Hive, a Norwegian-founded physical AI startup now headquartered in London, has closed a $15m pre-Series A round led by UK-based Super Seed with participation from US-based Veriten and Norwegian VCs Skyfall and Nysnø. The company, founded in 2020, is building a proprietary foundational model and software layer it calls a "silicon brain" designed to automate any on-site industrial machine regardless of brand or type.

The startup sells autonomy-as-a-service, delivering work hours rather than hardware. Its sensors and software can convert a standard digger into a self-driving vehicle for tunnelling and quarry operations, while also applying to warehouse, production line, and construction equipment. For complex tasks, a remote teleoperator controls machines from home across multiple sites. CEO Christoffer Jørgensvaag says the technology drives productive machine-hour costs down by 80% when fully deployed.

Hive is currently operating across several sites in Scandinavia with offices in Norway. The fresh capital will fund platform development, AI and robotics hiring, and scaling commercial deployments with industrial partners. The company plans to expand into London and the US, where Jørgensvaag sees minimal competition — most potential customers have only seen lab tests, not working field deployments.

The 80% cost reduction claim, if validated at scale, could reset economics across heavy industries facing labor shortages and safety pressures. Hive's model-agnostic approach — retrofitting existing fleets rather than selling new autonomous machines — lowers adoption barriers. However, the company must prove its teleoperation latency and edge-case reliability match lab results in unpredictable real-world conditions before industrial buyers commit fleets.