Inside Finland’s next wave of innovation: 10 promising startups to keep an eye on this 2026!

Following our series of country articles, today we turn our focus north to Finland, exploring the forces shaping its startup ecosystem and the companies driving innovation across deeptech, energy, health, AI, and mobility.

Finland has long been recognised for its strong engineering tradition, world-class education system, and close collaboration between academia, industry, and the public sector. In recent years, the country has reinforced its position as a key innovation hub in Northern Europe, with Helsinki and Espoo at the centre of this momentum. The ecosystem is supported by research-driven universities, active public actors, and a growing pool of international investors, particularly in areas such as clean energy, quantum technologies, autonomous systems, and healthtech.

In this article, we highlight 10 of the most promising Finnish startups, all founded between 2023 and today, that illustrate the breadth and depth of innovation emerging from the country!

Founded in 2024 in Helsinki, Distance Technologies is a deeptech startup developing AI-driven optics and computer vision technology that transforms transparent surfaces into 3D lightfield displays. Its platform enables pixel-level depth control, allowing digital content to appear at any distance and merge seamlessly with the real world, without the need for glasses or headsets.

The technology is designed for demanding defence, aerospace, and automotive environments, where it acts as a visual front-end for sensor fusion by combining inputs such as lidar, radar, and thermal data into a coherent 3D layer. In vehicles, it enables next-generation lightfield head-up displays that improve situational awareness and safety. The company has raised €11.8 million to further develop its platform and expand industrial deployments.

Launched in 2024, Helsinki-based Donut Lab develops a fully integrated electric vehicle technology platform that combines motors, batteries, control hardware, and software into a single system. The company is best known for its all-solid-state battery technology, designed for real-world deployment, offering high energy density, fast charging, long cycle life, and lower cost compared to traditional lithium-ion solutions.

As part of its unified EV platform, Donut Lab also develops in-wheel electric motors that enable simpler vehicle architectures and higher torque with reduced weight. Its technologies are already in production use across multiple programmes, including electric motorcycles, lightweight EV platforms, and industrial applications such as robotic load control systems. The company has raised €40 million to scale its platform and support partners building next-generation electric mobility solutions.

Founded in 2023 and based in Espoo, Gosta Labs is a healthtech startup building a trusted AI operating system designed to support healthcare professionals in their day-to-day clinical work. Its platform reduces administrative burden by automating tasks such as clinical note generation, structuring patient data, and surfacing relevant insights in real time, allowing clinicians to focus more on patient care.

The system is already used across tens of thousands of clinical appointments and is designed for real-world clinical environments, combining medical expertise with AI developed on secure European infrastructure. Founded by former Kaiku Health entrepreneurs, the company has raised €8.7 million to further develop its AI models, expand deployments across public and private healthcare providers, and support regulatory-compliant scaling across Europe.

Founded in 2024 in Helsinki, NestAI is building autonomous systems and command capabilities for real-world, mission-critical environments. The company operates at the intersection of software, hardware, and AI, developing technologies designed for situations where reliability, safety, and accountability are essential.

With close to 100 engineers and scientists, NestAI focuses on open and interoperable architectures that allow critical systems to evolve without vendor lock-in. Its platforms support autonomous operations across sectors such as defence, infrastructure, and security, combining sensing, autonomy, and command capabilities into deployable systems. To date, they have raised €100 million to scale their technology and expand real-world deployments across Europe.

Founded in 2023 in Helsinki, Perfat Technologies is a food deeptech company developing lipid-based technology that enables healthy liquid vegetable oils to behave like semi-solid or solid fats. Using material physics rather than chemical modification, its solution provides the structure and functionality required for food processing while significantly reducing saturated fat content.

The company’s technology is designed to help food producers replace conventional fats such as butter and palm oil with healthier alternatives, without compromising taste or performance across different food applications. Perfat Technologies has raised €3.5 million to scale its lipid platform, support industrial validation, and expand partnerships within the food manufacturing sector.

Founded in Espoo in 2024, QMill is a quantum computing software company developing algorithms designed to deliver practical quantum advantage in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era. The company focuses on making quantum computing useful before fully fault-tolerant machines arrive, by creating algorithms and software that can run on near-term quantum hardware.

QMill’s first product, an AI-powered quantum circuit compression tool, enables users to compress, run, and compare quantum circuits more efficiently across different platforms. The company develops quantum-advantage algorithms intended for real-world applications and has raised €5 million to advance its software, expand research partnerships, and support early commercial deployments.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Espoo, SemiQon develops silicon-based quantum processors designed to support the large-scale deployment of quantum computers. The company focuses on building cryogenic-ready quantum hardware that is more scalable, affordable, and energy-efficient than existing approaches, targeting the future million-qubit era.

SemiQon’s portfolio includes silicon quantum dot devices, cryogenic CMOS technologies, and next-generation quantum integrated circuits designed for both quantum computing and space applications. They have secured €19.4 million in funding to advance their hardware roadmap, support industrial partnerships, and accelerate the development of scalable quantum processing units.

Based in Espoo, Sensible 4 is a deeptech startup developing autonomous driving software designed to operate reliably in harsh weather and challenging environments. Its technology is built to function in conditions such as snow, ice, heavy rain, and low visibility, addressing one of the key limitations of conventional autonomous systems.

The company’s DAWN platform enables Level 4 autonomy for industrial and commercial vehicles across both closed sites and public roads, with applications ranging from industrial trucking to defence mobility and autonomous transport. Founded in 2017, but reorganised in 2025, Sensible 4 combines AI-driven perception, decision-making, and modular retrofit hardware to enable rapid deployment across existing fleets. To date, they have €14.5 million to scale their technology and expand global deployments.

Founded in 2025 in Helsinki, Solid IO is a biotech startup developing patient-specific tumour-on-chip technology designed to improve precision in cancer care. Its platform replicates an individual patient’s tumour microenvironment, generating real-time insights into how cancers respond to immuno-oncology treatments and enabling more informed, data-driven clinical decisions.

By combining bioengineering, AI, and translational oncology expertise, Solid IO aims to reduce trial-and-error in cancer treatment while accelerating drug development and clinical research. The company’s technology is designed to work across multiple cancer types and therapies, supporting both clinicians and pharmaceutical partners. Solid IO has landed €800k to advance its platform and expand collaborations in precision oncology.

Founded in Helsinki in 2023, Steady Energy develops compact nuclear heating plants designed to provide zero-carbon district heating. The company focuses exclusively on heat production, applying simplified and proven light-water nuclear technology to address one of Europe’s most carbon-intensive energy challenges.

At the core of its solution is the LDR-50 nuclear reactor, which operates at significantly lower temperatures and pressures than conventional reactors, enabling safer, more cost-effective deployment close to urban areas. Steady Energy’s approach is designed to complement renewable energy by decoupling heating demand from the electricity grid, particularly during winter months. The company has secured €44 million to advance its pilot plant and move towards commercial deployment later this decade.

By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!

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