The main piece of equipment in the gym is the barbell. It is as simple in its form as it is timeless in its design. But when it comes to using the proper safety equipment that comes with the barbell, that’s when the flaws become visible. Today’s methods of securing weight plates to a barbell is done by using collars or clips, which often lead to a poor user experience, and they are often hard to put on and pull off, can easily break or slip during lifts, they are often hard to find and even disappears. The Olympic barbell has remained virtually the same for the last 93 years, and despite today’s standards, improvements can be made. In a seemingly ever-growing market, people’s expectations of safety, design, quality, and user-friendliness in products are on the rise. Gungnir of Norway is a Norwegian startup company that designs and manufactures high-quality gym equipment. The company’s first product is the Allrounder, a standard Olympic barbell with built-in collars for securing weight plates. The built-in collar system or “SlideLock” makes the lifting experience safer, faster, easier, and more reliable than the standard safety equipment in use today. Also, the SlideLock system can be applied to several other bar types like compact group training bars or loadable dumbbells. This solution has shown enormous potential in the fitness market, which we intend to continue to take advantage of. The SlideLock is the first of many solutions that we seek to create within the fitness equipment industry. We started as a company in 2018 in Oslo, Norway, with an idea for a better solution to a problem well known to many who use weightlifting equipment regularly. Gungnir’s vision is to become the new standard solution for securing weight plates worldwide. A game-changing solution to a century old problem.

SHIFT Business Festival is a platform that has brought together C-level decision-makers, business developers, and tech-heads from growth companies across the board since 2016. The highlight of the year is a two-day business festival in Turku, Finland. We encourage and support our festival attendees and partners to find their competitive advantage in new technology applications and sustainable business. Our company is based in Turku and is the most important business event in the region and a solid actor in the local business ecosystem. Behind SHIFT is a non-profit organization driven by volunteers and supported by network with firm supporters like Turku Science Park, Boost Turku, JCI, Creve, Turku Chamber of Commerce and Federation of Finnish Enterprises.

It’s high time to free the healthcare system from intrusive staffing companies. Once and for all. Eppow is a service that makes it easier for healthcare professionals and healthcare units to find each other for job opportunities. Eppow enables healthcare units to publish vacancies. And on the other side of that, there are healthcare personnel, such as clinicians and nurses, looking for new jobs. When they find each other, they communicate directly and sign straightforward contracts without middlemen. The assignment may be very short, very long, or transition into permanent employment. The goal is continuity and quality within healthcare.

Matrikel1 is the  innovation House on Højbro Plads in the very center of Copenhagen. We opened in May and it has been fast pace ever since. It is the focal point for investors, entrepreneurs, creators and disruptive business in Denmark. Specifically, Matrikel1 provides high-end event space, bar&cafe, flexible work space, lounge and offices. We actively work with and create network across all of above.

We Acquire 100% ownership stakes in profitable industrial companies in the U.K & Scandinavia. Our primary focus is on family or founder owned business' that could benefit from a generational change of ownership whereby we provide an exit strategy to the current shareholders and serve as the new stewards that care for the business and preserve the founders life's work. Our largest asset is www.northernindustriesgroup.co.uk, which was founded in 2019 by the IPO Capital founder (Yusufa Sey) via multiple M&A transactions.

We are Nordcloud and we're on a mission to help organisations gain te maximum benefits of the cloud. As a global leader of cloud services, we deliver cloud strategy, migration, automation, management, capacity, and training. Since 2011 we,ve completed over 200 projects to help our customers harness the power of the cloud. Nordcloud is an AWS premier consulting Partner, a Google Cloud Platform Strategic Partner, and a Microsoft Azure Gold Cloud Partner. As an independent cloud-native organisation, our team of experts delivers objective advice and builds solutions on all the leading public cloud platforms.

Fresh.Land is a scale-up with a new model for the food industry. We developed a pioneering platform that shortens and digitizes the food supply chain. It allows farmers to sell fresh products directly to consumers, using the trees as their “warehouse” and cutting 3-5 middlemen. Our platform provides all the logistics, payment, legal, and knowledge required in one integrated solution. Fresh.Land was coined “truly pioneering” and “one of the most promising green startups in Denmark”. Our disruptive startup won the Sustainary Award (Denmark), Frederiksberg Iværksætterpris (Denmark), European Youth Award (Austria), EcoSummit Gold Winner (Germany), Nordic Cleantech Open (Sweden), WWF Climate Solver Award (Denmark), Portugal Digital Awards (Portugal), and Green Tech Challenge (Denmark). We have offices in Copenhagen and Portugal. The company is profitable and growing at a very fast pace. We are preparing to launch commercially in 8 EU countries. The management team includes former senior McKinsey consultants and senior executives, with a proven track-record in building and exiting successful companies in the past. According to WWF, “Fresh.Land can save 88% of CO₂ from storage and reduce food waste by 10%, saving 12.7 million tons of CO₂ annually by 2026”. Our just-in-time model is at the forefront of the green transition in the food industry and fostering a shift to a more plant-based diet.

