Swedish Tech Weekly #269

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This newsletter was sent on August 19, 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 last week, and is sent to 2485 subscribers today.

Mergers & acquisitions




• Klingit (Stockholm, all-in-one solution for brand and marketing needs) acquired the Norwegian digital design tool Graphic (English, Swedish).

• The investment firms Bure and GP Bullhound acquired existing shares in Stockholm-based audience engagement platform Mentimeter for SEK727M (€63M, $70M). Main seller was Alfvén & Didrikson (English).

• Hypergene (Malmö, SaaS decision-support solution) is acquiring the Finland-based software company Thinking Portfolio, which offers a cloud-based portfolio management tool (English).

• EQT will acquire Singapore-based online real estate platform PropertyGuru for USD1.1B (English).

• EQT is also acquiring a majority stake in Ireland-based software company AMCS (English).

Funding news

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

• Flower (Stockholm; software platform for energy forecasting, optimization and trading): €25M ($27.5M) in a Series A funding round led by Northzone (English). More about Flower in the news section further down.

• Oneflow (Stockholm, publicly traded platform for managing and tracking contracts): SEK90M (€7.8M, $8.6M) through a directed share issue to Lars Appelstål (chairman of the Board of Directors), Greenfield AB, Spintop Ventures, and others (English).

• Soundtrap (Stockholm, music-creation tool): SEK59M (€5.1M, $5.6M) in debt funding from undisclosed investors, raised since the company was bought back by its founders from Spotify last year (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Learnster (Stockholm, personalized learning management system and AI tools for organizations): SEK31M (€2.7M, $3M) led by Tom Nyman Holding, with participation from existing investors Söderberg & Partners and Subvenio Invest, for the international expansion (English).

• Gympak (Helsingborg; provider of sportswear packs, in-room training equipment & workout apps for hotels, resorts & gyms): SEK1M (€87K, $95K) from the company's new CEO Jone Sølvik, who joined in early 2024 (English).

• SEB Greentech Venture Capital co-led a €5M growth round raised by Finnish technology company Collo, which offers IoT analysers for optimising industrial liquid processes (English).

• For PRO subscribers: Many 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

• Exa Laboratories, a startup co-founded and led by the Swede Elias Almqvist, was accepted into Y Combinator. He and his co-founder Prithvi Raj aim to make reconfigurable chips for AI "which offer superior speed and energy efficiency compared to traditional GPUs/TPUs/LPUs" (English). ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on May 20.

• Finna, Stockholm-based fintech that offers an all-in-one SaaS solution for investor relations, is launching a platform for investors and analysts, described as "a tireless research assistant who can instantly answer your questions about any Nordic public company or global mega-cap" (English).

• Flower is launching Flower Hub — a smart battery optimization service "that gives homeowners with battery systems the opportunity to earn extra money", while allowing Flower to optimize their battery system (English).

• Garantio, Norrköping-based startup offering a solution that helps construction companies and real estate companies streamline their fault reporting and warranty case handling, grew net revenue in 2023 by 1136% (not a typo) to SEK27.2M, while also turning profitable. ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on August 12.

• Turbotic, Stockholm-based provider of AI-powered enterprise automation orchestration, will launch an AI assistant which is unique on the market, according to the startup. Turbotic's customers will be able to use this ChatGPT-powered assistant to help them create an internal AI strategy, based on their own data situation (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Dryft, Stockholm-based tech enabled full-service provider for home improvement and maintenance, is bankrupt (English).

• Deligate, Örebro-based provider of a hardware and software solution to reduce food waste at grocery stores and other retailers, has signed grocery giant Carrefour as customer in Belgium (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• SecureTag, a Stockholm-based startup founded by Fabian Forsberg and Kristina Hoang, is developing a software product to verify the authenticity of medicines (Swedish, machine translation).

• Profile of Örebro-based startup Alga Insulation and interview with its founders Janna Naser and William Khzouz. The duo is developing technology for transforming algae into insulation material (Swedish, machine translation).

