Making it in America: From Startup to U.S. Acquisition

We are delighted to invite you to join Amcham Finland and our member Smartius, a Helsinki-based law firm, for Making it in America: From Startup to U.S. Acquisition, a morning panel on Thursday, October 1, from 8:30 to 10:30 AM at Epicenter Helsinki (Mikonkatu 9, Helsinki).

What does it actually take to build a company for the American market and exit successfully to a U.S. acquirer?

Join three executives who have done exactly that. Zach Shelby co-founded Edge Impulse, which became the industry standard for embedded machine learning before its acquisition by Qualcomm in 2025. Harri Pesola co-founded CubiCasa, reaching approximately 10% U.S. market share before its acquisition by Clear Capital. Jaakko Vainio was part of the core team at Silo AI from its earliest days through to AMD’s $665M acquisition in 2024, the largest private AI lab exit in European history. The panel will be moderated by Paul Herring, Partner at Smartius.

Three stories, three very different paths, and an honest conversation about what it really takes to scale deep tech from Finland to the U.S.

The panel will be followed by open Q