Norwegian construction technology company Volve has raised $3 million (NOK 30 million) in seed funding to further develop its intelligence platform for construction tendering and preconstruction and support its expansion across Europe. The round was led by Skyfall Ventures, with participation from J12, Norrsken Evolve, OBOS Ventures, Antler and StartupLab. Angel investors also participated, including Daniel Kjørberg Siraj, former CEO of Nordic housing and urban development company OBOS.
Founded in 2024 by Herman Smith, Abyl Ikshanov and Alf Jørgen Dovland and headquartered in Oslo, Volve develops an intelligence platform for contractors and public-sector clients involved in tendering and preconstruction. The platform is designed to support commercial decisions made before construction begins, including whether to bid for a project, how to price it and how to assess contractual and operational risks.
Construction tender teams typically work under tight deadlines while reviewing large volumes of contracts, drawings, requirements and technical specifications. Volve analyses this documentation and maps relationships between requirements, project scope and potential risks, giving teams a structured view of the information used to prepare bids.
The platform also supports contractors in aligning bids with client evaluation criteria and reviewing offers from subcontractors. According to the company, around 80 per cent of a project's cost is determined before a contract is signed, making tendering and preconstruction a critical stage for determining project margins and risk.
Despite this, tendering and preconstruction remain among the less digitised parts of the construction industry. Construction represents more than €1.6 trillion in annual investment across Europe, according to data cited from the European Construction Industry Federation, while construction contracts account for close to one in five public tenders.
Construction is a project business: you have to win projects to stay in business, but winning on the wrong terms is worse than losing,
said Herman Smith, co-founder and CEO of Volve. He added that project margins are shaped by commercial decisions made before construction begins, often based on thousands of pages of interconnected documentation reviewed under tight deadlines.
Volve is already used by main contractors and public clients across the Nordics and is building its presence in the UK and Continental Europe.
Alongside the funding round, Volve is rolling out a new graph-based structure designed to retain and connect knowledge across projects. Although individual construction projects differ, many of the commercial decisions involved are recurring. The new structure is designed to allow knowledge generated during one tender to inform subsequent bids rather than requiring teams to start from scratch each time.
The new capital will be used to deepen Volve's product offering for main contractors and public clients and accelerate its European expansion. The company plans to position the platform as an intelligence layer for commercial decision-making across tendering and preconstruction.
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