Solvera raises $6.3m with London engineering office planned

Seedcamp leads $6.3m investment in Solvera

Construction engineering company Solvera has secured $6.3m in pre-seed capital, with Seedcamp leading the investment, Tech.eu reports. The Oslo business delivers engineering work using a combination of artificial intelligence and professional engineers, rather than selling technology for other firms to deploy.

Seven other funds backed the round: Construct Venture, Inception Fund, Momentum, Obos Ventures, PSV Tech, Sondo and The Nordic Web Ventures. According to Tech.eu, individual investors included Anders Kvåle and Håvard Haukeland, the founders of Spacemaker.

Building services provide the first proving ground

Solvera's founding team comprises chief executive Arif Mirza, chief technology officer Pål Rasmussen and chief commercial officer Thorvald Thorsnes. Tech.eu reports that the company handles the engineering process from assessing a project's requirements and limitations to producing aligned designs that builders can use on site.

Its first specialism is mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering, known as MEP. These building services require different engineering disciplines to work together, satisfy extensive requirements and revise their plans as construction progresses. Tech.eu describes a workflow still characterised by manual processes, disconnected tools and tasks that engineers must repeat on successive jobs.

Solvera has developed an internal operating system in which AI agents perform engineering tasks, while engineers retain responsibility for decisions requiring professional judgement. According to Tech.eu, the platform is intended to preserve knowledge generated during a project so that it can inform subsequent assignments, with automation taking on more work over time.

The company is already undertaking several building assignments in Norway, ranging from preliminary engineering to detailed design. Tech.eu reports that these include commercial developments involving Norwegian contractor Betonmast, giving Solvera live projects on which to apply its approach.

Solvera argues that better tools alone are not enough

In a statement carried by Tech.eu, Solvera argues that two decades of advances in engineering software have brought little change to productivity or the way engineering services reach customers. Its position is that adopting AI needs to involve the organisation and economics of an engineering business, not simply the tools available to its staff.

The company identifies large workforces, ongoing client assignments and reliance on billable hours as obstacles to changing established firms. Solvera therefore intends to earn revenue by delivering complete engineering services, rather than licensing software or billing clients for consulting time, according to Tech.eu. That puts the service itself, rather than access to an AI application, at the centre of its offer.

London office and Oslo hiring come next

The investment will fund a London office and an increase in engineering and technology staff in Oslo, Tech.eu reports. For Solvera, the planned UK location represents a move beyond its Norwegian base; the source does not give an opening date or a hiring target.

Further development of the operating system is another stated use of the capital. Solvera also plans to move into additional markets as its business model develops, although Tech.eu does not identify those destinations or provide a timetable. The expansion plan therefore leaves the sequence of further country launches open rather than setting out a fixed international rollout.