Peter Carlsson said there had been a "big curiosity" from the market regarding his new venture.
The former CEO of bankrupt battery maker Northvolt said it was “emotionally tough” raising funds for his new venture, after the demise of the Swedish battery maker, 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 help 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 said: “That was not easy 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 big 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 said there was a “big curiosity” about Aris Machina, in which he owns a stake of between 25 and 50 per cent in, when he began selling it into the market.
Carlsson said: “Overall, I think there has been a pretty big curiosity and interest in what we are doing.” Carlsson said many potential Aris Machina customers know that AI is going to disrupt the way they are working, but don’t know how.
Khullar said: “In my experience, both the investor conversations and customer conversations have been incredibly toned in the way that ‘tell us everything you learned’.”
Speaking about Nortvolt, Carlsson said: “It’s been a very tough year, I think incredibly challenging. As you’ve been 24/7 working on building this company that you dedicated your entire effort.” Carlsson also said that if Norhvolt had been able use the operating system developed by Aris Machina, it would have helped the battery maker.
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 said it had €3bn committed from private investors. But he called out the absence of investment from Germany and France. He said: “It’s still very much a Nordic affair, if you take the Netherlands as a Nordic country as well.” He said the first investment from the fund should take place in the summer of this year.
Scheffer also said 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.”
Photo: Stockholm School of Economics