Vigilens builds sovereign European AI governance infrastructure, and the latest addition to NORA's startup network. A small team located in Oslo, they are joining the network to meet future potential collaborators - whether students, research groups working on AI safety, evaluation and formal methods, or public-sector partners. We asked CEO Abdul Wahab Majeed some questions to introduce them to our network:
Faunus Hub, part of the NORA Startup network, has been awarded the Gründerprisen 2025 for its work turning real-time barn observations and predictive analytics into practical tools for improved broiler production and animal welfare. The award, presented by GründerAcademy in partnership with Sparebank1 Sør-Norge, includes a NOK 250,000 grant to support the company’s continued development.
In a drive to bring academia and industry closer, NORA Research School and NORA Startup hosted the knowledge‑sharing event Innovate Together: Academia Meets Industry in collaboration with UiB AI at the UiB Learning Arena in Bergen. The event — attended by more than 40 researchers and PhD candidates — focused on equipping early‑career researchers with the skills and perspectives needed to transform research into practical applications and to explore careers in industry.
The Norwegian startup Reliable AI — a member of the NORA.startup network — won the Outstanding Demo Award at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2025 in Bologna. ECAI, Europe’s oldest and most prestigious AI conference, convenes thousands of researchers, industry leaders, and technology communities worldwide. The 2025 conference ran from Monday to Thursday, with one full day dedicated to demo presentations.
We're seeking thoughtful leaders and innovators to join our Steering Group and strengthen the connection between academic research and practical AI applications in Norway. If you're keen to contribute to shaping how AI, Machine Learning, and robotics develop across Norwegian institutions, we want to hear from you. Application form: https://nettskjema.no/a/388787
At Oslo Innovation Week 2024, Gründergarasjen and NORA.startup's event illuminated the complex interplay between AI startups and academic research.
Snezhina joins the NORA.ai team as a Senior Adviser with responsibility for NORA.startup - she is looking forward to working with the startup network on their innovative ventures within AI
We are thrilled to announce the addition of new representatives to the NORA.startup steering group, marking an exciting chapter in our continuous journey towards fostering innovation and entrepreneurship within the field of AI in Norway. The NORA.startup steering group plays a crucial role in guiding our initiatives, and we are delighted to welcome aboard individuals who bring diverse perspectives and expertise to the table.
NORA.startup are currently seeking representatives to the NORA.startup steering group.
On the 23rd of November, NORA.startup, in collaboration with the University of Oslo, NMBU, BI Norwegian Business School, Simula, Kristiania University College and OsloMet hosted a Student-Startup Matchmaking event at Startuplab Oslo. The event was attended by 60+ bachelor and master students, PhDs and researchers from data science, computer science, civil engineering, signal processing, cybernetics and robotics, technology and knowledge management, innovation and business development, entrepreneurship and innovation and international business, who are interested in learning more about innovation and cutting edge AI projects taking place in Norway.
HANCE.ai is a member of NORA’s innovation ecosystem, NORA.startup. Collaborating with academic institutions has played a significant role in shaping HANCE.ai, and they have master students as part of the team. More about that later, here comes the full story.
Arealize's journey started in 2020 when the three co-founders, Sophie Irgens, Yanislav Zagorov and Benedicte-Elise Foldnes, joined forces while pursuing their master's degrees at NTNU School of Entrepreneurship in Trondheim. United by a common mission, they embarked on a quest to pioneer cutting-edge technology that could empower property stakeholders to swiftly visualize spaces and explore different layouts.
Kristiania University College 3rd year Bachelor Students complete Bachelor Projects working for AIVEO & Bergen Robotics!
In NORA.startup, we firmly believe that working for startups is a unique opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience, test their knowledge and build their CVs. Not only do students get the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge technologies that startups are developing, they also get a chance to showcase their skills and experience, and potentially secure positions or project-based work.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) has decided to grant Iris.ai 145 million NOK for the outstanding work on their AI engine for scientific text understanding, The Researcher Workspace. Horizon Europe is the world's largest research funding initiative and through their accelerator program, The European Innovation Council Accelerator, Iris.ai were among 78 companies who succeeded with their applications for funding this year, outcompeting over a thousand other qualified candidates. Only 15% of the selected 78 startups had a female CEO. This grant is awarded to innovations that have a particular potential for growth and that have an international appeal, and having a positive impact on society and the environment is also weighted as part of the decision. Iris.ai is a pioneering company, both when it comes to innovation and exceptional technology development, but also when it comes to going the distance to obtain EIC funding, which should both inspire and challenge other Norwegian startups.
Congratulations to Factiverse who got an IPN over the summer! An Innovation Project for the Industrial Sector, or IPN for short, is a funding instrument providing grants to innovation projects led by businesses which rely extensively on R&D activities. The funding was given to Factiverse with partners, namely the University of Bergen (UiB), the University of Delft in the Netherlands and Faktisk.no. We met up with Head of Engineering Christopher Maxwell and Data Scientist Maximillian Reimer, who work at Factiverse.
We want to hear from you!
Soundsensing is one of many NORA.startup members to be granted funding for an IPN alongside Solgt.no, Mobai and Factiverse. An Innovation Project for the Industrial Sector, or IPN for short, is a funding instrument providing grants to innovation projects led by businesses which rely extensively on R&D activities. Soundsensing will be collaborating with SINTEF and the Norwegian Computing Center (Norsk regnesentral) as well as an industry partner, the real estate advisory Malling & Co. We met up with co-founder and CEO Ole Johan Bjerke in their offices at Startuplab.
Disputas is an EdTech and AI company with the dual aim of enabling active learning in qualitative subjects and scaling data collection for complex concepts in natural language processing. The past two years we have built Ponder; a platform for making and doing practice assignments involving text-analysis. The fall of 2022 we will have the beginnings of a student annotated corpus with labels from law and informal logic. In 2023 we want to assess these datasets, before scaling up. We would appreciate suggestions concerning how to test the data in a research context.
Three Norwegian companies, among them NORA.startup member Digifarm, have received approximately NOK 60 million in funding from the EU.
NORA is proud to see our startup members being recognized in prominent news channels, and it's an inspiration to see the founder and CEO of Boost.ai, Lars Selsås, reward all his employees for their effort in scaling up the company by giving half his shares away to them!
NORA.startup has been recognised as an entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem by Innovation Norway! This is an important milestone for NORA.startup and will further strengthen NORA’s work towards supporting Norwegian startups specialising in developing solutions, products and services based on artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, with a high focus on research based innovation.
Soundsensing just got accepted as one of the speakers at this years TinyML summit in March. Find us in between speakers from Google, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. Topic for the talk will be “Environmental Noise Classification on Microcontrollers”
