19 AI/Deep Tech Startups Join Helsinki Incubators' Journeys
Inside "Journeys," Helsinki's four-month sprint for AI and hard tech founders
On Monday, August 25, a slice of Finland’s startup scene gathered at the University of Helsinki’s Porthania building to do something both terrifying and necessary: introduce themselves to the market—in sixty seconds.
The occasion was the kickoff of Journeys, a 16-week, mentor-driven programme run by Helsinki Incubators that aims to turn promising concepts into fundable companies with a global lens.Journeys is more like a field expedition. Founders are expected to move, test, and talk to customers early, supported by industry mentors, investors, and a peer cohort that will call your bluff when your roadmap is really just a vibe.
After the opening micro-pitches to a room of guests (investors, alumni, students—and, yes, cameras), the crowd crossed the street to Huone, a conference space where the real currency of early stage—warm intros and quick "show me" demos—took over.
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The mechanics
The programme runs four months. First: a one-month bootcamp to tighten the problem statement, define the value proposition, and build the initial go-to-market spine. Then founders peel off into specialisations—AI & Deep Tech or Sustainability & Social Impact—and grind through mentor sessions, tooling workshops, and investor touchpoints across University of Helsinki campuses.
The promise is not theory for a shelf; it’s a weekly cadence of decisions, deliverables, and feedback from people who have shipped, raised, and hired.Journeys’ AI & Deep Tech track assembled 19 teams, a snapshot of what "deep" means in 2025.
The spread hints at an interesting throughline: Finnish deep tech still loves hard problems—biotech pipelines, space hardware, compliance, data plumbing—but the interfaces are getting cleaner. Several teams here are making invisible layers (bioinformatics, data lineage, regulatory monitoring) legible to non-experts. That’s not just good UX; it’s how you win budgets.
Mentors over monologues
What sets Journeys apart is its mentor-driven structure. The programme pairs founders with practitioners from Finnish and international companies, investors, and corporate venture capitalists. The idea is to compress the "unknown unknowns" phase by surrounding teams with people who’ve already solved similar constraints: procurement at an enterprise, clinical validation timelines, the ugly reality of selling a v1 into a regulated industry. Less guesswork. More guidance.
Deliverables, not vibes
By graduation, Journeys expects every team to present three non-negotiables: a clearly defined problem with a compelling value proposition; a polished pitch deck that plays in sales meetings and funding rooms; and an actionable go-to-market plan.
That triad sounds basic until you try to build it while also talking to customers, rewriting a data pipeline, and fixing a model that performed beautifully on your laptop and fell apart in the wild.The programme sets explicit checkpoints to force momentum: October is for MVP review; November is for demonstrating PoC traction; December brings an investor-pitch rehearsal and, finally, Demo Day—the moment when all the months of testing, iterating, and narrative-tightening get their public audit. If you’re allergic to deadlines, this is not your playground.
And at the end, which project will be able to deliver and transform into the next AI and Deep Tech wave from Finland? We should know by december 2025. We will be there.
