Global shipping runs on paperwork. Every fuel delivery to every vessel at every port generates a chain of manual documentation, scheduling records, delivery notes, and compliance forms that the industry has been managing with clipboards and spreadsheets for decades. It's a $350 billion fueling market held together by fax machines and phone calls.

Oslo-based Ofiniti just raised $6.8 million to change that. The DNV spinout, which has quietly captured roughly 40% of Singapore's digital bunkering market, is taking its FuelBoss platform global with a growth round led by Verb Ventures and co-led by ShipsFocus. DNV Ventures and Nysno Climate Investments also participated, bringing total funding to $9 million.

Forty percent of one of the world's busiest ports. That's not a pilot program. That's infrastructure.

Ofiniti didn't start in a garage. The company was born inside DNV, the Norwegian classification society and maritime assurance giant, originally under the FuelBoss name around 2020. DNV spun it out as an independent company in September 2024, with three employees leaving DNV to become founders. DNV Ventures remained the largest shareholder.

That pedigree matters. Maritime fuel procurement isn't a space where untested startups win trust easily. Port authorities, fuel traders, and shipping lines don't adopt new software because it looks slick. They adopt it because it reduces risk. And a DNV lineage carries weight in an industry where certification and compliance are everything.

CEO Tue Nielsen put it plainly: "Our customers are managing more fuel types, across more ports, under more demanding documentation requirements than ever before. They rely on Ofiniti's seamless scheduling and automated documentation to reduce operational costs and provide full transparency across every delivery."

The numbers tell a specific story. Ofiniti processed more than 25,000 bunker operations in 2025. Of that volume, 500,000 metric tonnes comprised alternative fuels, including LNG, methanol, biofuels, and ammonia. The company expects alternative fuel volumes to increase tenfold in 2026.

Here's why that projection isn't just optimism. The International Maritime Organization's tightening emissions regulations are forcing ship operators to diversify beyond conventional heavy fuel oil. Each new fuel type comes with its own documentation requirements, safety protocols, and compliance standards. A vessel bunkering methanol in Singapore and ammonia in Rotterdam generates paperwork that didn't exist five years ago.

Manual processes can't keep up. The complexity isn't linear. It's multiplicative.

Singapore is the world's largest bunkering hub by volume. Proving the platform there wasn't accidental. If your software can handle the documentation complexity, speed, and regulatory scrutiny of Singapore's fuel operations, you can handle anywhere.

The $6.8 million will fund expansion into the ARA region (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp), Europe's largest bunkering corridor, as well as West Africa and Scandinavia. Major fuel suppliers in these regions have already begun adopting the platform, according to the company. In March 2025, Ofiniti acquired a Singapore-based competitor to consolidate its position, though details of that deal weren't disclosed.

Verb Ventures, which led the round, focuses specifically on digital infrastructure for global trade. Their thesis here is straightforward: shipping's paper-based procurement systems represent one of the last large-scale digitization opportunities in global logistics.

You don't hear much about bunkering software in the typical startup press cycle. There's no consumer app, no viral moment, no AI chatbot. But the regulatory pressure building underneath maritime fuel procurement is enormous.

Consider what's happening. The EU's FuelEU Maritime regulation, effective January 2025, requires vessels calling at European ports to progressively reduce their greenhouse gas intensity. The IMO's revised greenhouse gas strategy targets net-zero emissions by 2050. Every port in every jurisdiction is implementing its own layer of compliance documentation on top of these global frameworks.

For a fuel trader managing deliveries across 15 ports and six fuel types, the documentation burden isn't a minor operational cost. It's a strategic risk. One missed compliance form can delay a vessel's departure, costing the operator tens of thousands of dollars per day in charter costs.

Ofiniti's bet is that this compliance complexity will drive adoption faster than any sales team could.

Nine million dollars in total funding is modest by venture standards. For context, Ofiniti's round is smaller than what many B2B SaaS companies raise in a seed. But maritime software operates on different economics. Customer acquisition cycles are long, switching costs are high, and once you're embedded in a port's workflow, you tend to stay there.

The comparison to Flexport's early days is imperfect but instructive. Flexport raised modestly before freight forwarding's digitization wave made it a multi-billion-dollar company. Ofiniti is earlier, narrower, and more specialized. But the underlying dynamic, a massive legacy industry with paper-based processes facing new regulatory complexity, is strikingly similar.

Whether Ofiniti can translate its Singapore beachhead into global infrastructure will depend on execution speed and how quickly the multi-fuel transition accelerates. The regulatory tailwinds are real. The question is whether $9 million is enough runway to capture the market before larger players notice.

For now, 25,000 bunker operations and a 40% share of Singapore's digital market are numbers that speak for themselves. The shipping industry doesn't move fast. But when it moves, it moves all at once.