PSV Hafnium, the Technical University of Denmark’s spinout fund, has closed its first fund at €60m to back Nordic deeptechs with their origins in research.
Partner Anders Kjær believes its strategy will lead it to find the next wave of successful deeptech companies coming out of Nordic technical universities.
“Our job is to bridge the gap between lab and market for deeptech in the Nordics, in areas like quantum, clean energy and science-based AI,” Kjær says.
The fund is backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), Danish sovereign fund EIFO, PSV Foundry (a subsidiary fully owned by DTU), Nordea-fonden and the Danish Society of Engineers.
Around 40 deeptech individuals and family offices also came on board as LPs, and they’ll act as advisors or board members depending on their expertise.
“When we set out the fund a year and a half ago, it was with an assumption that more capital would come and that the deeptech ecosystem, locally and regionally, would evolve fast. And so it has,” Kjær says.
“We don’t do AI digital”
The fund will invest €100k-1m into 25 startups over the fund’s lifetime, and PSV aims to be the lead investor but will invite other funds to co-invest. Two-thirds of the fund will be reserved for follow-on investments.
It’ll support founders from the earliest stages through early commercialisation and has already invested in nine companies from the fund.
It’s also not chasing the hype around AI agents.
“We don’t do AI ‘digital’”, Kjær says. “We do AI, and we have hardware and software in some of our companies, all intertwined, implemented in big pieces of hardware, whether it be in quantum or in energy solutions.”
“We could also back a sophisticated quantum AI, but it has to be really based on science.”
Elevating science-driven entrepreneurship in the Nordics
As science-based startups become increasingly critical to global competitiveness, the fund’s strategy aligns with Europe’s ambition to lead in deeptech commercialisation, according to Kjær.
As the fund is a spinout from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), it’ll stay close to its origins and focus on science-driven innovation born at technical universities or developed in close collaboration with leading research institutions.
“It’s really strong for us to be on DTU, because DTU is actually involved in more or less everything in Denmark,” Kjær says, noting that it was ranked in the top 10 universities for technology innovation by HelloTomorrow’s recent Engirank.
