Danish startup Memora raises €1.7 million to modernise Europe's cemeteries
Danish startup Memora has raised €1.7 million (DKK 13 million) to build a single platform that links cemetery managers, gardeners and families, covering administration, maintenance and communication. The round was led by venture capital firm True Collective. Chris Evans, formerly of Kahoot!, will join as CTO in early 2027.
Founder and CEO Johan Toft-Nielsen started Memora in 2022 by selling grave maintenance directly to thousands of families. The company's own gardeners cycled between cemeteries with backpacks and shovels while relatives followed the work in an app. Doing that work showed him a bigger opportunity in building better technology for the people who run cemeteries. Today the cemeteries buy the platform and their own gardeners do the work.
On the platform, cemetery managers plan and assign tasks, gardeners document their work on their phones, and families receive photographs and community updates when graves are cared for. Families can also share memories of loved ones. Memora already uses AI to turn gardeners' work into updates for families, which cuts administrative effort and improves communication. The product was developed together with managers, gardeners and families, and the company brings geospatial tooling and AI into an industry still dominated by manual processes.
True Collective's managing partner Rolf Pedersen said Memora has turned former competitors into partners by listening to cemeteries, and that with Evans on the team, "Denmark is only the beginning." Evans said the opportunity is not just replacing paper with software but rethinking how the whole industry operates.
With the new capital, Memora plans to take its approach to cemeteries across Europe, where millions of grave plots are still managed through manual and fragmented systems. The round sits alongside other 2026 European investments in digital end-of-life services and operational software, including Sweden's Solace Care (€2.1 million), Ireland-founded EstateMin (€1 million) and Copenhagen-based Cortas (€1.47 million).