Einride’s Founders Start a VC Firm to Build Europe’s Next Unicorns

Two co-founders of Einride have started something new. Robert Falck, Linnéa Kornehed Falck and former McKinsey partner Robert Westerdahl unveiled Navisalma at TechBBQ in Copenhagen, pitching it as a platform to grow European frontier technology into global companies. Falck is CEO. Kornehed Falck and Westerdahl are founding partners.

Their diagnosis is blunt: Europe is strong at research, engineering and design, but far less reliable when it comes to turning those strengths into market winners. Falck said Europe creates technology well, but not value at the same level. Navisalma’s answer is to avoid the usual startup assembly line and instead bundle investment, product development, design, brand building and scaling into one platform.

Westerdahl frames the model as a bridge between venture capital and private equity. The firm wants the speed and ambition of frontier-tech investing, but also the discipline that usually shows up later, when a company has to scale and actually capture value. Kornehed Falck’s pitch is that design is not decoration. It is part of what makes a technology company matter in the first place.

The money is still being lined up. Navisalma is reportedly aiming for around €450 million over the next three years to back European deep tech, including robotics. For now, it is starting with roughly €40 million, most of it said to already be committed by the founders and other investors, and that sum is meant to cover operating costs as well as initial seed investments. The first portfolio company is Abundry, a Swedish startup using AI and decision intelligence to make better use of existing energy infrastructure.

Navisalma also grew out of Einride in a very literal way. Einride sold its design organization a few months ago to Navisalma Design, a newly formed studio created by Kornehed Falck and partners. The unit had handled product design, industrial design and creative work, and Einride said outside demand had been growing. Einride kept a minority stake and signed a three-year retainer for brand, design and marketing support. The timing is awkward in the interesting way: Einride went public on Nasdaq in June through a SPAC merger, and its founders are already trying to build the next thing.