Swedish Tech Weekly #275

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This newsletter was sent on September 30, 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 2570 subscribers today.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Aspect, formerly Hume (Gothenburg, AI co-pilot for interviews) was acquired by US-based HR tech talent company Karat (English).

• Swedish investment firm eEquity acquired existing shares in Voyado, Stockholm-based customer experience platform for e-commerce and retail. This deal is described as "strategic investment" (English).

Funding news

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

• CDLP (Stockholm, online retailer and D2C brand focused on luxury essentials "developed with innovation"): SEK47M (€4.2M, $4.6M) from new and existing investors including Flat Capital and Uchu, among others (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Graphmatech (Uppsala, materials technology company that solves industrial challenges using graphene): SEK28M (€2.5M, $2.8M) in bridge funding, presumably from existing investors (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Qura (Stockholm, AI search engine for lawyers): €2.1M ($2.3M) in a seed round led by Cherry Ventures (English).

• HayHay (Stockholm, mobile expert community app and AI-powered assistant for horse riders): SEK15M (€1.3M, $1.5M) from LRF Ventures, angel investors and existing investors (Swedish, machine translation).

• Aqua Robur (Gothenburg, IoT solutions for water networks): SEK10M (€900K, $1M) from employees and existing shareholders (English).

• Nordic Air Defence (Stockholm, high tech defensive solutions for both civilian and military use): SEK5.5M (€480K, $540K) from private/angel investors. The startup's first product, an interceptor drone named "Kreuger 100”, will be revealed in mid October (Swedish / Di Digital paywall). Here's a non-paywalled interview with co-founder Karl Rosander (English). ➡️ Funding first covered in my PRO subscription on September 20.

• Volubus (Malmö, solutions for chauffeured minibus and coach transportation booking management): SEK5M (€440K, $490K) from existing investors, in an ongoing round which aims for a total of SEK10M (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• OmMej (Malmö, platform for public agencies to assess children's mental health): around SEK4M (€350K, $400K) in a seed funding round led by Gorilla Capital (English). ➡️ Funding first covered in my PRO subscription on September 25.

• Korall (Gothenburg, developer of direct air carbon capture technology): undisclosed amount from Chalmers Ventures (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in December 2023.

• Seaqure labs (Gothenburg, technology for creating mycoproteins used for aquaculture feed): undisclosed amount from Chalmers Ventures (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in December 2023.

• EQT Ventures led a $21.5M seed round raised by UK-based startup Vsim, which is building simulation technology and software solutions for robotics (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 the Swedish startup & tech sector

• The Norrsken Foundation released its annual list of the world's 100 most promising impact startups. 7 Swedish startups made it this year: Airforestry, Blykalla, Cemvision, Flower, Heart Aerospace, Material Exchange, and Syre.

• At $1.35B, Stockholm ranked #5 in Europe during H1 2024 in terms of VC funding raised by tech startups, after London, Paris, Munich, and Berlin (English).

• EQT, the Stockholm-headquartered private equity firm, is the most active acquirer of venture-backed startups globally so far in 2024 (English).

• Sara Landfors, co-founder and CEO of Swedish AI startup Normain, represented Swedish entrepreneurship and AI ambitions at the Swedish parliament last week. She raised two main points: 1. The need for policymakers to educate themselves on AI 2. The inherent tradeoff between regulation and innovation (English).

• Supernormal, Stockholm- and New York-based AI meeting platform, launched a feature called Voice Agents, described as the "world’s first AI that speaks in your meetings and takes the notes" (English).

• Northvolt will cut 1600 jobs in Sweden – 25% of the workforce in the country. Globally, 20% of the jobs are being made redundant (English).

• Readioo launched its AI-powered edtech platform for young kids. It comes with an audio-only hardware device that aims to transform kids books into interactive adventures, while skipping a screen (📺 Swedish / 1 minute).

• Dendrite, Stockholm-based AI agent startup, will move to San Francisco, after the team visited for a month and "lived in a hacker house with 10 other Swedish founders" (English).

• Karma, Stockholm-based anti-food waste app & order solution for restaurants, is launching a "Sign in with Karma" feature for restaurants and their guests, promising personalized menus, loyalty perks for regulars, and one-click payment (Swedish, machine translation).

• Profile of Rivus Batteries and interview with founder and CEO Cedrik Wiberg. The Gothenburg-based developer of environmentally friendly organic redox flow batteries for large-scale energy storage is currently gearing up for its first pilot (Swedish, machine translation).

• Interview with Johan Hartman, co-founder of AI-based cancer diagnostics startup Stratipath, whose CE-marked product currently is being used for routine cancer care in four Swedish regions (Swedish, machine translation).

• Qred, Stockholm-based small business lending platform, is launching on the German market (English).

• Breakit ranked 324 tech companies in Sweden based on the average salary paid to employees in 2023. Across all companies, the average monthly salary was SEK56,000 (€5000/$5600), up 6% YoY. The top 10 companies: Facebook Sweden, Google Sweden, Spotify, Yubico, Recorded Future, Neo4j Sweden, Juni, Tink, Tacton, Centra (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Klarna will launch its flexible payment methods on Adyen’s physical payment terminals across Europe, North America and Australia (English).

• Voi announced having reached 2 million unique riders in Sweden (English).

• Vipps, the Norway-headquartered bank-owned Nordic p2p payments app, launched in Sweden, hoping to attract users who want to send money seamlessly from Sweden to other Nordic countries (English).

• EQT Foundation has opened a global call for scientists developing solutions tackling methane emissions. Grants between €25K – €100K are up for grabs (English).

• Venture Arena, a pitch event for startups and scaleups arranged by the incubator LEAD, will take place on November 6 in Linköping (Swedish).

• Vinnova, Sweden's innovation agency, establishes a presence in Singapore (English).

• SweBAN has launched, a non-profit organization stimulating the creation and growth of Business Angel Networks (BANs) in Sweden (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• GP Bullhound launched the European SaaS Survey 2024, to "gather data from Europe's leading software companies" (English).

• A billion dollars of venture capital will be invested into European defence technology in 2024, a first for the continent, and a five-fold increase since 2018 (English)

• AI startups take a median 11 months to hit $1M in annualised revenue after their first sales on Stripe, compared with 15 months for the previous generation of SaaS companies (English).

•  "It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days" , writes OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman in a piece titled "The Intelligence Age" (English).

• "When AI products are sold as services, they replace in-house labor. This changes internal processes. When the internal processes change, the opportunity to replace the system of record arises because the existing workflows are no longer relevant" (English).

•  A cheat sheet on what the typical VC post-first meeting process might look like (English).

• Sweden ranks #25 out of 83 nations in the Global AI Index 2024, down from #17 last year.

• Things look better when it comes to innovation at large: Sweden ranks #2 in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024 and #4 in the Innovation Indicator 2024.

• Swedes should reduce their meat consumption by 30%, says the Swedish Food Agency; focusing particularly on red meat, which may increase cancer risk (Swedish, machine translation).

• TikTok has one million daily active users in Sweden (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sweden and Denmark announced a joint bid for the women's 2029 Euros in football (English).

• In August, there were 3479 public EV fast charging points in Sweden, up 28% YoY (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sweden once again approved the European Union's controversial "chat control" surveillance law (Swedish, machine translation).