Walerud Ventures

Walerud Ventures is a Stockholm-based Swedish family investment office founded in 2002 by legendary Swedish angel and operator Jane Walerud, best known as one of Klarna's earliest investors and an active board director across the modern Nordic tech ecosystem, together with her husband Bengt Walerud and their daughter Caroline Walerud, who is also a co-founder and CEO of 3D foot-scanning company Volumental. The firm explicitly positions itself as a working-investor family office: rather than passive capital, Walerud Ventures joins pre-seed and seed-stage companies as investor, advisor and part-time operator, often hands-on inside the company through the earliest years, and it is willing to lead. Sector focus is unapologetically deep tech and impact tech 'for the living planet,' anchored in applied AI, IoT and wearables, synthetic biology, climate and cleantech, durability and circularity, and adjacent science-based hardware. Tickets range from approximately $1M to $10M per company with a stated sweet spot near $5.5M. Since 2002 the firm has invested in roughly 18 companies, four of which became world-class outcomes, Klarna, which IPO'd on the NYSE in September 2025 at a $15.1B market capitalization, eye-tracking platform Tobii, online optical retailer Lensway and Bluetail, alongside 10 more profitable exits or healthy growers, with the team citing an annualized return on investment in excess of 60% since inception. Recent activity includes Paebbl, in CO2-mineralization permanent carbon storage, and an October 2024 investment in Airforestry, in drone-based aerial forestry hardware. As a hands-on family office, Walerud Ventures backs Nordic deep-tech and impact founders.