The modern buildings along the fjord at Nedre Vats are the global headquarters of AutoStore, a robotics company that was once worth more than most companies on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The village has about 400 people.
The story starts with Jakob Hatteland, who began selling computer components from a barn here in the 1980s and built it into Northern Europe's largest electronics distributor. His technical director, Ingvar Hognaland, had a problem: the warehouse was mostly storing air. In 1996, inspired by a Rubik's Cube, he designed a system where robots move along rails on top of a grid, pulling bins from below. No aisles, no wasted space. They called it AutoStore and used it internally from 2002 before realising they could sell it.
Hatteland sold the electronics business to Arrow Electronics in 2000 and went all in on AutoStore. It worked. By 2021, more than 900 companies in 50 countries used the system. The technology holds over 1,600 patents. In October 2021, AutoStore went public on the Oslo Stock Exchange at a valuation of 103.5 billion kroner, making it Norway's biggest IPO in two decades. SoftBank was among the backers.
Then the stock collapsed. From an IPO price of 31 kroner, shares fell to an all-time low of 4.60 kroner in April 2025. The headquarters is still in Nedre Vats, in a village where the nearest traffic light is probably 30 kilometres away. It remains one of the most unlikely locations for a global tech company anywhere in the world.
The story starts with Jakob Hatteland, who began selling computer components from a barn here in the 1980s and built it into Northern Europe's largest electronics distributor. His technical director, Ingvar Hognaland, had a problem: the warehouse was mostly storing air. In 1996, inspired by a Rubik's Cube, he designed a system where robots move along rails on top of a grid, pulling bins from below. No aisles, no wasted space. They called it AutoStore and used it internally from 2002 before realising they could sell it.
Hatteland sold the electronics business to Arrow Electronics in 2000 and went all in on AutoStore. It worked. By 2021, more than 900 companies in 50 countries used the system. The technology holds over 1,600 patents. In October 2021, AutoStore went public on the Oslo Stock Exchange at a valuation of 103.5 billion kroner, making it Norway's biggest IPO in two decades. SoftBank was among the backers.
Then the stock collapsed. From an IPO price of 31 kroner, shares fell to an all-time low of 4.60 kroner in April 2025. The headquarters is still in Nedre Vats, in a village where the nearest traffic light is probably 30 kilometres away. It remains one of the most unlikely locations for a global tech company anywhere in the world.