News November 30, 2022: Leyr, OmMej, Logcast, Spotify, Acast, AIM, KiddoKitchen, Klarna and more

Martin Weigert -

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

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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).
  • 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.