From lab to stock market: How Finnish research drives growth

This year, two companies entered a new phase of growth by announcing plans to list on the stock exchange: quantum computer developer IQM and small modular reactor developer Steady Energy. IQM has sold 26 complete quantum computers. Steady Energy is building a pilot heating plant based on a small modular reactor in Helsinki.

Onego Bio, which develops animal-free egg proteins, received GRAS approval for its product from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is building its first full-scale factory in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Volare, which produces insect protein using food industry side streams, opened an industrial-scale factory in Pori.

These start-ups are building internationally scalable businesses based on technological breakthroughs. Technology is by no means market-ready when it leaves the laboratory; the companies continue to develop it actively and scale it up to industrial production.

Developing technology requires decades of deep expertise as well as world-class research equipment and environments – in other words, costly infrastructure. VTT spin-offs build on this foundation. The same VTT expertise and infrastructure are also available to other growth companies and industrial businesses. A company does not need to invest in its own pilot infrastructure or wait for expertise to mature: it can test and pilot a solution with us before making major investments. Once a solution has demonstrated validated results, the risk decreases and investors develop interest. This allows the new solution to move into the scaling phase faster and shortens the product’s journey to market.

For example, together with Neste, we developed production technologies for renewable fuels and e-fuels and built piloting environments that accelerate the transition of solutions towards industrial scale. Together with Valmet, we developed a novel 3D wood-fibre technology aimed at replacing fossil-based plastics with sustainable packaging solutions and creating new growth opportunities.

These successes are underpinned by long-term investment in research infrastructure by the Finnish government and VTT, benefitting clusters across a wide range of sectors. Increasingly, this infrastructure is linked to digital and AI capabilities, while any individual technology forms only one part of the enabling technology layer.

Excavation work began in early October on a site in Otaniemi. A new shared cleanroom environment, VTT KvanttinovaHub, will be built there. It will enable the development of specialised chip production in Finland and provide a major boost to new initiatives in many other fields.

When I meet business representatives, they are often surprised by the breadth of VTT’s activities. We can offer a formidable depth of research expertise to virtually every branch of industry. Finland must continue to ensure that the foundation on which new solutions are built – expertise and infrastructure – remains world-class and competitive. This benefits the entire Finnish business community. And it creates a chain reaction of growth: research becomes technology, and technology becomes new business, jobs, exports and economic growth.