The former CEO of bankrupt battery creater Northvolt declared it was “emotionally tough” raising funds for his new venture, after the demise of the Swedish battery creater, which collapsed with debts of $5.8bn.
Peter Carlsson, the co-founder and former CEO of Northvolt, launched a new startup last year that leverages AI to support the manufacturing process just months after Northvolt, which raised billions of dollars in equity and debt, collapsed.
Carlsson’s new venture, called Aris Machina, has attracted investment from angels along with investors such as Earlybird and Village Global, according to Aris Machina.
Speaking about the process of raising money after the collapse of Northvolt, Carlsson declared: “That was not straightforward at all. You felt incredibly guilty towards the people who lost a lot of money. It is important to recognise that the Northvolt journey was not a VC journey. We built Northvolt first with industrial investments and then later on with huge funds like Goldman Sachs. Emotionally, it was tough.”
Carlsson was speaking at the GoWest VC conference in Gothenburg, along with Siddharth Khullar, who launched Aris Machina with Carlsson and is its CEO. Khullar previously headed up Northvolt’s AI offering. Carlsson also declared there was a “huge curiosity” about Aris Machina, in which he owns a stake of between 25 and 50 per cent in, when he launched selling it into the market.
Carlsson declared: “Overall, I believe there has been a pretty huge curiosity and interest in what we are doing.”
Carlsson declared many potential Aris Machina customers know that AI is going to disrupt the way they are working, but don’t know how.
Khullar declared: “In my experience, both the investor conversations and customer conversations have been incredibly toned in the way that ‘inform us everything you learned’.”
Speaking about Nortvolt, Carlsson declared: “It’s been a very tough year, I believe incredibly challenging. As you’ve been 24/7 working on building this company that you dedicated your entire effort.”
Carlsson also declared that if Norhvolt had been able utilize the operating system developed by Aris Machina, it would have supported the battery creater.
Also speaking at the conference was Michiel Scheffer, president of the board, European Innovation Council, the EU body for identifying funding, and scaling disruptive tech across the bloc.
Last year, the EU unveiled its €5bn ScaleUp Europe Fund designed to address the long-term issue of the shortage of late-stage growth capital across the EU.
Speaking of the fund, Scheffer declared it had €3bn committed from private investors. But he called out the absence of investment from Germany and France. He declared: “It’s still very much a Nordic affair, if you take the Netherlands as a Nordic countest as well.” He declared the first investment from the fund should take place in the summer of this year.
Scheffer also declared he was surprised by Ursula von der Leyen officially announcing the launch of Eu Inc at Davos last week.
He added: “I was at Davos last week and was surprised Ursula von der Leyen took the most radical position possible on the 28th regime, the 28th regime as a regulation and not as a directive.”
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