Swedish Tech Weekly #266

đź’ˇ
This newsletter was sent on July 29, 2024 to subscribers of Swedish Tech Weekly.


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 recently, and is sent to 2466 subscribers today.

📢 After a month of reduced summer frequency, Swedish Tech Weekly is now returning to the weekly publishing schedule.

Mergers & acquisitions

• The UK-based PE firm Tenzing is acquiring the majority of shares in Bannerflow, Stockholm-based creative management platform for marketing teams (English).

• Enerpoly (Stockholm, developer of zinc-ion batteries for stationary energy storage) has acquired the end-to-end battery production line and process development capabilities of bankrupt former Swedish competitor Nilar (English).

• Brick (Stockholm, network for power bank-sharing) is acquiring the Danish company Volt, which offers various services (including phone charging) for music festivals (Swedish, machine translation).

Funding news

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

• Leya (Stockholm, AI assistant for legal professionals): $25M in a Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from new investor Alt Capital, and existing investors Benchmark, Y Combinator, and Wayfinder Ventures (English).

• Kry / Livi (Stockholm, digital healthcare provider): €20M ($22M) convertible note led by existing investor Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, and other existing investors (English).

• Maurten (Gothenburg, manufacturer of nutrition products based on its patented technology encapsulating high concentrations of carbohydrates in hydrogels): €20M ($22M) in a funding round led by IRIS Ventures (English).

• Greenely (Stockholm, next-generation household energy platform): €8M ($8.7M) in a Series A funding round led by Korys, with participati0n from existing investors including Luminar Ventures, for the Nordic expansion (English).

• Blue Scarab Entertainment (Stockholm, game studio developing a MMORPG for fans of cozy escapism and true-crime): $7M seed funding led by NetEase and Behold Ventures (English).

• Multi4 (Jönköping, technology for endoscopic cancer diagnosis and treatment): €2.5M ($2.7M) grant from EIC Accelerator (English).

• Millow (Gothenburg, Mycelium-based meat alternative): €2.4M ($2.6M) grant from EIC Accelerator (English).

• Mimbly (Gothenburg, sustainable laundry solutions): SEK16M (€1.4M, $1.5M) from new and existing investors including Polttina, ForeC, MMH Båstad, Lindia Invest, GU Ventures, Länsförsäkringar Göteborg & Bohuslän, Marinvest, and Lars Rundblom, for the expansion outside of Sweden (English, Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• Lemonado (Stockholm, no-code platform for business software): $1.4M in pre-seed funding led by node.vc (English). ➡️ Company first covered on February 1 in the early-stage startup tracker for PRO subscribers.

• Tapster (Stockholm; developer of contactless wearables and accessories): SEK8M (€680K, $740K) from unspecified new and existing investors (Swedish / Di Digital paywall). ➡️ Funding first covered in my PRO subscription on January 16.

• Creandum led a €7.6M funding round raised by German startup doinstruct, a platform for frontline worker training (English).

• Pale Blue Dot led a €5.7M seed funding round raised by German home insulation startup VARM (English).

• EQT Ventures led a €4.2M seed funding round raised by French Nylon recycling startup Syntetica (English).

• Scania participated in a $39M Series B funding round raised by UK-based startup Addionics, which is "redesigning the architecture of rechargeable batteries" (English).

• For PRO subscribers: 13 additional rounds, as well as more details, valuations, and numbers for many covered rounds (English).

• For PRO subscribers: Google Sheet with funding data, 1000+ rounds added during the past 12 months, updated daily (English).

News from Swedish startups & the tech sector

• Lolo Company, Stockholm-based iFaaS platform and programmable VPC for building cloud agnostic serverless apps, grew revenue by 72% in 2023 to SEK32.1M, while remaining profitable. ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on July 22.

• The two founders of Gofrendly, Claudia Gård and Ulrika Lilja, have bought the bankruptcy estate of their Stockholm-based social network for women to make new friends, and will continue run it (Swedish, machine translation).

• GU Ventures, the first investor in bankrupt Gothenburg-based foodtech startup Mycorena, formed a consortium aimed at raising a total of SEK35M to buy Mycorena's estate and rehire the team (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• Stockholm-based startup Heartspace launched "Nirvana AI", an automated media monitoring and article generation tool described as "the world's first fully autonomous AI-journalist".

• Worldish, Linköping-based startup offering solutions aimed at breaking communication barriers in healthcare and other public sectors, is launching the beta of a language learning app for elderly care, designed to help users master the Swedish language, using their mother tongue as a reference (English).

• Hava, a satiety-focused nutrition app launched in early 2024 by Stockholm-based startup Diet Doctor, now offers a free tier for 90 days (English).

• Lindsing, a Sundsvall-based foodtech startup, has launched its functional cereal product Knaprig, described as "the world's first cereal made from potato protein".

• HEJMAS, a startup founded in Canada, is moving operations to Karlstad. HEJMAS has developed a method to produce pulp that drastically reduces carbon emissions, water and chemical usage (English).

• Tebrito, Swedish developer of a protein food ingredient derived from mealworms, is bankrupt (Swedish, machine translation).

• Esportal Group, Stockholm-based esports platform, is also bankrupt (Swedish, machine translation).

• One more bankruptcy: Streamify, publicly traded Östersund-based live video shopping platform (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sifted covers the "Kry founders factory", i.e. entrepreneurs that previously worked at the Stockholm-based digital healthcare provider (English).

• 6 out of 10 employees at Swedish scaleups become burnt out, according to research from the International Business School in Jönköping (Swedish, machine translation).

• Spotify posted a record quarterly profit (English).

• The Gothenburg Tech Week 2024 will take place from October 2-4, including a special edition of GoWest. The next main event of GoWest – Gothenburg’s and west Sweden’s annual venture capital forum – will take place on January 28-30, 2025.

• PlayCap Angel Invest has launched, an angel network of women from the games industry, founded by the Stockholm-based investor Bibbi Wikman (English).

• 📺 Charlotte Ljung, founder and CEO of Malmö-based digital divorce planner Endbright, held a TEDx talk on "the problem with modern dating" (English / 13 minutes).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond


• McKinsey published its Technology Trends Outlook 2024 (English).

• Thoughts on the role of shame in the founder journey, and what VCs can do to not make their suffering worse (English).

• Guide to going multi-product (English).

• Sell -> design -> build (English).

• The latest edition of Nöjesguiden, a free-of-charge young adult monthly magazine, was entirely written by generative AI (Swedish, no machine translation available).

• The northern Swedish city of Östersund has launched Östersund AI, a GPT-4o-based chatbot interface for tourists to learn about the city's sights from the perspective of different "local" AI personalities.