Swedish Tech Weekly #248

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This newsletter was sent on March 11, 2024, to subscribers of Swedish Tech Weekly. To receive future editions, you can sign up for free on swedishtechweekly.com.

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 2269 subscribers (+10).

Mergers & acquisitions

• Closar AI (Stockholm, upcoming app for daily monitoring of wearable data to make it actionable for doctors) acquired the Stockholm-based startup Untied World, which built a solution to integrate wearable data into a unified API (English). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription in December 2023.

• BatteryLoop, Gothenburg-based creator of scalable and circular energy storage systems founded as a subsidiary of Stena Metall, was acquired by Repono, a new pan-European company just launched by EIT InnoEnergy, focused on owning and operating large energy storage systems (ESS) (English).

• Duni Group, a publicly traded Swedish company offering sustainable dining and food packaging solutions for the restaurant market, has become majority owner of German startup Relevo (English).

• Accedo, Stockholm-based global video solutions provider, acquires the UK-based AI-powered end-to-end video streaming platform Easel TV (English).

Funding news

Do you have unreported funding news you want to see here? Fill out this form or respond to this email.

• Syre (Stockholm, textile-to-textile recycling at hyperscale, unveiled last week): $50M from TPG Rise Climate. This capital injection comes in addition to funding provided by Vargas Holding and H&M, which have founded Syre together with Susanna Campbell (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall). Syre will need “a couple of billion dollars” for its plan to scale up rapidly (English).

• Cellcolabs (Stockholm, making high-quality Mesenchymal stem cells available at scale and enabling market approved products): $8.7M from angel investors including Fredrik Österberg and Jens von Bahr (English).

• Privasea (Gothenburg, digital asset exchange and privacy computing platform for data value circulation): $5M in a seed funding round from Binance Labs and other Web3-focused investors (English).

• Sand Clinic (Stockholm, upcoming private members club offering prevention and precision medicine focused on longevity): €4M ($4.3M) from the Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon (English). ➡️ My PRO subscribers learned about this startup and investment before everybody else, on Nov 13.

• eComID (Stockholm, solution that aims to empower global online retailers to collaboratively reduce product returns): €2.75M ($3M) in a pre-seed funding round led by CapitalT, with participation from existing investor H&M Group Ventures, and angel investors (English). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription on February 12.

• Cellfion (Stockholm, bio-based membranes for electrical energy storage and conversion devices): €2.5M ($2.7M) grant from EIC Accelerator (English).

• Multi4 (Jönköping, technology for endoscopic cancer diagnosis and treatment): SEK25M (€2.2M, $2.4M) from "experienced life science investors", including Fredrik Strömholm (Swedish, machine translation).

• Legitify (Stockholm and Dublin / Ireland, digital notarization platform): €1.5M ($1.6M) in a seed funding round led by UK-based VC firm Verb Ventures (English).

• Cetti, formerly BudID (Uppsala, service to streamline the process of home purchases): SEK16M from new angel investors, for the Nordic expansion. Norway will be first (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Pantlån (Stockholm, AI-powered online pawnshop): SEK5M (€440K, $480K) from angel investors (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ In my PRO subscription on Feb 26, I covered this funding, and the other AI service the startup operates.

• Wingbits (Stockholm, community-driven flight data platform): $80K in pre-seed funding from Borderless Capital. This comes in addition to the €150K ($160K) in pre-seed funding from Antler announced in fall 2023 (Swedish / Breakit paywall). ➡️ Company and initial funding first covered in my PRO subscription in November 2023.

• Openpoint (Stockholm, browser based platform for digital twins): undisclosed amount from real estate industry angel investors (English).

• T&S Engineering Intelligence (Gävle; AI-powered solution that reads drawings, creating new opportunities for automating design processes): undisclosed amount from Almi Invest and one private investor (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Funding first covered in my PRO subscription on February 22.

• Backing Minds led a €750K pre-seed funding round raised by Denmark-based startup NitroVolt, developer of technology to produce green ammonia (English).

• VNTRS invested an undisclosed amount in Iceland-based pay-per-view live streaming platform Livey (English).

• Flat Capital, the Siemiatkowski couple's publicly traded investment firm, has invested around SEK3M in the US-based AI search engine Perplexity AI (English).

• In a follow-on investment, H&M Group participated in a €40M funding round raised by Finnish startup Infinited Fiber Company, which develops a technology similar to what now bankrupt Swedish Renewcell worked on (English).

I covered 8 additional rounds, as well as more details, in my PRO newsletters last week.

News from Swedish startups & the tech sector

• "The days when social gatherings were for extroverts are over" – that's the promise made by Mingla, a new Stockholm-based startup developing tools for gamified networking at events, founded by Elise Lilliehöök and the Nordic Angels founders Andreas Grape and Ash Pournouri (English).

• SSE Business Lab has admitted ten new Swedish startups to its incubator program. For the first time, the incubator of the Stockholm School of Economics is making sustainability coaching mandatory for all participating companies (English). ➡️ Five of the startups have been previously covered in my PRO subscription.

