Key takeaways

Shifter’s coverage follows Volve’s journey building AI for construction tendering.

It highlights milestones reached so far and the company’s plans ahead.

For readers tracking Volve, the piece adds external coverage to the company’s account of its development.

Shifter, a Norwegian venture publication, reported on 3 February 2026 that Volve went from zero to NOK 6 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in one year.

At a glance

Outlet: Shifter (Norwegian)
Journalist: Joakim Birkeli Jacobsen
Topic: Volve’s first commercial year

The numbers

Commercialisation started: January 2025.
ARR at the end of 2025: NOK 6 million.
Outlook: Herman B. Smith expected the figure to nearly double around Easter 2026.
2026 target: originally NOK 20 million in revenue, now to be revisited.

Background

Volve was formally founded on 1 February 2024 by Herman B. Smith, Abyl Ikhsanov and Alf Jørgen Dovland, with development starting in 2023. Antler, OBOS and Startuplab invested in spring 2025.

Shifter describes the platform as using AI to analyse large volumes of project documentation, helping contractors and developers find risks, deviations and critical information in tender processes. That work has traditionally relied on manual review and searching through hundreds of PDFs.

Read the full story in Shifter (Norwegian).

Learn how Volve works on the Features page.

Herman B. Smith

CEO & Co-Founder