PSV Tech has locked in €56 million for its second fund, doubling down on the Nordic region’s earliest-stage founders. The Copenhagen-based venture firm closed Fund II with fresh backing from Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker and Nordea-fonden, alongside returning limited partners ATP, EIFO, and IDA.
The announcement caps a 25-year trajectory that began in the corridors of the Technical University of Denmark. What started as a campus initiative to commercialize Danish research has evolved into a venture platform managing nearly 500 early-stage investments across the region.
General Partners Helle Uth, Richard Breiter, Alexander Viterbo-Horten, and Christel Piron lead the fund. Their mandate remains unchanged since PSV Tech spun out of PSV Venture House in 2020: write checks before founders have proven product-market fit.
Uth frames the challenge bluntly. At this stage, there is little market data to evaluate. The team becomes the primary signal.
“You don’t necessarily have the product or traction to evaluate, so the main parameter we can assess is the team,” Uth explains.
The firm has spent years refining its pattern recognition for founding teams that can survive when plans collapse. That adaptability matters more now, Uth argues, because AI has reshaped what early-stage companies need.
“One of the clearest things we’re seeing is that companies can do much more with less,” she notes. “They don’t need to build really large teams really quickly.”
Meanwhile, startups emerging from research environments increasingly bring proprietary technology and IP beyond off-the-shelf AI models. Uth stresses that distribution, not raw technology, will likely determine winners in this cycle.
Fund II has already deployed capital into 19 companies. Eleven of those investments, spread across Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, remain unannounced. The first fund backed 47 startups and logged six exits, including Helloflow and Heyhack. Portfolio companies Teton and Spektr have since raised $20 million Series A rounds.
Uth sees Stockholm’s startup flywheel, where successful founders recycle capital and talent into new ventures, now forming in Denmark. Senior executives from scaled companies are leaving to start again.
“Those same patterns are emerging in Denmark,” she observes.
The risk, Uth warns, lies in Europe’s fixation on late-stage capital shortages while early-stage funding withers. No scaleups exist without the pre-seed checks that create them.
DTU President Anders Bjarklev frames the moment as a continuation of the university’s founding mission: converting knowledge into societal value through risk capital and courage.
