Swedish Tech Weekly #252

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 2324 subscribers (+9).

Mergers & acquisitions

• Rocker (Stockholm, digital bank) was acquired by the Swedish B2B financing provider Nordiska, reportedly in a kind of fire sale (Swedish, machine translation).

Funding news

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• Scayl (Stockholm, platform that gives fintech lenders access to scalable debt funding): €100M ($107M) in debt funding from an European bank. In conjunction with this announcement, Scayl emerged from stealth mode. The company has not raised any equity funding so far (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription on March 11.

• Zaver (Stockholm, payments provider featuring size-agnostic checkout solutions): $10M Series A extension from existing investors such as FROS Ventures, Hållbar AB, Hobohm Brothers Equity, JOvB Investments, MAHR Projects, and Skagerak Capital (English).

• Telness Tech (Stockholm, provider of next-generation cloud-based telecom solutions): SEK50M (€4.3M, $4.6M) in bridge funding from existing investors Industrifonden and JCE, through Viltor Ventures (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• GAIA Biomaterials (Helsingborg; manufacture of a material that has most of the qualities of plastic, but not the disadvantages): $5M in a funding round led by Almi Invest Greentech (English).

• Turbotic (Stockholm, provider of AI-powered enterprise automation orchestration): SEK27M (€2.3M, $2.5M) from two undisclosed new angel investors, and existing investors including Öresund and Luminar Ventures (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Ironic Biotech (greater Lund area; developer of plant-derived proteins used as ingredients in food or food supplements, that allow iron to be easily absorbed into the blood): €1M ($1.1M) in pre-seed funding led by Nordic Foodtech VC (English).

• Alrik (Stockholm, SaaS logistics workspace for distributors in construction): €1M ($1.1M) in seed funding from London-headquartered Pi Labs (English).

• B.SALUS (Kalmar, sprayable body powder against thigh chafing): SEK400K (€35K, $38K) in first outside funding from Kick Capital, for the international expansion (Swedish, no machine translation available).

• Gilion provided a €2M loan to German healthtech company Recare, which has developed a SaaS platform to facilitate easy and effective patient transfer from hospitals to care providers (English).

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

News from Swedish startups & the tech sector

• Fredrik Hamilton, the founder of Swedish last mile delivery company Budbee, has co-founded a new startup: Guardly, whose upcoming product "provides families with intelligent home security for smart homes" (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Vectorview, one of the three Swedish startups known to have made it into the current Y Combinator (YC) batch, got a special shout out by TechCrunch as one of the best pitches/companies during the YC Demo Day event (English).

• Lavendla, profitable Stockholm-based digital provider of funeral services founded in 2014, is reportedly for sale (Swedish / Affärsvärlden paywall).

• EndoGyn, Stockholm-based digi-physical healthcare provider of personalized healthcare for women with endometriosis, just opened the first endometriosis clinic in Sweden (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription in October 2023.

• Noctie, bootstrapped Umeå-based startup that offers a "personal AI chess coach with a human touch", launched on Product Hunt (English).

• Profile of Relox Robotics and interview with co-founder and CEO Marcus Olsson. The Stockholm-based startup offers an autonomous golf robot "as a service" for driving ranges (Swedish, machine translation).

• OurGreenCar, bootstrapped Malmö-based platform for group sharing of EVs, reports net revenue of SEK25.6M for 2023, up 137% year-over-year, and a profit ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on April 2.

• Done, Stockholm-based installation network and platform within EV-charging, electricity & plumbing, doubled net revenue to SEK18.5M in 20223. The startup also extended the SEK4.3M bridge round first announced in December, with SEK200K (English).

• Arctic Space Technologies, Piteå-based provider of satellite ground segment solutions founded in 2020, generated revenue of SEK18M and a profit of SEK8M in 2023. Northern CapSek Ventures and existing shareholder Carlson Invest just announced an investment in the startup: Both acquired shares from the founders ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on April 5.

• Mo'cycle, Stockholm-based fashion-tech company which a year ago brought its invention – a motorcycle airbag jeans – to the market, launched an equity crowdfunding campaign.

• Anyfin, Stockholm-based consumer loan refinancing provider, reports having reached the milestone of "100,000 customers in Sweden" (English).

• Flower, Stockholm-based software platform for energy forecasting, optimization and trading, acquires "Sweden's largest battery park", Bredhälla, from OX2 (English).

• Johan Nordenström, co-founder and CEO of three-year-old Stockholm-based provider of tech-enabled hospital level in-home care Medoma, shares insights into building in healthcare as a startup (English).

• ParkSpy, a Stockholm-based startup, just launched its community-based parking app in Sweden. It encourages motorists to inform each other about available parking spots (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sifted profiles Vargas Holding, the Swedish company builder, investment company, and "climate tech unicorn factory" (English).

• The Finland-based AI lab Silo AI launched new LLMs for the Nordic languages, including Swedish (English).

• The applications for the annual startup competition Techarenan Challenge are now open (English).

• Skåne Ventures, the new investment vehicle established last year by the southern Swedish incubators Minc, Ideon Innovation, Hetch and Krinova, announced the first closing of its first fund at SEK33.6M (English, Swedish).

Exclusives for PRO subscribers last week

PRO subscribers last week also read about these things (among many others), which mostly have not been covered or curated elsewhere:

• A Swedish AI startup, which raised $1M in equity funding when it got started in 2022, aims to "deliver full AGI within 18 – 24 months".

• Two Stockholm-based startups are developing open-source alternatives to widely used SaaS tools.

• Bankruptcies of Swedish startups in the powertech and SaaS/healthcare sectors.

• 13 new Swedish tech startups, unannounced funding rounds, financial results from several startups, and more.

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

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyon

• When hype cycles meet S-curves: The roll-out conundrum of generative AI (English).

• Founder’s guide to hiring lawyers at every stage of a startup (English)

• Hackernews comment thread on whether developers there are getting value from AI Agents (tenor: not too much quite yet) (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• The legendary rock band Kiss sold their music catalog, name, image and likeness — including their iconic makeup designs — to Sweden-based music investment firm Pophouse Entertainment. The deal is reported to be worth around $300M (English).

• Aircraft landing and departing from Kiruna Airport, Åre Östersund Airport, Umeå Airport and Malmö Airport, can now be controlled remotely from Stockholm (Swedish, machine translation).

• March’s auto market saw plugin EVs at a 58.1% share in Sweden, down YoY from 59.9% (English).

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

Martin