Nordic Hardtech Weekly #31: Ten Nordic Companies Turning Heat into Hardtech

A new wave of Nordic companies is bringing engineering back to the centre of the energy transition — turning temperature into technology and showing that industrial innovation still drives climate impact.

This week we dig into what that shift looks like on the ground: ten companies redefining how heat is captured, stored and reused from Nordic factories to global grids.

• Lightbringer: AI-powered patent service helping tech companies protect their edge fast, with in-house legal expertise. Book an intro.
• Recuro: Growth partner for hardtech and deeptech. Scale with profit.
• SISP (Swedish Incubators & Science Parks): The network for 60+ incubators and science parks in Sweden. Find yours here.
• The Yard: Gothenburg’s hub for co-working, community, and serious hardware. Explore their memberships.

The Nordic Heat List

Electricity built the first phase of the green transition. The next one runs on heat. Across the Nordics, founders are rethinking how temperature is captured, stored and reused — transforming an overlooked energy source into industrial progress.

Nearly half of Europe’s total energy use goes into heating and cooling, yet policy and investment have long treated it as a side issue. That is changing fast. As industries search for ways to cut fossil fuels, heat is emerging as the real test of engineering ingenuity, and Nordic companies are early to act.

From molten salt and nano-coated minerals to smart buildings and biomass turbines, a new generation of hardtech founders is turning thermal engineering into climate impact, solving problems where decarbonisation is hardest to achieve.

The Nordic Heat List maps ten companies showing where real progress is being made, from materials and storage to systems and scale.

1. Kyoto Group (Norway)

Kyoto’s Heatcube converts surplus renewable electricity into industrial heat stored in molten salt. The system delivers energy on demand, helping factories cut fossil use and stabilize local grids. With deployments in Hungary and expansion plans across Europe, Kyoto is setting a new benchmark for thermal storage in heavy industry.

2. Aira (Sweden)

From the team behind Northvolt and Vargas, Aira is taking household decarbonization mainstream. Its smart heat-pump subscription replaces gas boilers with electrified heat, offering comfort and carbon savings through a scalable consumer model. Aira’s manufacturing plant in Poland and recent €145 million raise mark the start of a European rollout built on Nordic engineering.

3. Enjay (Sweden)

Restaurants and commercial kitchens have long been “unrecoverable heat zones” because grease destroys traditional heat exchangers. Enjay changes that. Their Lepido system captures energy from exhaust streams once written off entirely, turning dirty ventilation into usable heat and unlocking efficiency gains where few have even looked.

4. SaltX Technology (Sweden)

SaltX uses nano-coated salts to store heat like a giant rechargeable battery. When energy prices spike or renewables dip, stored heat can be released instantly to power industrial processes. In partnership with Vattenfall, SaltX is demonstrating how cement and steel plants can replace fossil fuels with thermal storage — proving that the chemistry of salt can change the economics of heat.

5. Againity (Sweden)

Againity builds compact ORC turbines that turn low-temperature waste heat into electricity. Installed across Scandinavia, the units help utilities and industries reclaim value from every degree. It’s a circular-energy solution that doesn’t rely on scale, just smart engineering applied to forgotten energy flows.

6. Heaten (Norway)

Industrial heat pumps rarely reach temperatures high enough to replace fossil steam and boilers. Heaten changes that. Their high-temperature units deliver up to 200°C using electricity instead of fuel, tackling one of industry’s hardest emissions problems: process heat. With deployments across Europe, Heaten shows that electrification can compete with gas and oil in real factories, not just pilot sites.

7. Heliac (Denmark)

Heliac’s thin, low-cost mirrors concentrate sunlight to generate industrial heat of up to 400 °C, cutting the price of solar-thermal energy by as much as 70 percent. In a region famous for wind, they’re proving that solar heat can be part of the Nordic energy mix too — clean, concentrated and continuous.

8. Rebase Energy (Sweden)

Rebase uses predictive modelling to balance heat and power. Its software analyses weather, demand and production data to decide when energy should be stored, released or shared. The result is smarter local grids and heat networks that behave like real-time systems rather than static infrastructure.

9. Green Transition Holding (Norway)

Through subsidiaries focused on hybrid boilers and high-temperature heat pumps, Green Transition Holding develops modular systems for industrial decarbonisation. Active in aquaculture, shipping and food processing, the company turns “industrial heat as a service” into a scalable export product for sectors that can’t easily electrify.

10. Polar Night Energy (Finland)

Polar Night Energy has built one of the world’s first sand-based thermal batteries, turning ordinary sand into long-duration heat storage. The system stores excess renewable electricity as heat and releases it on demand for district and industrial use. Proven in pilot projects across Finland, it’s a low-cost, low-loss solution showing how local materials can store large-scale energy.

Update: This list was originally published with Enerpoly and Phoenix BioPower in slots 3 and 6. Since both companies have since entered bankruptcy proceedings, we have replaced them with two active Nordic frontrunners in the same category.

• EU grants can fuel deep-tech growth, but few get it right. Missed the Lightbringer x Evolution Europe session? ▶️ Sign up to watch the replay!

• Hardware FYI highlights a great Keithley whitepaper on HALT and HASS — stress tests that push hardware to failure to expose real design limits.
• Copenhagen-based drone maker Monopulse raised €1.1 M to expand production of NATO-class UAVs built for GPS-jammed environments, supplying Nordic and Baltic defense customers.
• VCs are getting impatient. Sifted notes a new wave of investors backing AI founders before the company even exists, pre-pitch, pre-product, sometimes pre-idea. Question is: How early is too early for hardtech?

• Copenhagen’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Summit takes place Nov 14 , gathering female and non-binary founders, investors and partners to pitch, network and spotlight women-led innovation.
• How can game logic drive real-world innovation? On Nov 18, The Yard hosts The Power of Play — a night on gamification, engagement and the tech behind attention. Join in, 16:30–19:00 at Lindholmen.
• Sweden’s new Chips Competence Centre (SCCC) hosts a half-day at Chalmers on Nov 26 — diving into EU pilot lines, ASIC design and patent strategy. Sign up here.

Nordic Hardtech is a platform for the hardtech ecosystem — sharing knowledge, bringing inspiration, and building community through podcasts, newsletters, events, and more.

💸 Fuel up. Scaling takes capital — The Nordic Hardtech Funding List shows you where to find it.

💥Get involved. Pitch a topic. Join the podcast. Get on the investor list– if you're hardtech.

→ Spotify | LinkedIn | nordichardtech.com
📩 hello@nordichardtech.com

Sign up for Nordic Hardtech

The platform for leaders of hardtech

Subscribe

Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup.

Don't worry it's free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.