Here are today's news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.
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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!
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!
Funding news
- Leyr (Stockholm, API platform for healthtech startups): €600K ($620K) in a pre-seed round led by Icebreaker.vc (Swedish, machine translation). The article didn't mention the name of the VC, but Leyr CEO and co-founder Helena Holma confirmed to me that it's Icebreaker.vc.
- OmMej (Malmö, platform for public agencies to assess children's mental health): SEK5.5M (€500K, $530K) from Almi Invest, Helmer Hagman, BB5, Victineodor Ventures, Acantor and JNN Consulto (Swedish, machine translation).
- Update to PlayMaker's funding round covered yesterday: According to a Breakit article published after yesterday's newsletter went out, the amount raised is SEK4M (€370K, $380K) (Swedish, machine translation).
- In a follow-on investment, EQT Ventures participated in a $23M Series A round raised by UK-based fintech TreeCard, which aims to plant trees with card payments (English).
- In a follow-on investment, Norrsken Foundation participated in a $3.4M seed round raised by Nigerian food tech platform Orda (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
- Logcast, Stockholm-based social network for audio creators and their fans, scored a partnership with Spotify: Through an integration to be rolled out in Sweden and then worldwide starting from January, creators can record talk content on Logcast, set a price and release it to Spotify, where fans can pay to unlock and stream it (English, Swedish).
- Spotify, meanwhile, released its popular and usually quite viral annual Wrapped review showcasing what users have been listening to throughout the year (English).
- Acast launched a self-serve advertising platform for small and medium sized businesses as well as podcasters who want to advertise (English).
- ArK Kapital, Stockholm-based alternative lending provider for startups, launched its internal AI-driven forecasting platform as public service, named AIM. It is initially available to companies in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and the UK, with more markets following soon (English, Swedish).
- KiddoKitchen is a new bootstrapped Stockholm-based startup founded by Linn Thulin and Molly Gyllenkrok, which has launched a mobile app to simplify baby meals (Swedish, machine translation).
- After a significant workforce cut in June, more employees are reportedly being laid off at Tipser. The Stockholm-based embedded commerce solution was acquired by US-based checkout technology company Bolt in December 2021 (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
- Lidong Zhang, Chairman of TikTok owner ByteDance, is/was in Stockholm. According to a photo posted on LinkedIn, he met up with the Swedish investment firm eEquity (English).
Swedish tech earnings
- Klarna published its Q3 financial numbers and says it made “huge progress” towards profitability, even though the company reported a net loss of SEK2.1B (€190M, $200M) for the latest three-month period compared with SEK1.1B a year earlier. However, Klarna reduced its operating losses by $169M (42%) between Q2 and Q3 this year (English, Swedish).
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
- What happens to stock options if a startup employee is laid off (English)?
- Thanks to recent advances in AI, there's a huge opportunity for startups to capture value in the massive productivity market by owning the UX and prompt engineering layer (English).
Other interesting things related to Sweden
- Sweden ranks first in Europe and third globally in this year’s Network Readiness Index (English).
- In a pilot project, a self-driving truck (carrying a safety driver) from Scania is currently maneuvering a stretch of some 300 kilometers between the cities of Södertalje and Jönkoping, delivering fast-food goods (English).
- Researchers at Gothenburg's Chalmers University have initiated a year-long study on the charging and driving habits of Swedish EV owners (Swedish, machine translation).
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That's it for today.
