News from our network

All news
″
Dear Mr. Hewson, Thank you for submitting your tape of "U2" to RSO Records, we have listened with careful consideration, but feel it is not suitable for us at present.
″

Patrik Backman

General Partner

,

Helsinki

A General Partner at OpenOcean, Patrik’s heart lies with the “data-intensive” bit of our investment thesis. Before starting OpenOcean, Patrik co-founded MariaDB, and spent 6 years managing product and business development at MySQL AB, where he served as a Director of Software Engineering from 2003 to 2008, and managed the company’s strategic technical alliance with SAP AG. With his business hat on, Patrik was part of MySQL Management Team, and worked in management consulting at eCraft Management Solutions and A.T. Kearney. Patrik is on the board of Nosto, Booksy, Supermetrics, Import.io, AppGyver and MindsDB, works closely with NearGroup, and has held directorships at Ironstar Helsinki, MariaDB, and SkySQL. He received a Master of Science (Engineering) degree from Helsinki University of Technology and Master of Science (Finance) from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki.

Investment theme coverage

Horizontal & vertical AI automation
Agentic infrastructure & developer tooling
AI technology
AI-enabled services

Team

Investment Team

Portfolio

News highlights

All news
6
min read

Why we invested in Ubitium

OpenOcean has invested $4 million in Ubitium’s $14 million seed round, led by US-based Ibex Investors with participation from Quantum Systems co-founder Florian Seibel and existing backers KBC Focus Fund, Runa Capital, and Inflection.
6
min read

IQM's dual listing is a blueprint for European deep tech

In July IQM Quantum Computers started trading on Nasdaq New York and Nasdaq Helsinki, on subsequent days.
8
min read

Three things the State of Quantum 2026 report tells an early-stage investor

The State of Quantum 2026 report shows quantum computing maturing into a real market. For investors, the biggest opportunities lie in enabling infrastructure today and commercial adoption tomorrow.