Nuard Ventures

Three equal partners — Otto Keravuori, Pietari Päivänen, and Kalle Hiitola — form the entire investment committee. The firm’s website describes them as generalist operators who directly support portfolio companies; there is no separate CIO or external investment committee disclosed.

Nuard explicitly positions itself as a provider of very early capital, backing founders at pre-seed and seed stages. The portfolio confirms this: most named companies raised their Nuard check as one of the first institutional tickets, often alongside other Nordic pre-seed funds such as Wave Ventures and Superangel.

Both. Direct equity positions — Crown Defence, Elevatix, Complink — are the core activity, but Nuard also commits as a limited partner to select early-stage funds. Confirmed fund investments include First Circle Capital (Africa fintech), Wave Ventures (Nordic pre-seed), FOV Ventures (European metaverse and spatial computing), and Superangel (Baltic AI and mobility).

Nuard’s public materials define a positive thesis — AI, games, productivity tools, and cross-border ideas — rather than a list of excluded sectors. The firm does not mention cleantech hardware, biotech, or regulated financial infrastructure. Its curated portfolio and fund commitments suggest an intentional distance from deep-tech physics risk and capital-intensive manufacturing.

The partnership’s operator history in Finnish and Nordic tech is the primary sourcing engine, augmented by a network of early-stage fund relationships — Wave Ventures, Superangel, FOV Ventures, First Circle Capital — that collectively surface founders across Northern Europe, the Baltics, and select African fintech markets. Nuard’s website frames the network as a core part of its value proposition to founders.

Arte Collectum I AB — a Swedish publicly traded art-investment fund — appears in Nuard’s portfolio under ‘Fund’ type, confirming an LP commitment or sponsorship relationship. Arte Collectum is registered with Euroclear and holds physical art as an underlying asset. The vehicle sits outside Nuard’s core technology mandate and suggests the partners allocate into alternative-asset structures on an opportunistic basis.

No. Nuard has not published an AUM figure on its website or in any captured public filing. The firm’s investment vehicle is structured as a private Finnish limited partnership without a regulatory requirement to publicly report fund size. The portfolio count and stage focus suggest a sub-$100 million capital base, but this is not confirmed.