Byrd is a platform for verified user-generated content. In other words, we’re making a web- and smartphone app where private people can sell their photos and videos to news organizations. Our users can respond to assignments from media or upload content they consider newsworthy. Our vision is to innovate and empower storytelling by providing photographers and media outlets with powerful tools in order to get the best truthful news coverage possible.

Talent Garden's mission is to empower people and organizations by creating relevant learning and networking opportunities in the digital ecosystem. We host Europe's largest digital and tech community of over 45,000 professionals, startups, agencies, corporate labs, freelancers, investors, SMEs and students within a network of campuses in 13 countries.

AI Rookie helps companies turn AI interest into real capability. Many organizations want their employees to use AI more effectively, but they struggle to move from inspiration to practical adoption. Traditional training is often too generic, too theoretical, and quickly forgotten. Employees need relevant guidance, hands-on support, and someone they can learn from in the context of their actual work. That is the problem we are solving. AI Rookie is a platform where companies can give their employees access to experienced AI mentors who help them build confidence, skills, and real-world AI workflows. Instead of one-off courses, we focus on practical mentoring that makes AI useful in everyday work. We are building AI Rookie because we believe the biggest barrier to AI adoption is not the state of the technology— it is the gap between potential and implementation. Companies need a better way to help their people learn by doing, ask questions, and apply AI responsibly and effectively.

Fronted helps companies recruit, employ, and pay global talent — fast, compliant, and without the usual hassle. Hiring internationally should open doors, not slow companies down. Yet most organisations face the same challenges when they expand across borders: roles stay open for months, local salary structures become unsustainable, compliance feels risky and unclear, and teams are assembled through a maze of vendors, tools, and handoffs. Recruiters focus on candidates. Employer-of-Record providers focus on compliance. Payroll vendors handle payments. Consultants offer advice. Each piece exists in isolation — and no one owns the full system. That’s because global hiring isn’t just a legal problem or a payroll problem. It’s a systems problem. Fronted was built to solve that. Fronted is the Global Talent OS — a single system companies use to build, employ, and run global teams. We bring together everything required to scale internationally into one clear, connected platform, backed by one partner. Our approach combines: Precision recruitment: We help companies hire the right people in the right markets, with a focus on long-term performance rather than short-term placement. Nordic-grade compliant workforce management: Employment structures designed to meet local regulations, reduce risk, and stay reliable as companies grow across borders. Payroll and benefits: Accurate, compliant payroll and locally appropriate benefits, handled in one system and aligned with each country’s requirements. Ongoing team stability: Support that goes beyond hiring to help teams stay engaged, productive, and sustainable over time. All of this is built with a Nordic mindset: clarity over complexity, trust over control, and responsible scaling over quick fixes. Fronted enables companies to move beyond borders without losing speed, control, or confidence — turning global hiring from a fragmented process into a system that simply works.

FIT for LIVET is a health and lifestyle company working at the intersection of training, behavior change, and medically supported weight loss. We address a growing problem: many people struggle with their health and weight despite knowing what to do. For some, lifestyle changes alone are not enough. That’s why we combine structured training, motivation, and community with modern, medically approved treatments – always as part of a holistic and responsible approach. Our mission is to make health sustainable, realistic, and long-term. We believe medication can be a powerful support when used correctly, but real change happens when it is combined with movement, structure, and daily habits.

Headquartered in Norway and founded in 2022, Vind AI is reinventing the future of wind energy development, offering a digital platform designed to accelerate wind projects, onshore and offshore. By integrating data, advanced algorithms, and analysis and collaboration tools in one place, Vind AI enables developers to make faster, smarter decisions when planning and designing wind projects. Trusted by top renewable energy companies globally, Vind AI is an industry-driven platform

Affily is a UGC marketplace and collaboration platform that helps brands scale through authentic, creator-driven content. As traditional ads lose trust, brands struggle to consistently source, manage, and scale UGC creators while maintaining a clear content strategy. Creators, meanwhile, face fragmented workflows, unclear briefs, and inefficient collaboration across DMs, email, and file-sharing tools. Affily connects brands with vetted UGC creators and supports them with clear content strategies and ready-to-use content packages tailored to each brand’s goals. This ensures brands don’t just get content — they get the right content, produced consistently and optimized for performance. To support execution at scale, Affily provides a built-in collaboration workspace where brands and creators manage briefs, communication, file delivery, feedback, and approvals in one structured system. By combining strategy, a UGC marketplace, and collaboration software, Affily turns authentic content into a scalable, repeatable growth engine for modern brands.

VAEV is an AI-first platform for building internal business applications. Most companies run critical workflows on spreadsheets, emails and manual processes, but they don’t have enough developers to replace them with proper tools. Traditional software projects take too long, cost too much and are hard to maintain. We solve this by letting business teams describe what they need in natural language. VAEV then generates, hosts and operates the application directly on top of the company’s own systems, with governance, access control, auditability and data sovereignty built in from the start. The focus is not on quick demo magic, but on creating systems that can be trusted and maintained for many years. Over time, customers can extend and adapt their apps using simple prompts. Once the core data model and application foundation live on VAEV, teams can create new workflows, variants, and reports without starting over. In short, VAEV turns business intent into reliable software and gives organizations a faster, safer way to build and evolve the internal tools that run their business.