Exclusive: Norwegian impact investor Katapult launches €50m Nordic ocean fund

Oslo-based impact investment firm Katapult is launching a dedicated €50m Nordic ocean fund, CEO Jonas Skattum Svegaarden has exclusively shared with Impact Loop.

The new vehicle will focus primarily on Nordic startups working across the ocean economy – with a small allocation reserved for non-European companies looking to establish a foothold in the region.

"We feel like we're sitting on top of a big opportunity," says Svegaarden, who took over Katapult's ocean investing strategy in 2020. "The industry mix here is good. Norway has big maritime clusters, Sweden and Finland are strong in both industry and capital, Denmark has major shipping players. We have all of this in our backyard."

The LPs

Katapult Ocean is currently in discussions with LPs to raise money for the new vehicle, Svegaarden says.

While the CEO declined to comment on who those LPs are, he said he expects many of the VCs existing backers will contribute to the Nordic fund.

Katapult Ocean's existing investor base spans maritime families, institutional impact platforms, and strategic corporates. Backers include Norwegian industrial family GC Rieber, Dutch multi-family office Commenda, the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Japanese shipping giant Mitsui OSK Lines, US impact platform Builders Vision, ocean philanthropy organisation Oceankind, and fund of funds Planet Ocean Fund.

Deep roots in the Nordics

Katapult was founded by Tharald Nustad, a Norwegian serial entrepreneur, prolific angel investor and heir to a real estate fortune. Nustad made ocean investing the fund’s biggest bet since 2019, with the portfolio now spanning over 100 investments across the globe.

Svegaarden says it’s been a busy 12 months, with over 15 investors made from its flagship $50m Deep Blue Fund. The firm also launched a $75m Asia fund in September in partnership with Singapore’s Octave Capital, and produced the thirtieth cohort from its ocean accelerator in October.

Svegaarden says Katapult is now currently hiring staff to manage the Nordic fund, with a view to start making the first investments later this year.

What they'll invest in

So what exactly counts as "ocean" for Katapult? It's a fair question given how loosely the term gets used.

Svegaarden breaks it down into four areas: shipping and logistics, including decarbonisation tech and smaller vessel innovation; energy, covering offshore renewables like floating wind and wave energy as well as the sensors, connectivity and micropower solutions that underpin them; food and water, spanning aquaculture, seaweed, algae and, increasingly, water treatment, PFAS removal and wastewater; and a fourth bucket covering new materials, plastics alternatives, ocean data, and carbon removal.

The fund will deploy roughly 70% of capital into later-stage follow-ons and direct investments, ranging from €1.5m to €4m per company, with the remaining 30% reserved for earlier bets between €150k and €500k. Svegaarden says the sweet spot is pre-Series A and Series A.

"We love it when we don't really need to pay the full Series A price and we can take some tech risk,” he says.

The bigger picture

Katapult is launching into a moment of sharply rising ocean awareness – and not just for environmental reasons.

The Baltic Sea, which sits at the heart of the fund's new geographic focus, is one of the most ecologically degraded bodies of water in the world. But after a string of suspected sabotage incidents targeting subsea cables in late 2024, the ocean has also become a security conversation.

The European Commission responded in February 2025 with a dedicated Action Plan on Cable Security. Last week it went further, with President Ursula von der Leyen announcing OceanEye, a €50m Horizon Europe-backed ocean monitoring initiative, framing marine data infrastructure as a strategic European priority.

Svegaarden, who was in Brussels earlier this month for EU Ocean Days, is watching all of this closely.

"Ocean data, climate impact, transportation, it's moving up the agenda," he says. "Ninety percent of all data goes through underwater cables. The cybersecurity and hardware aspects of underwater assets – it's really interesting stuff."