News March 29, 2022: ArK Kapital, Zimpler, Scania Growth Capital, Freja eID, Bumbee Labs, Klarna, and more

Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.

💡
This post has been unlocked and made available for free a month after publication.

Subscribe to Swedish Tech News to get access to a daily newsletter that brings you a brief overview of news from the Swedish startup & tech sector, curated by Martin Weigert.

Or, if you prefer a free weekly newsletter, subscribe to Swedish Tech Weekly!

Financing rounds

  • ArK Kapital (Stockholm, alternative lending provider for startups): €150M ($165M) in debt funding and €15M ($16.5M) in equity funding. The equity round was led by LocalGlobe, with participation from Creandum, Alliance Venture and angel investors such as Hjalmar Winbladh and Jacob de Geer (English, Swedish).
  • Zimpler (Stockholm, account to account payment solutions for merchants): undisclosed amount from Nordstjernan, for the international expansion (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).
  • Scania Growth Capital led a $6.7M Series A round raised by UK-based urban logistics technology company Parcelly (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

  • Freja eID, Stockholm-based electronic ID provider, criticizes that most of the about 5000 Swedish services that require digital identification, only integrate with its competitor BankID, instead of also offering Freja eID. The current situation is "creating a single point of failure" (Swedish, machine translation).
  • Bumbee Labs, Stockholm-based provider of intelligent footfall analytics, is expanding into Brazil - the company's first South American market - through a partnership with local Wi-Fi service provider Mantis Tecnologia (English).
  • The Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection hit Klarna with a SEK7.5M (€730K, $800K) GDPR fine. The company says it wants to appeal against the decision (Swedish, machine translation).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

  • German AlphaQ Venture Capital (AQVC) launched a venture capital fund of funds with an initial target volume of €500M, for backing top-performing venture capital mostly in Europe (English).
  • Investment into foodtech reached a record $12.8B in venture investment globally in 2021—double the amount a year earlier (English).
  • Packy McCormick writes about the herd mentality behind "the current financial thing": The idea that a high interest rate, high inflation environment will kill growth companies and risk assets (English).

+++

That's it for today.

Martin Weigert

Martin Weigert

Martin is the founder of Swedish Tech News. Every day he spends many hours gathering and curating the latest from Sweden's startup & tech sector. Contact: m@swedishtechnews.com
Stockholm