News November 22, 2022: Hub Planner, Ljusgårda, Ocean Harvesting Technologies, Wilma Emanuelsson, Hemma, Maîtres, Sthlm Fintech Week 2023 and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Swedish investment firm Monterro is acquiring 80% of the shares of Stockholm-based resource management platform Hub Planner (founded in 2013), in a deal estimated by Di Digital to be worth between SEK140M-SEK210M ($13.1M-$20M). In 2021, Hub Planner generated revenue of SEK26.1M and a profit of SEK11.5M (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall)

Funding news

• Ljusgårda (Tibro, vertical farming startup): SEK50M (€4.6M, $4.7M) from existing investors. Another round of at least the same size is currently being raised. The company's goal is to become the global leader in vertical indoor farming (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Ocean Harvesting Technologies (Karlskrona, developer of wave power technology): SEK22M (€2M, $2.1M) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency to perform sea trials of its InfinityWEC wave energy device (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

• Wilma Emanuelsson, 18-year old founder and CEO of Swedish eye-tracking-based "eye to speech" technology startup iTrack Reading, was named "Entrepreneur of the year" at this year's Nordic Women in Tech Awards (English).
• Hemma, a Stockholm-based startup founded in 2018 by Therese Ruth, has pivoted from providing green mortgages, to offering a SaaS platform for banks and energy companies to "enable the best customer journeys for home energy transition" (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Readly (publ), Växjö-based subscription service for digital magazines, has launched in France, the company's fourth market. Around a year ago, Readly acquired French local competitor Toutabo (English).
• Anders Ingårda, founder of Stockholm-based guest experience management platform for restaurants Maîtres, is stepping down as CEO, handing the reins to Malin Carlsdotter, who was previously COO (Swedish).
• The first edition of Sthlm Fintech Week 2023 will take place on February 15–16, embedded into a week of side events, networking, dinners and matchmaking (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• It appears Amazon's Alexa voice assistant (or rather, its associated hardware business which is burning lots of cash) is falling out of favor at the e-commerce giant. Things aren't looking great for other voice assistants either when it comes to business models (English).
• The 3 types of bridge rounds: “Bridge to nowhere”, the “1x Bridge” (increasing the odds a VC gets their money back, maybe with a modest return), and the "10x Bridge" (where investors know it’s a 10x-100x deal, it just needs to get over a hump) (English).
• VCs invested more than $25B in blockchain companies in 2021, and then a further $16B in the first six months of 2022 (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service (operated by SpaceX) is now available even in the most Northern parts of Sweden (English). Although apparently satellite coverage is still thin (Swedish, machine translation).
• Bloomberg Opinion's global business columnist Adrian Wooldridge on how "Sweden is rethinking what makes it great", describing the "search for a new balance between a commitment to globalization and a recognition of society’s needs for roots" (English)

+++

That's it for today.