News March 6, 2024: EIT InnoEnergy, Repono, Syre, Privasea, Cetti, Wingbits, Countagen, Pepins, VCraft Aeronautics, Mylla, hummy, Scalinq, Probe, and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• BatteryLoop, Gothenburg-based creator of scalable and circular energy storage system made from reused electric vehicle batteries founded in 2018 as a subsidiary of Stena Metall, was acquired by Repono, a new pan-European company just launched by EIT InnoEnergy, focused on owning and operating large energy storage systems (ESS). Through this acquisition, Repono is kickstarting its journey with a number of energy storage systems in operation in the Nordics, as well as a team of 25 employees. Repono plans to "deploy and operate 100 gigawatt hours of energy storage in Europe by 2030" (English).

Funding news

• Syre (Stockholm, textile-to-textile recycling at hyperscale, founded 2023 and unveiled today): $50M from US-based TPG Rise Climate. This capital injection comes in addition to funding provided by Syre's two founding companies, Vargas Holding and H&M. The latter also secured an offtake agreement with Syre worth a total of $600M over 7 years," covering a significant share of H&M Group’s long-term need for recycled polyester". Syre is currently building its first plant in North Carolina, USA, and "aspires to have 12 gigascale plants up and running at full speed and capacity worldwide" within ten years (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall). Syre will need “a couple of billion dollars” for its plan, CEO Dennis Nobelius tells the Financial Times (English / FT paywall, alternative URL). A potential side effect of this: As Syre is being co-founded by Swedish business exec, board professional and investor Susanna Campbell, large future funding rounds may have an outsized effect on the stats of funding raised by Swedish startups with mixed gender teams. Remember where you heard that first :)
• Privasea (Gothenburg, digital asset exchange and privacy computing platform for data value circulation, founded 2022): $5M in a seed funding round from Binance Labs, Gate Labs, MH Ventures, K300, QB Ventures, Crypto Times, and some angel investors from the Web3 sector (English). Privasea was founded by Yin Jiao and Daniel Nilsson. Funding news continue below...