Jenz lands €540K four months after hackathon win to streamline retail operations

Norwegian AI startup Jenz has raised €540,000 in pre-seed funding from Antler and Ada Ventures. It has also received a NOK 1 million (about €92,000) startup grant from Innovation Norway. The company builds an AI agent aimed at streamlining retail operations.

Jenz came out of the Norway AI Hackathon, organised by Ada Ventures and Startuplab in Mandal, which it won in June. Ada Ventures then became its first investor. The team later moved from Kristiansand to Oslo and joined Antler's residency programme. The funding arrives roughly four months after the hackathon win.

CEO and co-founder Remi Bjørnestad says most retailers want to use AI but don't know where or how to start. Many have tried generic AI tools and hit the same problems: the tools start from scratch every time and can't handle the volume of data a store actually has. Because AI decisions in retail can cost real money, he says, the system has to act on real and trusted data. That reasoning is behind the Jenz agent.

Jenz plans to expand beyond the Nordic region, with a UK launch expected within the next nine months.

The story shows how quickly a hackathon project can turn into a funded company in the Nordic AI scene, with a regional investor, an international accelerator-style programme and a public innovation grant all backing a team working on practical retail AI.