Swedish investor Norrsken is pledging €300m from its Norrsken VC, Norrsken Launcher and Norrsken Accelerator funds to European start-ups using “AI for good”.

On Wednesday, the company said it would commit the capital to solve challenges in climate, health, food, education and society.

“Clean energy, healthcare, education, and food systems – the first trillion-euro companies will be built by problem engineers solving global challenges at scale,” the investor said in a statement.

Norrsken pointed out that artificial intelligence has so far been used to optimise clicks and automate e-mails, but the real potential of its use is still untapped.

“We barely scratched the surface of what this technology can do. AI is not just another productivity boost; it’s a real chance to fix what truly matters,” it added.

The investor went on to say that the winners in the investment race will be those betting on using AI to solve the world's most pressing challenges, as AI start-ups have so far attracted more than $110 billion in VC funding, accounting for about a third of all global VC investments.

Norrsken funds’ portfolios already features a number of AI-driven businesses, including AI specialist for smarter clinical workflows Quadrivia, data centre cooling Submer, sovereign cloud infrastructure Evroc and industrial energy optimisation Juna.ai.

“Startups like Juna.ai are giving heavy industry a radically lighter footprint by making factories operate at maximum efficiency,” Norrdisk said.

“Quadrivia is fixing the broken healthcare system with AI-powered clinical assistants that free up time for overburdened medical professionals, without needing to hire at an impossible scale.”

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