We are looking for early phase startups developing solutions in the sustainable mobility area, with focus on hardware and complex software solutions. Validate your ideas as quickly as possible and co-design the future of sustainable mobility. Join our corporate incubator and co-locate to one of our R&D buildings on site in Gothenburg, Sweden.
If we select your startup for our incubator, you will get to work right beside the R&D teams of Volvo Group in the CampX innovation hub. You will receive mentoring from our (chief) engineers, senior managers, and former Volvo-employees-turned entrepreneurs.
We value your time as much as you do, and we add value where we believe is will be most beneficial. Therefore, there are no additional programs and no obligatory workshops and a hands-off approach in our incubator. We believe you should spend your time on your company instead. We aim to build a strong peer-to-peer community of founders, geared toward changing the world of sustainable mobility. As we would like to work side by side with your startup, we ask you to move your company to our R&D innovation hub in Gothenburg.
For the Volvo Group incubator, we are looking for early-stage startups: a team of full-time founders with a majority share, a freedom to operate, and a reasonable runway.
You need to develop a solution in the sustainable mobility industry focusing on hardware and/or complex software solutions as we in the Volvo Group believe that is where we can add the most value.
We will not interfere with your customers, your IP or your (potential) investors, and taking equity is not part of our incubator offer.
We strongly believe in an open approach and a collaborative mindset and that by keeping our hands off we will create the most value together.
We help deep-tech entrepreneurs to capture their uniqueness, to offer instant customer validation and to open up to the corporate network. The goal of the incubator is to validate solutions as quickly as possible, to give you the necessary support in this process and to create sustainable solutions that will change the mobility industry.
Our corporate incubator is a way to work side by side with startups in relevant industries. Being close to each other will help to develop ideas, solutions, products, or services and to grow as a company. Both for startups as for Volvo Group.
Through the incubator, the startups are provided mentorship, connections, facilities, and quick customer validation.
Our incubator is there for the long(er) run. In the incubator, we focus on early-stage startups and help them quickly validate their solution directions. We work side by side and we ask you to relocate your office to our campus. Our accelerator “accelerates” the growth of an already established startup with a product or service. Having a product or service ready for use is therefore a necessity for our accelerator. A steady team and some secured funding to support product development is almost always required as well.
The role of a corporate incubator is to open up its corporate social network. Startups might otherwise have not been able to access it. Corporates are often active in only one specific industry and know all the key players. Opening up that network and working side by side is a priceless experience for startups. In this way we are different from university-based incubators: they are often technology and industry agnostic, and it is therefore hard for them to support customer validation.
Very often corporates are willing to help startups but want something in return: a first pilot, a first investment, or securing an exit in some way. We do not believe in this approach. We truly think that by keeping our hands off we will create the most value together. We have no desire to limit you in your startup journey. We will not interfere with your customers, your IP or your (potential) investors, and taking equity is not part of our incubator offer.
Of course, if you want us to, we will happily talk about being your first customer, your strategic investor or your advisory board member!
Yes, we will charge a reasonable fee for using our services, comparable with renting an office in any inner city or science park. Our business model revolves around this fee, grants from governments and funding from Volvo Group. The incubator does not take equity.
Our goal is to build an ecosystem of corporates and startups around sustainable mobility. Therefore, your startup success is our success. We have numerous technical challenges at Volvo and it would be great if incubated startups can help solve them, or discover opportunities together with us in this exciting industry, in the short term or the long term. The more successful you are as a startup, the higher the chance you can contribute to solutions.
First, you need to check a few boxes: are you a founding team working fulltime in the startup with a majority of the shares and have freedom to operate? And are you active in the sustainable mobility industry with a hardware or deep-tech solution? Then you can apply here.
Yes as we really want to be physically close to each other, but we are looking into fully remote and hybrid solution for the future.
No, but we highly recommend it. Being incorporated in Sweden means you are more interesting for local investors and it is easier to work with local actors. There is also possible to apply for research and development grants.
Yes, send us an e-mail, campx@volvo.com or send in an application for either the incubator or the accelerator and we will contact you as soon as we can.
We are located in the CampX building on the Lundby campus in Gothenburg. Here we have co-located R&D engineers working within the areas of, Electromobility, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, Hydrogen Volvo Energy. The whole building has adopted an activity based approach, but a certain area of the building will be allocated to startups where you have “your own space”. Access to our labs, workshops and demo vehicles is part of the offer.
