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Ralf Wahlsten

Chairman

,

Helsinki

Ralf is a co-founder and chairman of the board of OpenOcean, Ralf holds board memberships at RapidMiner, Nordic Telecom and HeavenHR. Before fate brought him together with the rest of the Swedish-speaking Finns in Helsinki to build OpenOcean, he had been an active angel investor, as well as a key advisor to the MySQL founders from the company’s inception, helping them develop their first business plan, strengthening the Board, and hiring the CEO – up until the exit to Sun Microsystems. With a Management Consulting background, Ralf has broad experience in areas like Corporate and Business Strategy Development, Business process reengineering and Marketing Strategy from top consulting firms like AT Kearney, Booz-Allen and Indevo. Ralf is also a co-founder of MariaDB. He holds a Master of Science degree in Engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (Aalto University).

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10
min read

The state of agentic AI in 2025: what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s next

At the start of the year, “2025: The Year of Agents” sounded like headline bait. Eight months in, it feels like an understatement. Sam Altman said agents would “join the workforce” in 2025. Satya Nadella expects them to replace segments of knowledge work. Marc Benioff wants Salesforce to be the “#1 provider of digital labour.” That’s not future tense anymore - today, agents are moving tickets, shipping code, and digesting documents.
9
min read

What we’ve learned from the front lines of AI-enabled services

Last November, we laid out a vision for AI-native services: businesses rebuilt from the ground up to combine the margins of software with the resilience and depth of services markets. Since then, we have taken dozens of first meetings, explored more than 15 verticals, backed our first deals, and sharpened our thesis along the way.
7
min read

Enterprise automation market industry update: automation after GenAI

At OpenOcean, we’ve long believed in automation software’s potential. It’s been a core theme in our investment focus for years, giving us early and continued exposure to exciting developments in the field.