• Pepins, the Swedish crowdfunding and investments platform, announced it will have to shut down, following a canceled acquisition by Gothenburg-based regtech company AktieGirot. This is actually the second time within half a year that an expected acquisition of Pepins is falling through (Swedish, machine translation).

• LingoLooper (Lumi Labs), Gothenburg-based startup founded in 2022, has launched its fully immersive AI-powered language learning app as free "early access" version for iOS and Android (English). Personal recommendation: Try it. I instantly loved it. Great first impression.

• Stockholm-based startup Nova Circle has launched its social recommendations app for people who know and trust each other (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in May 2023.

• Profile of Sea Technology, Stockholm-based developer of a concept for floating container terminals that could act as a new type of logistics nodes on the world's oceans. The company was originally founded by the marine engineer Bengt Lundqvist, and is now run by his daughter Thérèse Lundqvist (Swedish, machine translation).

• Profile of VCraft Aeronautics, a Stockholm-based developer of electric eVTOL aircraft for both military and civilian use (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in June 2023.

• Stockholm-based startup Safety by Cilia is developing and selling a personal safety alarm solution integrated into jewelry. In this interview, founder and CEO Cissi Nilsson talks about her experience of an attempted rape six years ago, and how this eventually led her to start Safety by Cilia (Swedish, machine translation).

• Mylla, Malmö-based online marketplace which lets local farmers sell directly to end consumers, is entering the SaaS space and launching an "E-com-as-a-service" offering for farmers and food brands that would like to sell through their own store (English).

• Endbright, Malmö-based digital divorce planner, will soon expand internationally and broaden its approach, to help couples protect relationships before they end up in a divorce (Swedish / Rapidus paywall).

• HayHay, Stockholm-based mobile expert community app and AI-powered assistant for horse riders, expanded into Norway in the beginning of this year (Swedish, machine translation).

• Freja eID, the publicly traded Stockholm-based electronic ID provider, is launching a white label solution for electronic ID operators in other countries (Swedish, machine translation).

• Following a March 2019 antitrust complaint by Spotify, the European Union has fined Apple €1.84B ($2B) for breaching antitrust rules in the market for music streaming services on its mobile platform, iOS. Apples says it plans to appeal the ruling (English).

• Time to Raise, Swedish accelerator program focused on fundraising for women-led companies, is having a few open spots left for its fifth cohort. The applications have officially closed, but are being kept open for Swedish Tech Weekly readers until tomorrow (Tuesday). Here's the application form.

• Breakit published a list of "Sweden's 500 most important angel investors, VCs and family offices" (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Swish, the ubiquitous Swedish payments app owned by major banks, is about to launch a self scanning feature for customers of shops that opt-in for this option (Swedish, machine translation).

• Feelingstream, an Estonia-based startup that offers a conversation analytics tool for decision makers, is expanding into the Nordics with an office in Sweden (English).

• Aerit, Stockholm-based sustainable drone delivery startup, is now selling its own cereal named "NAT-Os Cereal Box" to celebrate Sweden's NATO membership (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:

• Founders of a Swedish fintech which raised an eight-digit dollar amount in funding and recently pivoted, have silently started a new company.

• An under-the-radar HR tech startup from southern Sweden has raised fresh, unannounced funding, and increased its valuation by 66% vs two years ago.

• A new startup working on a solution for authors and IP-owners to control, produce and distribute their works globally, raised first unannounced funding.

• A furniture subscription service for workplaces from central Sweden increased revenue 130% year-over-year while delivering a break-even result.

Join PRO, if you are an early-stage investor, analyst, or a sales exec.

Want an annual PRO subscription paid by invoice, or one for your entire team? Respond to this mail and let me know. I'll provide you with an individual quote.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Between 2019 and the end of 2023, women's share of tech jobs rose from 31% to 35% in the US, 23% to 25.2% across the EU, and 29% to 32%+ in the UK (English).

• Databricks, the still private US-based enterprise software company co-founded and led by Swedish entrepreneur Ali Ghodsi, pulled in $1.6B in revenue during the financial year that ended in January 2024 – an increase of more than 50% YoY (English).

• Using the gold rush metaphor to understand the mechanisms and economics of the AI hype (English).

• When founders just own a minority in their own company, that makes it highly unattractive for most future investors (English).

• A founder’s guide for successful early-stage customer discovery (English).

• Sweden officially joined NATO last week, ending an almost two-year long process (English).

• 49% of Swedish consumers prefer a self checkout solution when paying for something in a physical store (Swedish, machine translation).

• Space, Stockholm's ambitious hub for digital culture and gaming, which opened in late 2021, is closing its doors after accumulating heavy losses (Swedish, machine translation).

• Elisabet Eriksson, the founder of Swedish coffeehouse chain Espresso House, and her partner are bringing their egg fast-food restaurant concept Eggs Inc to the US (English).

• 41% of Swedes say they believe in some kind of paranormal phenomenon – 37% of men and 52% of women (Swedish, machine translation).

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And check out my regularly updated Swedish tech startup & VC lists.

Martin

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