{"id":574497,"date":"2026-07-08T04:51:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T04:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/574497\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T04:51:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T04:51:43","slug":"hive-raises-15m-in-pre-series-a-to-create-a-silicon-brain-that-can-operate-any-industrial-machine-tfn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/574497\/","title":{"rendered":"Hive raises $15M in pre-Series A to create a silicon brain that can operate any industrial machine \u2014 TFN"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>HIVE, a Physical AI startup from Kristiansand, has secured $15 million in pre-Series A funding led by SuperSeed. <\/li>\n<li>The company\u2019s technology is already being used in tunnels, quarries, and logistics locations. Proof of the effectiveness of physical AI in industrial settings should come this year.<\/li>\n<li>HIVE has 52 employees and is expanding from Europe into the US. The company has not disclosed its total funding to date.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/christoffer-j%C3%B8rgenv%C3%A5g-0bb90b13\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Christoffer J\u00f8rgenv\u00e5g<\/a> started out developing control systems and later sold the company that built them. From that, he realised it would be better to create a single intelligence to run all the machines, rather than making each machine smarter on its own. <\/p>\n<p>This idea led him to start <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hiveautonomy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">HIVE<\/a>, the Kristiansand-based company that just closed a $15 million pre-Series A round. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/techfundingnews.com\/superseed-50m-fund-iii-physical-ai-british-business-bank\/\" type=\"post\" id=\"62840\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">SuperSeed<\/a>, a London-based firm focused on Physical AI, led the funding round. Tech Funding News reported in March that SuperSeed\u2019s Fund III, backed by a \u00a350 million cornerstone commitment from the British Business Bank, counts HIVE among its lead investments alongside Ai Build and All3.<\/p>\n<p>Veriten, Skyfall, and Nysn\u00f8 also joined, along with angel investors <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/borgehald\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">B\u00f8rge Hald<\/a>, co-founder of Medallia, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/j%C3%B8rn-lyseggen-1146301\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">J\u00f8rn Lyseggen<\/a>, founder of Meltwater.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where the machines are actually being used<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Founded in 2020, HIVE builds a silicon brain, which can be explained as neural networks trained to act like human operators, which are installed on existing forklifts, wheel loaders, and excavators rather than sold as new hardware.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is not automation, it is trainable AI. When you operate the systems over time, they get smarter,\u201d J\u00f8rgenv\u00e5g explains to Tech Funding News. <\/p>\n<p>This is similar to companies like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyngn.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Cyngn<\/a> in California and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fernride.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Fernride<\/a> in Munich, which also retrofit existing fleets rather than sell new machines. J\u00f8rgenv\u00e5g says most competitors focus on a single machine type, whereas HIVE\u2019s system works across any brand or machine type.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHIVE\u2019s silicon brain is powerful enough to retrofit existing industrial fleets, and the intelligence compounds in value with every hour it runs. That is the defining wave of physical AI for the next decade,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/madsjensen\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Mads Jensen<\/a>, Managing Partner at Superseed.<\/p>\n<p>HIVE\u2019s technology has delivered real results for customers, including a wheel loader at Yara\u2019s Her\u00f8ya plant, a Norwegian Road Authority avalanche-clearance project, an unnamed logistics operator, and a previous partnership with Toyota Material Handling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A fundraising round without urgency<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is J\u00f8rgenv\u00e5g\u2019s first time raising venture capital, even though he previously built and sold a company. He spent a few months in Silicon Valley before this round talking with founders and investors to learn about financing, and turned down capital that didn\u2019t fit HIVE\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n<p>For comparison, Yann LeCun\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/amilabs.xyz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">AMI Labs,<\/a> a frontier AI lab also working on real-world sensor data and physical systems, raised $1.03 billion in a seed round in March, roughly 70 times the size of HIVE\u2019s pre-Series A. When we asked about the scale of physical AI funding generally, J\u00f8rgenv\u00e5g pointed to the sector\u2019s large untapped potential rather than addressing the comparison directly.<\/p>\n<p>Mordor Intelligence reports that the industrial automation market was valued at about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mordorintelligence.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">$238 billion in 2026<\/a> and is expected to grow at 7.55% annually through 2031. This growth is primarily driven by labour shortages and the need to upgrade existing equipment, both of which align with the market gap HIVE aims to fill.<\/p>\n<p>HIVE has 52 employees and plans to use the new funding to hire more tech staff and expand into the US. The company has not disclosed its total funding to date.<\/p>\n<p>The real test for physical AI, on J\u00f8rgenv\u00e5g\u2019s own timeline, comes in the second half of 2026, with cost savings and efficiency gains expected next year rather than this one. Whether HIVE\u2019s silicon brain gets there before the funding runs out, or joins other physical AI companies still looking for proof from real customer data, remains an open question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HIVE, a Physical AI startup from Kristiansand, has secured $15 million in pre-Series A funding led by SuperSeed.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[291,125610,79,18,236,1015,1510,19,17,5,1222,238],"class_list":["post-574497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-ai","tag-autonomous","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-europe","tag-funding","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-robotics","tag-startups"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116882563737356026","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}