Winners of the 2025 UArctic Entrepreneurship Fund

The UArctic Entrepreneurship Fund is an initiative of the Managing Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in the North Thematic Network.  The fund supports the development of incubator-stage services and products that aim to have a direct, beneficial impact on Arctic communities or the environment. The Fund was created highlight and advance innovative and inspiring entrepreneurial ideas focused on the North.

Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in strengthening Arctic communities by fostering local innovation, economic opportunity, and environmental stewardship. The 2025 UArctic Entrepreneurship Fund recipients exemplify this spirit through forward-thinking solutions that address pressing Northern challenges while delivering tangible community benefits. From advancing food security and waste management to expanding access to critical environmental data, this year’s projects reflect the creativity, determination, and resilience that define entrepreneurship in the North.

The UEF is proud to support these emerging leaders as they refine, test, and scale their ideas into practical solutions that contribute to sustainable Arctic development.

The 2025 recipients of the UArctic Entrepreneurship Fund:

$5,000 - Saadman Noor Wasif (Lead)  - Agronomy was founded by Saadman Noor Wasif, with co-founders Kalle Rantti and Ronja Ristolainen, along with Petrus Poutanen and Niko Koskela. Agronomy Oy is a Finland-based food-tech startup building a producer-first, farm-to-door digital marketplace that connects Arctic and Nordic farmers and fishers directly with consumers. The platform enables each farm to operate as an independent digital brand while offering traceability tools, CO₂ transparency, and optional IoT-enabled cold-chain tracking. Through shortening supply chains and reducing reliance on intermediaries, Agronomy aims to increase income retention for producers, reduce food waste and emissions, and strengthen regional food security.

$5,000 - Nicoline Louise Thomsen (Lead) - Aaveq Robotics is developing unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to provide reliable, modular waste transport services for remote Arctic settlements, beginning in Greenland. Responding to landfill growth, labor shortages, and long-distance transport challenges, the team proposes weekly waste collection using remotely operated boats designed specifically for Arctic conditions. Rather than selling vessels, Aaveq will operate as a logistics service provider in collaboration with ESANI A/S and Greenlandic municipalities. The project builds on three years of development and aims to deploy a scaled MVP in Greenland by 2026, offering a cost-competitive, scalable model that improves environmental conditions, public health, and Arctic infrastructure resilience.

$5,000 - Sritejas Murugan and Will Taylor (Leads) - This team of engineering students from the University of Toronto is developing a low-cost, autonomous unmanned surface vehicle (USV) prototype for environmental and bathymetric monitoring in the Canadian Arctic. Designed as a catamaran-style, sensor-equipped platform, the prototype will collect high-fidelity data on ice melt, temperature shifts, water depth, and ecological patterns in areas inaccessible to traditional survey vessels. Through expanding access to near-shore and shallow Arctic waters, the project aims to support Inuit and local communities, researchers, and policymakers with more frequent, localized environmental data.

Congratulations to all winners, and thank you to everyone who applied in the 2025 call.

Read more about the UArctic Entrepreneurship Fund.