Oslo-based Solvera has raised $6.3 million in a pre-seed round led by Seedcamp, with participation from Inception Fund, Momentum, PSV, Sondo, OBOS Ventures, Construct Venture and The Nordic Web Ventures, and also backed by an exceptional group of angels: Spacemaker founders Anders Kvale and Håvard Haukeland, and former OBOS CEO Daniel Kjørberg Siraj. Founded in 2026 by Arif Mirza, Pål Eskild Rasmussen and Thorvald Thorsnes, Solvera is building an AI-native engineering firm for the construction industry, starting with mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems. Rather than selling software, the company delivers end-to-end engineering services using AI agents alongside experienced engineers. The funding will support team expansion in Oslo, the opening of a London office and further development of its AI-powered operating system.
Solvera operates as an engineering services provider rather than a software vendor. Its model combines proprietary AI systems with experienced building engineers to manage projects from initial requirements and constraints through to coordinated, construction-ready designs. Clients pay for the engineering work delivered rather than software licences or consulting hours.
The company is initially focusing on mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) engineering, which involves designing and coordinating a building’s heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing systems. These projects require engineers to work across multiple tools, manage changing requirements and coordinate designs across disciplines. Solvera aims to automate a growing share of this work, including testing design alternatives, routing systems and coordinating technical information, while engineers oversee decisions requiring professional judgement.
The company’s approach is based on the idea that applying AI to engineering requires changes to the delivery model itself, rather than simply adding new tools to existing workflows. Solvera’s operating system is designed to reuse knowledge from completed projects to support future work.
“We’ve had twenty years of better building engineering software, and now AI, but productivity and the fundamental way engineering gets delivered has barely changed”, said Arif Mirza, co-founder and CEO of Solvera. “Technology is only part of the answer. To capture its full potential, you also have to rethink how the firm operates and how it makes money. That is incredibly difficult to do inside organizations built around thousands of people, active projects and billable hours.”
Since launching in July 2026, Solvera has grown to a team of nine and secured more than $1 million in contracted revenue during its first three months of operations, according to the company. It is working on several building projects in Norway, including commercial projects with Betonmast, a Norwegian construction contractor.
“That is why we decided not to build yet another tool for engineers that doesn’t move the needle in how work gets done,” Mirza added. “We are building the engineering firm itself around AI.”
Mirza and Pål Rasmussen, co-founder and CTO, spent much of the past decade in leadership roles at Spacemaker and Autodesk, building AI and cloud technology for the construction industry and taking it to architects, engineers and contractors around the world. Thorvald Thorsnes, co-founder and CCO, previously co-founded Y Combinator-backed Enode to transform energy infrastructure.
“The most valuable thing in building engineering has always been the engineer’s judgement, yet much of their day goes to sorting a constant stream of information and changes, manual data entry, and coordination,” said Rasmussen. “Our goal is to free up their time so they can focus on high impact decisions, with our agents handling the rest like testing alternatives, coordination, and production work”.
Betonmast selected Solvera for several projects to address challenges associated with fragmented engineering workflows, including delays, unnecessary costs and issues identified late in the construction process.
“As a contractor, we see the consequences of fragmented and inefficient engineering every day: unnecessary cost, slow iterations and problems that are discovered too late. We don’t believe adding more hours will solve this, so we want partners who are willing to challenge established ways of working, move faster, and take responsibility for better outcomes. That is why we chose Solvera for several of our projects,” said Kristian Gjestemoen, Managing Director, Betonmast Buskerud-Vestfold.
The new funding will support the expansion of Solvera’s engineering and technology teams in Oslo, the establishment of a London office and further development of its operating system. The company also plans to enter additional markets as its model evolves.
Seedcamp Partner Tom Wilson said the investment reflects the opportunity to redesign how engineering services are delivered and paid for, rather than develop another software tool for existing firms.
Tom Wilson, Partner at Seedcamp, said: “We invested in Solvera because Arif, Thorvald and Pål are not just building software for engineers, they are rebuilding the firm itself. That is a much bigger swing, and a much better one. Construction has absorbed two decades of tooling without shifting how the work actually gets delivered or paid for. Solvera is the first team we have seen with the technical depth and industry experience to close that gap, starting with MEP and expanding from there. This is what the next generation of professional services firms looks like.”
Read the orginal article: https://arcticstartup.com/solvera-raises-6-3m/
