News August 17, 2022: Doktor.se, bld, Syndata, Cetasol, Airinum, ArK Kapital, Tiptapp and more

Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.

Funding news

• Doktor.se (Stockholm, digital healthcare provider): SEK280M (€26M, $27M) at a post-money valuation of SEK6B (€570M, $580M) – slightly higher than the most recent valuation from 2021 – from new investors such as Gustaf Hagman and Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, and existing ones including Tencent and Bonnier Ventures (English, Swedish / DI Digital paywall, Swedish#2).
• bld (Stockholm, upcoming social media app where real people are sharing real life experiences): SEK12M (€1.1M, $1.2M) from angel investors, among them Hélène Barnekow, Fredrik Hjelm, Viktor Frisk, Moha Bensofia and the family offices Åhman and Sahlén. According to founder Claes Mårtén, the round was raised at a valuation of SEK100M. The app is expected to be launched in Sweden in fall, followed swiftly by the US market  (Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
• Syndata (Stockholm, synthetic data generation platform): SEK2.2M (€210K, $210K) from undisclosed angel investors, the company's founders and Connect Öst (English).
• Partinc Capital invested an undisclosed amount in Finnish cloud-based sales platform Seidat (English).
• Kale United participated in a $500K pre-seed round raised by Iceland-based plant-based seafood startup Loki Foods (English).

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups. Request access.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Gothenburg-based startup Cetasol, founded in 2021, is creating AI-powered energy optimization solutions for small and medium-sized vessels. In a pilot test conducted in the Gothenburg archipelago, captains were able to cut fuel consumption by 17% on average by changing their driving patterns (English)
• Airinum, Stockholm-based maker of "urban air masks" founded in 2015, is feeling the "post-pandemic" hangover, by seeing a lot of its Covid-related spike in demand disappear. Now the Stockholm-based company is pivoting back to its original product story: to reduce the health effects of climate change (Swedish, machine translation).
• ArK Kapital, Stockholm-based alternative lending provider for startups, is heavily expanding its tech team and has grown to 40 employees within less than a year. The company says it has around 30-40 customers on its platform, which are accessing loans ranging from SEK10 up to SEK100M (Swedish / Breakit paywall)
• In Berlin, Stockholm-based app startup Tiptapp, which helps people move things in and out of their home, got the official blessing from and secured a partnership with the city's waste management company BSR, which is actively promoting the service for bulky waste disposal (English).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Streamify (Östersund, live video shopping platform): Swedish, machine translation.
• Flowscape (Stockholm, digital workplace solutions): Swedish, machine translation.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• 87% of 133 startup employees that participated in a Sifted survey said that working at a startup had negatively impacted their mental health at some point. Likely selection bias, but still (English).
• When hiring indepentend board members, founders should look for 5 personas that add value: the CEO whisperer, the voice of the customer, the industry expert, the functional expert, and the public readiness expert (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Sweden led the Nordics in 5G median download speeds in Q2 2022, Denmark on 5G availability (English).
• Sweden is relying on an old oil-fired power plant to keep the lights on in the south as a dearth of wind generation and nuclear outages sends prices to a record (English / Bloomberg paywall, alternative URL).

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That's it for today.