Swedish tech news roundup #1 / week 1: Workamo, TicTac, Semcon, Collaboration Art, Picsmart, Gårdskapital and more
Welcome to the latest hand-curated roundup of news from Sweden's startup & tech sector.
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Mergers & acquisitions
- Workamo (Stockholm, online marketplace that matches freelancers and gig economy companies) acquired its Swedish competitor Simpell for SEK19.5M (€2M, $2.1M)(English, Swedish).
- TicTac (Malmö, provider of corporate e-learning solutions) acquired Danish provider of corporate e-learning solutions Key2Know. Financials were not disclosed (English, Swedish).
- Semcon (Gothenburg, multi-discipline technology firm) acquired UK-based e-learning solutions provider Walkgrove. Financial details were not disclosed (English).
Financing rounds
- Collaboration Art (Stockholm, holding company for performance marketing brands): SEK60M (€6M, $6.6M) from Spiltan (Swedish, machine translation).
- Swedish investment firm Flat Capital revealed that it invested SEK4.5M (€450K, $500K) in US-based design platform Figma's Series E round (Swedish, machine translation).
News from Swedish startups and the tech sector
- SEK70.8B (€6.9B, $7.7B) were invested in Swedish startups in 2021, according to DI Digital, compared to SEK27B the year before. Even when excluding Northvolt's giant SEK23B round, that's still about twice as much money that was flowing into Swedish startups 2021 vs 2020 (Swedish, machine translation).
- Picsmart, Stockholm-based online and delivery platform for local grocery stores, is expanding to other Swedish cities, with Örebro and Gothenburg first (Swedish, machine translation).
- Stockholm-based agricultural impact fund Gårdskapital wants to solve farmers’ capital needs to help them transition to more sustainable working practices, as explained by the founders Ebba Sundström and David Elvingsson in this interview (English).
- Spotify is losing its chief legal officer Horacio Gutierrez, who will join Disney (English).
Other interesting things
- Tech analyst Benedict Evans highlights technology-related questions for 2022, from crypto to cars to fast fashion (English).
- 78,711 new companies were started in Sweden in 2021, an increase of 7.1 percent compared to 2020, the previous record year (Swedish, machine translation).
- Last year, the Volkswagen ID.4 was Sweden's most registered electric vehicle, followed by Kia e-Niro and Tesla Model 3 (Swedish, machine translation).
- Volvo Cars announced Jim Rowan, who has a background in EVs and autonomous driving tech, as new CEO (English).
- H&M denies rumors that it plans to open a store in the Metaverse (English).
That's it for today!
