Finland Venture Capital Market Analysis 2023–2025: Data, Trends, and Outlook

Finland’s venture capital market underwent significant shifts between 2023 and 2025, driven by changes in foreign investor participation, sector performance, and capital composition. This analysis reviews data from the Finnish Venture Capital Association (FVCA) and other market sources to explain why total funding declined while early-stage activity and ecosystem fundamentals remained strong. The findings offer founders, investors, and policymakers a clearer understanding of the real trends shaping Finnish startup financing.

Over the past two years, the common view of Finnish venture capital has been simple and bleak: “Foreign investors pulled back, funding collapsed, and the ecosystem weakened.” It’s an easy story to understand, but actually, it’s wrong.

When we analysed the data, the full picture changed significantly. Yes, foreign growth investors exited after the global liquidity surge of 2021–2022. Total euros declined. However, components of the ecosystem, such as early-stage activity, the founder pipeline, domestic VC participation, and public capital, did not diminish. In fact, they became stronger. The key point from 2021–2022 is that, despite the decrease in total euros, these essential elements of the ecosystem did not shrink; instead, they grew stronger.

This is the paradox that headlines overlook. Judging an ecosystem just by total funding makes losing foreign megadeals seem disastrous. But viewed through the lens of quality, resilience, sector strength, and capital makeup, the exit of foreign capital served as a stress test that Finland quietly passed.

Early-stage funding remained stable. Company creation stayed consistent. Domestic VCs invested record sums in 2025. Public capital continued to fill initial gaps and kept the system operational. Meanwhile, sectors where Finland has genuine structural advantages, including deep tech, health data, energy systems, and industrial technologies, remained robust even during the correction.

Essentially, the tourists left, but the locals kept building.

This matters because markets are not driven solely by money; they are driven by confidence cycles. If you believe the system is collapsing, you behave cautiously. If you see that it is simply normalising, you behave smartly. The difference between caution and clarity can change outcomes.

Our new research brief aims to dispel the myth of the “funding winter.” Not to promote false optimism, but to restore accuracy. Finland did not face a crisis; it underwent a recalibration, one that revealed where true strength resides. And Finland’s strength lies firmly in science-based sectors, resilient public institutions, and a founder community that didn’t disappear when global valuations declined.

Foreign capital will return, as that’s what it does. But the true driver of the Finnish startup scene never left; it just became easier to see once the noise subsided.

If you care about this space as a founder, investor, policymaker, or operator, this brief offers a clearer understanding of what really happened and what comes next. Sometimes, the biggest breakthroughs start with a single question:

“What if everyone is wrong about this?”

Additional topics covered: Finland VC funding trends, Finnish startup funding, FVCA data analysis, early-stage investing in Finland, foreign VC pullback, venture capital market outlook in Finland, and deep tech funding in Finland.