Investment: “Volve raises $3M”
Volve develops an intelligence platform for contractors and public-sector clients involved in construction tendering and preconstruction and has raised $3 million (NOK 30 million) in seed funding to further develop its platform and support expansion across Europe. The round was led by Skyfall Ventures.
The round included participation from J12, Norrsken Evolve, OBOS Ventures, Antler and StartupLab, alongside angel investors including Daniel Kjørberg Siraj, the former CEO of Nordic housing and urban development company OBOS.
Founded in 2024 by Herman Smith, Abyl Ikshanov and Alf Jørgen Dovland and headquartered in Oslo, Volve builds an intelligence platform intended to support commercial decision-making in tendering and preconstruction. The company targets main contractors and public clients, aiming to help teams decide whether to bid for projects, how to price them and how to assess contractual and operational risks before construction starts.
The platform analyses large volumes of contracts, drawings, requirements and technical specifications, mapping relationships between requirements, project scope and potential risks to give teams a structured view of the information used to prepare bids. It also helps align bids with client evaluation criteria and supports review of offers from subcontractors; according to the company, around 80 per cent of a project’s cost is determined before a contract is signed, making tendering and preconstruction a critical stage for margins and risk management.
Volve is already used by main contractors and public clients across the Nordics and is building its presence in the UK and continental Europe. Alongside the funding, the company is rolling out a new graph-based structure designed to retain and connect knowledge across projects so that knowledge generated during one tender can inform subsequent bids rather than requiring teams to start from scratch.
The new capital will be used to deepen Volve’s product offering for main contractors and public clients and to accelerate its European expansion, with the company positioning the platform as an intelligence layer for commercial decision-making across tendering and preconstruction.
“Construction is a project business: you have to win projects to stay in business, but winning on the wrong terms is worse than losing,” said Herman Smith, co-founder and CEO of Volve.
