RunwayVC Reaches €40M First Close for Industrial Fund II

RunwayVC has put potential customers inside the capital stack of its second fund. The Norwegian early-stage venture firm reached a €40M first close for RunwayVC Fund II on August 24, 2026, with Aker continuing as cornerstone investor and a wider group of industrial and institutional LPs joining the vehicle.

The new group includes Halliburton, Aker BP, Aker Solutions, KLP, Investinor, Norwegian industrial families, and private technology and finance investors. RunwayVC plans to invest from pre-seed through Series A across industrial AI and software, robotics, automation, and autonomous systems.

The amount matters, but the LP roster carries the more interesting operating claim. Industrial technology companies need factories, infrastructure, equipment, technical scrutiny, and procurement access long before they can turn a promising demonstration into a repeatable business. RunwayVC is betting that capital providers who understand those environments can become part of the route to deployment.

What Happened

RunwayVC announced the €40M first close after building its first fund around a single industrial anchor. Aker was the sole LP in Fund I and remains the cornerstone investor in Fund II. The expanded base now brings in Halliburton, Aker BP, Aker Solutions, KLP, and Investinor, alongside industrial families and individual technology and finance investors.

The announcement is a first close, not a final close. RunwayVC has not disclosed a final Fund II target, a final-close timetable, LP allocation sizes, fees, or return expectations. The verified event is €40M committed at the first close, giving the firm a broader vehicle for approximately 20 investments over the next 3-5 years.

RunwayVC reports that Fund I made 24 investments and 23 follow-ons and produced 2 exits since 2022. The firm also says its Fund I portfolio companies have raised more than NOK 2B from outside investors. Those figures are company-reported operating evidence rather than audited fund-performance data, but they explain why the platform can now ask a broader set of LPs to back the next vehicle.

LPs as Investment Infrastructure

Managing Partner and Co-Founder Tor Bækkelund and Senior Partner and CTO Sagar Chandna have framed RunwayVC around a practical industrial-tech problem. A young company can build a credible robot, autonomy layer, sensor system, or industrial software product and still struggle to reach the operating environment where customers decide whether it is safe, useful, and economically worth adopting.

That gap is visible across the market. DevCuration's coverage of Mesoware's industrial automation platform examined the same distance between an impressive technical capability and reliable production outcomes. Industrial buyers do not purchase a demonstration. They purchase uptime, safety, integration, support, and a path through the existing operation.

RunwayVC's answer is to make industrial access part of the investment system. LPs such as Aker, Halliburton, Aker BP, and Aker Solutions operate in sectors where automation, robotics, industrial software, and autonomous equipment face real demand and unforgiving qualification requirements. Their participation may provide portfolio founders with better context, introductions, and opportunities to test technology against actual operating constraints.

The structure should not be romanticized. An LP who could become a customer does not guarantee a pilot, and a pilot does not guarantee procurement. Close industry relationships can sharpen investment judgment, but they can also make familiar problems feel more attractive than the evidence warrants. RunwayVC still has to prove that its network improves selection and commercialization without narrowing the fund's view of where the strongest companies emerge.

The First Two Fund II Investments

Fund II's first 2 disclosed investments give the mandate a physical form. Minerva Humanoids is building rugged humanoid robots for hazardous industrial work. HIVE Autonomy develops an autonomy system that adds intelligence to industrial machines already operating across construction, mining, logistics, and other heavy environments.

The distinction is useful. Minerva begins with a new machine designed to remove people from dangerous work. HIVE begins with equipment that customers already own and tries to make that installed base autonomous. One company must prove a new machine belongs inside the operation; the other must prove a new intelligence layer can be trusted inside existing machinery.

Both companies sit inside a wider shift toward physical AI, where software decisions leave the screen and begin moving equipment, materials, and people through real environments. That shift can create large markets, but it also raises the cost of being wrong. The capital-and-industrial-partnership combination appearing across autonomy and advanced systems reflects how often financing must arrive beside manufacturing, qualification, supply-chain, or customer access.

What Industrial Founders Still Have to Prove

RunwayVC plans to invest primarily in Norway and the Nordics, with selected investments elsewhere in Europe and the United States. Reported initial investments are NOK 5M-NOK 10M, with follow-on capital handled separately. That is enough to finance early technical and commercial progress, but industrial companies are rarely built on check size alone.

The portfolio will have to survive long sales cycles, integration work, field reliability, security and safety review, and customer budgets that move according to operating risk rather than startup urgency. A founder can be directionally right about industrial AI and still be early, undercapitalized, or unable to cross the gap between technical validation and a purchase order.

RunwayVC's broader LP base may help that crossing, particularly when industrial operators can contribute domain expertise or access to representative environments. The fund's obligation is to show that those relationships create repeatable commercial advantage rather than a collection of warm introductions. The distinction will appear in deployment quality, customer retention, follow-on financing, and whether portfolio companies can sell beyond the networks that helped them begin.

What This First Close Signals

The €40M first close reflects growing institutional interest in technology that changes physical industry, but it also shows how specialist venture firms are rebuilding the value proposition around more than capital. Deep-tech investors such as Lux Capital have long argued that technical ambition requires investors willing to understand difficult markets. RunwayVC adds a Nordic industrial-access model in which potential buyers sit closer to the fund itself.

The proposition now has more capital, more LPs, and 2 early portfolio examples. What it does not have is a guaranteed result. RunwayVC Fund II will be judged by whether Minerva, HIVE, and the companies that follow can move from technical promise into safe, repeatable, global industrial use while the fund preserves independent judgment about what deserves to be built.

The first close gets the vehicle onto the runway. The next evidence will come from the operating environments where machines are expected to work, people are expected to trust them, and customers are expected to pay.