News December 15, 2022: Xtrfy, Hypergene, Sib Solutions, Anyone, Minalyze, Kärnfull Next, porkchop, VOI, GeoGuessr and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Xtrfy (Landskrona, gaming peripheral manufacturer launched in 2013) was acquired by German manufacturer of keyboard switches and computer input devices CHERRY. Financial terms were not disclosed (English, Swedish).
• Hypergene (Malmö, SaaS for enterprise decision support) acquired the German company proventis, maker of the multi-project management software Blue Ant. Financial terms were not disclosed (Swedish, machine translation).

Funding news

• Sib Solutions (Lund, AI video analytics platform for logistics): SEK50M (€4.6M, $4.8M) from Scania Growth Capital II. According to Di Digital, Sib Solutions is being valued at SEK300M (€27.5M, $29M) post-money (English, Swedish).
• Anyone (Stockholm, career mentorship audio app): SEK15M (€1.4M, $1.5M) in a funding round co-led by Zenith Ventures and existing investor Cavalry (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Minalyze (Sävedalen, provider of scanning instruments and software for visualization of geological data): €370K (€390M) grant vom Vinnova to further drive the digital transformation of the mining industry (English).
• Kinnevik co-led a $185M Series C round raised by hospitality management cloud platform Mews, based in the Czech Republic (English).

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

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Breakit compiled a list of the income from work earned by CEOs of 108 Swedish tech companies in 2021. The article explaining the selection criteria is paywalled but here's the list itself (Swedish).
• Gothenburg-based cleantech startup Kärnfull Next and Finland-headquartered energy company Fortum signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly explore opportunities in new nuclear for developing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) in Sweden (English).
• porkchop, a Stockholm-based startup developing in-space logistics for smallsats, is shutting down due to not being able to secure follow-on funding. In early 2022, the startup raised a pre-seed round of unspecific size (English).
• VOI won Sweden's first public tender for micro-mobility and will get the exclusive right to operate shared scooters and ebikes in the city of Gävle (Swedish, machine translation).
• Spotify is ending production of several of its live audio shows (English). Meanwhile, the company plans to generate revenue from selling premium plugins to the widely adopted infrastructure frontend Backstage, which Spotify released as open source nearly 3 years ago after having used it internally since 2016 (English).

Swedish tech earnings

• GeoGuessr (Stockholm, geography game asking players to identify locations based on Google Street View imagery) is expected to generate revenue of SEK200M (€18M, $20M) and profit of SEK115M this year, while growing 70%. In a recent secondary share transaction, the startup recently was valued at SEK2.6B, up from SEK1.8B in early 2021. Co-founder and CEO Daniel Antell says he expects the company to grow rapidly for many years (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• German solar power systems provider Enpal has secured a total of €855M in new debt funding (English).
• Guide for doing due dilligence on early-stage startups which one considers joining as employee (English).
• a16z launched an interactive guide to growth metrics, with benchmarks of B2B companies, "based on a16z data and investing team expertise" (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• IKEA is giving all its retailers globally the possibility to add solar-powered cargo bikes to their last-mile delivery services (English).

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That's it for today.