node.vc backs Redpine
We are excited to share that node.vc has invested in Redpine, a Stockholm-based AI data platform giving AI companies and agents access to licensed, high-quality, non-public data. Redpine joins our portfolio as part of a €6.8M seed round led by NordicNinja, with participation from Luminar Ventures and strategic angels including investors from OpenAI.
The problem Redpine is solving
Only 1–2% of the world's data is openly available for AI training. Meanwhile the vast majority of the world's knowledge sits behind paywalls, in proprietary databases and with content owners who have no safe compliant way to make it available. The result: most AI companies are racing on the same narrow track, building on the same scraped data with no moat, insufficient accuracy and no compensation flowing to the rights holders.
For AI agents operating in mission-critical domains such as health, law, finance, news - "good enough" data isn't good enough. Accuracy, provenance and rights compliance are what separate trusted automation from unacceptable risk.
Why we invested
"Most AI companies are racing on the same track with the same scraped data. Redpine builds the moat - licensed, premium, non-public data that makes the difference between AI that's good enough and AI that can actually be trusted. Moreover the fact that Redpine is being built by a team with deep experience in exactly this kind of platform shift, made our decision easy." - Henrik Tellving, Partner at node.vc
The founding team is what made this an easy conviction. CEO Anders Hammarbäck brings experience as a former VC partner and a clear-eyed reading of the data landscape. CTO David Österdahl was part of the early team at Spotify that helped transition the music industry from piracy to a licensed streaming economy — a pattern that maps directly onto what AI is facing today with data. Together, they have a strong track record in scaling startups and global teams.
The broader team brings roots in Spotify, Sana, CERN, McKinsey and H&M, with founding data scientist Dr Leonora Vesterbacka leading the proprietary retrieval and reranking technology.
The agentic AI wave is accelerating fast — McKinsey projects agentic commerce could generate up to $5 trillion in global retail revenue by 2030. The companies powering it will need data infrastructure that is licensed, trustworthy, and compliant. Redpine is building exactly that.
Links