Swedish Tech Weekly #245
Welcome to the latest from Sweden's startup & tech sector.
I'm Martin Weigert. Swedish Tech Weekly brings you a selection of some of the news I covered in my PRO newsletters last week. Today's email is being sent to 2253 subscribers.
Mergers & acquisitions
• AlexisHR (Stockholm, people operations and analytics platform) is being acquired by Norway-headquartered HR tech company Simployer (English).
• HomeQ (Stockholm, market place for first hand rental contracts) is being acquired by Schibsted Nordic Marketplaces (English).
• The bidding war for Gothenburg-based automated business transactions network Pagero has concluded with Thomson Reuters now controlling 99.45% of the shares and votes (English).
• Swedish private equity firm Nordic Capital acquires a majority stake in Canadian SaaS company Zafin (English).
Funding news
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• Roam, formerly Opibus (Stockholm & Nairobi/Kenya, developer of electric mobility technology): $24M in a Series A funding round consisting of $14M in equity funding led by Equator Africa, as well as a $10M debt commitment (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
• Fever (Stockholm, API-centric platform for virtual power plants): €10M ($10.8M) in a seed funding round led by General Catalyst, with participation from previous investors La Famiglia and Norrsken VC (English).
• Capitainer (Stockholm; platform for microsampling of blood for everyone, everywhere): SEK30M (€2.7M, $2.9M) in a funding round led by strategic investor We Venture Capital, with participation from existing investor Sciety (English).
• Kameo (Stockholm & Oslo, digital marketplace for crowdfunded loans to property developers): SEK30M ( €2.7M, $2.9M) in a funding round led by Incore Invest (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
• Suturion (Lund, developer and manufacturer of a sewing machine for standardized closure of the abdomen): SEK24M (€2.1M, $2.3M) from new investors including Scale Up Life Science Invest and Impilo Partners, and existing investors (English).
• 3eflow (Luelå; designs, manufactures and sells/licenses smart distribution systems for drinking water): SEK20M (€1.8M, $1.9M) from Longrun Capital, in the company's first larger funding (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).
• Ella (Stockholm; digital healthcare app for women before, during and after pregnancy): SEK4.5M (€400K, $430K) from undisclosed investors. ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on Feb 9.
• Life Inside (Gothenburg, B2B SaaS solution for integrating interactive video testimonials on any website): SEK4M (€350K, $380K) from angel investors (English).
• VOC Diagnostics (Stockholm, AI-supported technology for early detection of ovarian cancer through smell in a blood sample): $350K grant together with Linköping University, from Vinnova and the U.S. National Science Foundation (English).
• Zuna (Stockholm, upcoming SaaS solution for online retailers that helps to optimize product assortment based on customer demand): SEK3M (€270K, $290K) in pre-seed funding from angel investors, including Rickard Glamsjö, as well as EHAB and Holmströmgruppen. ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on Feb 13.
• Starfish of Sweden (Lund, developer of medical devices for preventative care of pressure ulcers): SEK2.5M (€220K, $240K) from angel investors, in an ongoing round with the goal of SEK5M (Swedish / Rapidus paywall).
• GOOZO (Gothenburg, HR platform focusing on employee well-being): undisclosed amount from Building Great Companies Group (BGC) (Swedish, machine translation).
• Resitu (Stockholm, developer of an innovative solution for breast cancer biopsies): undisclosed amount from Scale Up Life Science Invest (Swedish).
• Vividye (Gothenburg, resource-efficient dyeing technology for textiles): undisclosed amount from existing investor Chalmers Ventures (Swedish, machine translation).
I covered 12 additional rounds, as well as more details, in my PRO newsletters last week.
News from Swedish startups & the tech sector
• 40 startups will pitch at Sweden's new major tech conference The Tech Arena in Stockholm later this week (English).
• Lovable wants to "build software that builds software". The ambitious Stockholm-based startup was founded by a team surrounding former Depict co-founder/CTO Anton Osika (also former founding engineer at Sana) and just made itself known to the public for the first time (English). ➡️ PRO subscribers learned about Lovable on February 2.
• Creandum published its second Founder Compensation report (English).
