Ark Kapital Expands Presence in Finland With €400 Million Capital Pool

The Swedish Tech lender Ark Kapital, extends its presence into the Finnish market. Ark Kapital provides tech companies with access to up to €10 million founder-friendly and non-dilutive funding combined with its unrivaled growth forecasting platform AIM. Thereby ArK is making over €400 million non-dilutive capital available to European tech startups, as a complement to traditional venture capital, as they master the shift towards profitability.

With today’s launch, ArK introduces a new model for Finnish founders and tech companies to grow their business, offering access to non-dilutive loans and access to world class growth forecasting, via AIM, founders simply plug into ArK’s machine learning platform with all their growth related accounts and in return get access to a detailed 5-year forecast – from which they can access customized funding. ArK’s financial product suite gives access to a transformative, large growth loan that spans between €1-€10 million, lasting up to seven years, with repayments not starting for two-to-three years, completely non-dilutive.

“We’re happy to bring a new asset class to the Finnish tech ecosystem. And with the continuous decline in venture capital, pressuring companies to redraw their playbooks and optimize for profitability, we believe the timing couldn’t be better.” says Henrik Landgren, co-founder and CPTO at Ark Kapital. “Since the founding of ArK, we’ve seen a growing need for access to capital offered on founders’ terms, with longer repayment periods, flexibility outside traditional equity rounds, and as a complement to venture capital.”

While 2023 continues to see a distinct decline in the flow of venture capital into the European tech market. Finnish technology company Giosg, which provides customer engagement and analytics tools for businesses to improve customer satisfaction, conversions, and sales online, fuels their future growth and paves a path towards profitability with Ark’s Growth Loan.“We’re happy to inject new capital to fuel future growth on our own terms whilst accumulating and monitoring insights and optimizing for long-term profitability.”, says Ville Rissanen, CEO at Giosg. “Additional financing options becoming available for companies, like us, and for the wider ecosystem is an overall net positive.”

In the current financial climate, the credit market has historically been closed off for early stage tech companies, as banks haven’t been able to properly risk assess companies with not-yet profitable growth. With ArK’s always-connected approach to underwriting it’s now possible to bridge the gap between the credit market and the startup community – opening the way for more companies to secure access to funding from a sizeable larger pool compared to only venture capital.

In record time, Ark Kapital has seen significant demand in the Nordic region for its financial products and frontier growth forecasting platform and is planning on further market expansions in 2023. The team is backed by no less than additional six unicorn founders, Hjalmar Winbladh of Epidemic Sound and founding partner of EQT Ventures, Jacob De Geer of IZettle, Timo Soininen of Small Giant Games, Ilkka Paanen of Supercell Sebastian Knutsson of King, Riccardo Zacconi of King, and Steve Anavi of Qonto.