• In July, publicly traded Malmö-based smart city logistics provider MoveByBike acquired the Denmark-based peer Chainge for SEK19M in newly issued shares. Now Chainge has been declared bankrupt, after a creditor filed (Swedish, machine translation).

• Tommy Eklund, the CEO of publicly traded Växjö-based software provider Fortnox, has left the company with immediate effect. Eklund transformed Fortnox from a niche supplier of accounting software into a stock market sensation (English).

• Yubico, the provider of secure login solutions based in Stockholm & Palo Alto which since last year is publicly traded in Sweden, delivered a great Q2 report. The stock is up almost 140% this year (English).

• Apple now allows Spotify to mention the subscription price inside the app, for plans to be purchased on Spotify's website. But the US giant still prohibits linking out to the website, or even mentioning the spotify.com domain (English).

• Klarna is launching a checking account-like product (which so far only was available Germany) and a cashback offering that rewards users for shopping via its app, in 12 markets including Sweden and the US (English).

• Carl Pei, the Swedish serial entrepreneur and founder/CEO of London-based consumer electronics company Nothing, warns others that a scammer generated his voice with AI and then left WhatsApp messages, asking a leader on the Nothing team to wire money for an urgent project (English).

• The Swedish Armed Forces and Vinnova are launching a joint acceleration program for civil-military innovations. Startups and SMEs can apply for a maximum of SEK1.3M in funding (English).

• The applications for the SSE Business Lab's Fall 2024 batch are open until September 7 (English).

• Fast Track Malmö's Angel Fundraising Bootcamp 2024 will take place from September 23-27. It's open to tech startups in Southern Sweden (and the Copenhagen area), designed to help them secure SEK2M-7M in funding (English).

• Sweden Sustaintech Venture Day, hosted by the Swedish Energy Agency and Cleantech Scandinavia, will take place on October 9-10 in Stockholm (English).

• Scandinavian MIND's fashiontech event Transformation Conference will come to Stockholm on August 27 (English).

• Ballista Capital is a new Umeå-based investment firm which will invest in unlisted startups and SME growth companies, mainly based in northern Sweden, and outside the metropolitan regions.

PRO subscribers last week also read about

• 9 unannounced funding rounds.

• An advertising solution for publishers that users actually love – that's what an experienced trio with background in media, social media and entrepreneurship, is working on.

• A Stockholm-based startup founded in 2020 raised yet-to-be-announced funding at an almost 4x increased valuation from 2021.

• 11 new Swedish tech startups, including several in stealth; one aims to fix problems with solar farms, another is working on an OS for batteries.

• And much more!

Join PRO here. Ideal for startup investors and analysts.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Balderton Capital announced its $615M Early Stage Fund IX and $685M Growth Fund II, to back Europe’s most ambitious entrepreneurs from seed stage through IPO (English).

• Deals for AI companies captured 41% of US VC deal value in the first half of 2024 (English).

• Three reasons burn-rates spiral out of control (English).

• What seed stage founders can expect when pitching at a VC Partner meeting (English).

• Successful founders may have a “second nature skill” that gives them a jump start (English).

• Sweden outperforms in tech and could be a model as the European Union refigures its growth policies, writes the New York Times (English).

• What's at stake for Sweden and Europe, in northern Sweden's green energy boom (English).

• Danish energy giant Ørsted has abandoned its investment in Flagship One, a planned e-methanol facility in Örnsköldsvik (northern Sweden), which was set to become Europe's largest, and attracted a significant investment of over SEK1.3B from Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy (English, Swedish).

• Nordic transport ministers have presented a joint declaration on promoting the development of electric aviation (English).

• TikTok users' obsession with Swedish candy, which began in early 2024, has squeezed global supply chains and shows no signs of slowing down (English).

• There is potential for locally led energy transitions in developing countries to break established gender norms, according to a study by Chalmers researchers (English).

• Gröna Lund, Stockholm's major amusement park, is looking into uses of AI to streamline and improve processes and experiences (Swedish, machine translation).

• A 270 km long trail through the Stockholm outer archipelago will be inaugurated in October (Swedish, machine translation).