• Vässla, Stockholm-based micromobility company, had to file for bankruptcy, after a district court rejected the company's request for extended coroporate reconstruction. The startup was just about to raise a small funding round to be able to exit the reconstruction. Founder and CEO Rickard Bröms writes that "the company is fully restructured and ready for a new chapter" (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
• Matspar.se, mostly bootstrapped Stockholm-based comparison platform for groceries sold online, launched a feature for food brand websites that allows consumers to add products from such a website to their Matspar shopping bag/checkout page (Swedish, machine translation).
• Interview with Kira Unger, co-founder and CEO of Stockholm-based legal platform PocketLaw, on the tough steps the startup took last year to shift the strategic focus from SME to large corporate customers (English).
• Profile of Law Off The Shelf, a new Stockholm-based startup aiming to democratize law through a digital marketplace for legal products targeting businesses (Swedish, machine translation).
• Mynt, Stockholm-based provider of smart corporate credit cards and spend management to SME, announced a strategic partnership with Visa, through which third parties can offer Mynt-powered (white label) card and spend management solutions to their customers (English).
• Minesto, publicly traded Gothenburg-based company, announced that its utility-scale tidal power plant is delivering its first electricity to the national grid in the Faroe Islands (English).
• The estate of 18-year-old bankrupt Malmö-based airbag bicycle helmet Hövding has been acquired by the private owned Austrian industrial iSi Group (English, Swedish / Di paywall).
• VOI, Stockholm-based e-scooter provider, is laying off another 120 office employees, 70 of which are full time roles, representing around 12% of the workforce (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
• Neo4j, the Malmö-founded and now Silicon-Valley based graph database firm, is looking to go public on Nasdaq's stock exchange in New York as soon as the window for initial public offerings opens up again (English).
• The Swedish FinTech Association published its annual report on the state of the Swedish fintech sector (English / PDF, Swedish / PDF).
• Mashup aims to be "Europe's most exclusive startup/VC meetup" and will take place on May 15-16 in Malmö (English). ➡️ PRO subscribers learned about Mashup and some background in late January.
• Base Camp is a 48-hour hackathon that will take place on April 12-13 in Stockholm. It's arranged by early stage VC and company builder Superangel, and designed for already established early-stage startups.
• EQT Ventures is hiring a "Head of AI" (English).
Exclusives for PRO subscribers last week
PRO subscribers last week also read about these things (among many others), which have not been covered/curated elsewhere:
• Pre-seed funding for a Swedish startup which enables customers to build better genAI products.
• A stealthy Swedish AI proteomics startup raised funding from an US VC firm.
• An under-the-radar social networking startup from Stockholm raised pre-seed funding from a high-profile US early-stage VC.
• Bankruptcies of various Swedish tech startups, including a shopping marketplace, an online career advisor app, a B2B SaaS solution, and a developer of innovative furniture.
• Unannounced down-rounds raised by two Swedish fintechs.
• Nine new early-stage tech startups, including an upcoming circular marketplace for fashion, a startup that develops an LLM approach to an automotive after-sales vertical, and an AI-powered solution for monitoring manufacturing.
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Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
• Y Combinator released a new list of 20 types of startups the accelerator wants to join its program, including Climate tech, new space, and explainable AI (English).
• The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied OpenAI’s attempt to trademark “GPT" (English).
• Some entrepreneurs in Europe worry over the EU’s Big Tech acquisition crackdown, as it might be a blow for their exit strategies (English).
• How to nail product-market fit by fine-tuning strategy with customer needs from day one (English).
• Founders should pitch "like a dinner party jerk", not holding back, and putting shyness and cordiality aside (English). I don't like this advice but it's good to know for Nordic founders what (some) US VCs might expect from them.
Other interesting things related to Sweden
• Two Sweden-based entrepreneurs have created an alternative organizational structure called regenerative community organism (RCO). It aims to redefine the way we think about sustainability and regenerative business practices (English).
• E-commerce revenue in Sweden shrank 8% in 2023, despite the high inflation (Swedish).
• Swedish major banks are moving to adjust product offerings and increase surveillance, amid growing fraud attacks by organized crime rings (English).
• Arla, the largest dairy producer in the Nordics, releases a product line made from oats (Swedish, machine translation).
• A Swedish non-profit has developed a dating app for people with mild intellectual disabilities and autism (English).
• Drug seizures in Sweden have reached an ”all time high” (English).
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Martin