Icelandic maritime start-up secures fresh funding

Icelandic maritime start-up Hefring ehf. has successfully closed a financing round led by the New Business Venture Fund, an Icelandic state-owned venture capital fund, with the participation of Innoport, the venture capital unit of Germany’s Schulte Group, and TechNexus, a U.S.-based venture collaborative.

The Hefring Marine system provides vessel operators with an intelligent solution to improve situational awareness, safety, and efficiency on board.

It analyzes real-time data from vessel operations to adapt and optimize speed, route and decisions while logging all trip data to improve tracking, monitoring and planning. The solution can help improve onboard welfare and safety and reduce power demand during vessel operation, according to the company.

“The funding will enable us to scale faster and expand our system’s capabilities for increased modularity, adaptability to different vessel types and applications, and to develop new features and solutions,” Karl Birgir Björnsson, CEO and Co-founder of Hefring ehf, commented.

„We seek to invest in early-stage technology platforms that we believe can help advance changes in established industries and enable them to better meet today‘s global challenges. We are following Hefring ehf. for a second financing round because we believe in the company’s prospects and the benefits that their intelligent navigation solutions can offer to mariners worldwide,” Huld Magnúsdóttir, CEO of the New Business Venture Fund, said.

Hefring officially launched the first version of its Hefring Marine system in 2020 and has since then worked closely with selected partners to improve the solution and technology. The company is now developing next generation of the solution and is working with various commercial partners, including De Haas Maassluis B.V. in the Netherlands, the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue, the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue, the Icelandic Coast Guard and others.

While the company has focused primarily on the commercial vessel market, the solution is also being developed for recreational and leisure vessels.