News August 4, 2022: WAGMI, Cora Music, Rocker, Readly, European VC funding H1 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

• WAGMI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fragbite Group (Stockholm, global group of gaming and e-sports companies): $3.35M through a strategic sale of an upcoming in-game token, to "leading blockchain investors" including Solana Ventures, Magic Eden, COM2US, CRIT, Mysten Labs, Zeeprime Capital, Hustle Fund, SOLBigBrain, Devmons GG and Sebastien Borget (English, Swedish).

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Sweden ranks #7 by VC investment raised during H1 2022 and drops significantly when it comes to VC funding per capita, according to the "European VC Pulse Check" published by Dealroom and Silicon Valley Bank (English):

• Cora Music is a new competitor to Epidemic Sound, launched by the Swedish music rightsholders organization Stim. The service focuses on YouTubers who want to use well-known songs in their clips (Swedish, machine translation).
• Rocker (Stockholm, digital bank) generated revenue of SEK106M (€10.2M, $10.4M) in 2021 compared to SEK90M in 2020. Losses grew from SEK73M in 2020 to SEK143M in 2021. The company expects to achieve positive cash flow in the near future and likely won't need fresh funding for that, says CEO and founder Jonas Hultin. However, he doesn't rule out an exit to a potential acquirerer (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Readly, Växjö-based subscription service for digital magazines, is continuing its move into podcasts which started in the UK a month ago. The company has now launched the first 9 podcasts in Swedish from 5 publishers (Swedish, machine translation).
• Sweden currently counts 21 "climate fintechs", ranking #2 in the world (or at least among countries considered) per capita, behind Switzerland (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Shorting startups: With synthetic derivatives, hedge funds can bet against a startup’s price and VCs can de-risk an aging portfolio (English).
• ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of a TikTok Music service (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Sweden is making a nice profit by importing cheap energy from north Norway into north Sweden before moving it south and exporting it to south Norway (English, Norwegian).

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That's it for today.