Deals · RetailTech / AI

Jenz raises €540K pre-seed to automate retail back-office with AI, four months after hackathon win

An Oslo-based startup building an AI platform that automates back-office operations for independent and SME retailers — inventory management, replenishment ordering, and supplier communications — with a UK market launch planned within nine months.

ProYarn Desk · October 21, 2026Read this in French

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“Retail is a space everyone touches but no one has fixed. We are building the back office that independent retailers never had.”

Remi Bjørnestad — CEO, Jenz

Jenz (Oslo) has raised a €540K pre-seed backed by Antler and Ada Ventures, alongside a NOK 1M grant from Innovation Norway — non-equity and non-dilutive. The company was founded by Remi Bjørnestad (CEO), Jo Schou Sandåker (CTO), and Natnael Belete Seifo (CCO). The round was announced four months after Jenz won the Norway AI Hackathon in June 2026.

What Jenz builds

Jenz targets the operational gap beneath most independent and SME retail businesses: the back-office coordination work — inventory tracking, supplier ordering, stock deviation alerts, and replenishment communications — that owners and managers currently handle manually or delegate across disconnected tools.

The platform connects to the retailer's existing point-of-sale and inventory systems, monitors stock levels against sales velocity and supplier lead times, and automates the outbound workflow: placing replenishment orders, sending supplier messages, and routing exceptions for human review. Jenz does not replace the retailer's software; it fills the gap between what that software records and what it actually does about it.

A partnership with Avinor, Norway's main airports operator, is already in place. Airport retail — the independent food concessions, duty-free operators, and franchise units inside Avinor's terminals — is a concentrated cluster of exactly the operators Jenz is targeting: high transaction volume, lean staffing, and complex supplier relationships managed in real time. The Avinor relationship provides a structured customer base against which to develop the product before a broader rollout.

Hackathon to funding in four months

The timeline from Norway AI Hackathon win (June 2026) to closed pre-seed round (October 2026) is four months — fast for an enterprise B2B company, and consistent with the Antler Oslo programme model, which provides capital, infrastructure, and deal-acceleration services to cohort companies from day one.

Ada Ventures, a London-based pre-seed fund focused on underrepresented founders in B2B, adds a UK market lens to the Norwegian investor base. The company plans to launch in the UK within nine months — Ada's portfolio network there is the evident rationale for its participation. The Innovation Norway grant (approximately €88K) adds non-dilutive capital to the raise without equity dilution. Funds will support continued product development and the UK market launch.

Why it matters to investors

Independent retail is one of the largest underserved markets in enterprise software. The global chains run SAP. The mid-market runs specialised vertical SaaS. The independent and SME retailer — the corner shop, the boutique, the independent chemist, the duty-free concession inside an airport terminal — runs a combination of a point-of-sale system, a supplier phone call, and a spreadsheet. Jenz is building the AI layer that automates the coordination work between those pieces: the inventory check, the replenishment order, the supplier communication, the deviation alert. The Avinor partnership is the distribution insight. Avinor operates Norway's main airports, including Oslo Gardermoen. Airport retail is a concentrated cluster of independent and franchise operators that face exactly the operational problem Jenz is solving — high transaction volume, lean headcount, and supplier relationships that require constant real-time coordination — all within a geography that is pre-sold on the proposition. Getting into Avinor's network gives Jenz a structured reference customer base to develop the product against before a broader market rollout, and airport operators are notoriously demanding on operational reliability, which produces a strong product signal if met. The investor combination explains the UK market focus. Antler's Oslo hub has backed early-stage Norwegian founders since 2017 and provides local network and infrastructure. Ada Ventures, based in London, specialises in underrepresented founders and pre-seed B2B — its portfolio value comes from UK market access, not Norwegian. Ada joining an Oslo round is a specific signal that the nine-month UK launch is a genuine commercial priority, not a slide-deck aspiration. Innovation Norway's NOK 1M grant (approximately €88K, non-dilutive) adds clean validation from the national innovation agency without equity dilution. The 18-month risk is integration breadth. Automating inventory, ordering, and supplier communications for independent retailers requires connecting to whatever POS system, supplier portal, and accounting tool that retailer uses — a long-tail integration challenge. The €540K finances the proof of concept for one or two retailer archetypes. The Series A conversation will turn on whether the unit economics hold as integration complexity scales.

Sources

Pre-Seed RetailTech / AI Norway Antler Ada Ventures

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RetailTech / AI · September 21, 2026

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