power has joined the fund that helped organise the campaign, and has not put its name on the page.

That gap is the partnership in miniature. Fortum’s public-affairs shop already argues for higher electrification rates, lead markets for low-carbon metals, and bankable flexibility auctions. Norrsken wants a single EU number, 50 percent by 2040, that investors and regulators can share. An LP cheque is easier to sign than a political letter. It also does something the letter cannot: put a working utility inside the cap tables of the companies that will have to connect, store, flex and sell the extra terawatt-hours.

The commitment amount is still private. So is any plan for pilots, PPAs or observer seats. The 80 companies will learn what a Nordic generator does with a pre-seed holding when the first of them needs a queue position, a heat sink, or a long-term power contract, not when the limited-partner notice goes out.