HELSINKI, FINLAND: Today NordicNinja VC, has made a series A investment in Einride, a Swedish company developing an autonomous, electric transport system, together with EQT Ventures fund (“EQT Ventures”). Other investors joining the round include Ericsson Ventures, Norrsken Foundation, Plum Alley Investments and Plug and Play Ventures.
Einride was founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, Filip Lilja and Linnéa Kornehed. Einride develops intelligent transportation solutions – sustainable, cost-effective and safe – and has gained global recognition for the Pod, the first truck specifically designed for electric propulsion and autonomous driving. This March, the Swedish Transport Agency concluded that the Einride Pod is able to operate in accordance with Swedish traffic regulations and approved Einride’s application to expand the pilot to a public road, which it did in May in collaboration with its customer and partner DB Schenker. Einride has ambitious plan to expand their business globally.
“Our ambition is to disrupt the transport industry and closing our series A brings us one step closer to that goal. The funding will allow us to start expanding in the US, deliver on our technology road map and to meet rapidly increasing customer demand”, says Robert Falck, CEO & founder of Einride.
“Einride’s solution in transportation solves the environmental, safety and manpower problems that have haunted the industry for years. Moreover, their fleet system has a unique potential to make long distance ground transport as reliable as water. This is truly revolutionary.” says Marek Kiisa, the Managing Partner of NordicNinja VC.
“Nowadays the road freight industry faces a lot of difficulty including driver shortage and it is forced to be disrupted. We are deeply impressed with what the team of Einride has achieved and we believe that their solution is essential in this industry all over the world.” says Tomosaku Sohara, the Managing Partner of NordicNinja VC.
NordicNinja VC started with over 100 million euros in January 2019 and is backed by Japanese blue-chip companies, Honda, Omron, and Panasonic, as well as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. It aims to support scale-up goals in the Nordic and Baltic region through supporting the region’s startups expand into and develop business opportunities in Japan.
