Swedish Tech Weekly #278



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 2602 subscribers today.

Mergers & acquisitions

• cReal (greater Helsingborg area, B2B supplier of oat-based food ingredients based on proprietary technology to process and fractionate oats): The investment company Lindéngruppen, already a previous shareholder, acquires a "substantial" stake and becomes the largest shareholder (English).

• Byhmgard (Halmstad; provider of turn key grid connected photovoltaic, battery and EV charging systems): The investment company Gelba acquires 10% of existing shares, for around SEK12M (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

Funding news

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• Aira (Stockholm, D2C heat pump subscription service): €63M ($69M) from existing investors Temasek, Statkraft Ventures, Kinnevik and Altor, for the continued expansion in Germany, Italy and the UK (English).

• CorPower Ocean (Stockholm; designs, manufactures and operates wave energy farms): €32M ($35M) in a Series B1 funding round led by NordicNinja VC, SEB Greentech VC, and EIT InnoEnergy (English).

• AlixLabs (Lund, method for manufacturing nanostructures which enables the semiconductor industry to scale down in a cost effective manner): around SEK110M (€9.7M, $10.6M) from yet-to-be-announced investors in an ongoing round with a goal of SEK165M (Swedish / Rapidus paywall).

• partihandel.se (Helsingborg; sourcing, sales and warehouse management platform for wholesale professionals): SEK4.5M (€390K, $430K) from Loop Capital and Loop Venture, as well as angel investors Jonas Bonde, Martin Mazur, and Göran Hellström, in a first funding round. The startup decided to raise this funding to scale up following increased customer demand from both Sweden and abroad. ➡️ Funding first covered in my PRO subscription on October 17.

• Winteria (Hudiksvall, technology for quality assessment of welds in manufacturing industries): undisclosed amount from Almi Invest (Swedish).

• Nextgen Classroom (Växjö, AI-powered education platform for schools and teachers): SEK1M (€87K, $95K) from Kick Capital and Almi Invest (Swedish / Smålandsposten paywall). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription on April 11.

• EQT Ventures led a $8.7M seed round raised by French-US startup dottxt, which builds "a tool to make LLMs reliable enough for the world to build on (English).

• Creandum and Norrsken VC participated in a €62M equity funding round raised by Switzerland-based startup terralayr, which provides energy flexibility services on demand (English).

• For PRO subscribers: 10 additional rounds as well as more details and numbers for many of the above mentioned 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

• Talentium, a new Stockholm-based AI-powered hiring platform founded by 22-year-old Sebastian Hjärne, received write-ups by both Di Digital and Breakit last week – almost simultaneously. The startup is reportedly in funding talks "with the world's leading VCs", following fast early commercial succes (Swedish / Di Digital paywall, Swedish / Breakit paywall). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription in August 2023.

• SSE Business Lab, the startup incubator of the Stockholm School of Economics, has admitted ten new companies (English).

• Time to Raise, the Swedish accelerator program focused on fundraising for women-led companies which now is part of Techarena, announced its Fall 2024 cohort, featuring 11 startups. 5 are from Sweden (English).

• Wired published its annual list of "the hottest startups in Stockholm" (English).

• Hemla is a new startup founded by Budbee founder Fredrik Hamilton and two others, that develops an intelligent home security solution for smart homes (English). ➡️ I covered another new Swedish home security startup in my PRO subscription last week.

• For PRO subscribers: 17 new Swedish tech startups tracked last week, including:
- A startup working on a solid state heating system
- A fintech founded by Transfer Galaxy alumni
- An AI hardware infrastructure company

• Scrintal, Stockholm-based visual note-taking and collaboration tool, launched its new version on ProductHunt last week, and received around 1000 upvotes (English).

• Innit Audio, Stockholm-based game audio/sound technology startup, introduced a free version of its Windows software that "transforms any headset or earphones into a portal for hyper-realistic audio" (English). ➡️ Company first covered in my PRO subscription in August 2023.

• VCraft Aeronautics, Swedish developer of electric VTOL aircraft for both military and civilian use, had its first full-scale demonstrator aircraft completely destroyed in a fire, just shortly before the planned maiden flight (Swedish / NyTeknik paywall).

• Vakanta, Stockholm-based platform for the contingent workforce which was ranked fifth in the Financial Times’ 2024 annual survey of the fastest-growing companies in Europe (over a period of several years), is bankrupt – reportedly as a consequence of the crisis at Northvolt, which was "one of Vakanta's key customers" (Swedish, machine translation).

• Popswap, Stockholm-based startup that offers a mobile social platform for fashion enthusiasts, is also bankrupt. ➡️ Bankruptcy first covered in my PRO subscription on October 15.

• The founders of bankrupt online art platform Artportable have bought their company back, together with a consortium of former shareholders (Swedish, machine translation).

• Hint, Stockholm-based streaming discovery app, is adding subscription management features, to help users cut costs for unused streaming services (English).

• Johan Pihl, one founder of Doconomy, is leaving the Stockholm-based creator of climate-friendly fintech solutions, and criticizes investors for increasingly preventing innovation (Swedish / Resumé paywall, Swedish #2, machine translation).

• X Shore landed its biggest order yet: The upstart Swedish electric boat maker is preparing to fulfill an order of 32 electric boats signed by a German yacht management service (English).

• Sweden's first large-scale agrivoltaics park has been inaugurated. It was developed by Svea Solar. Indoor vertical farming company Ljusgårda (aka Supernormal Greens) will procure the energy produced. The land under the panels will continue to be cultivated by a farming company (English).

• Legalbuddy, Stockholm-based digital platform offering easy-to-access legal services to SME-companies, is launching in Finland together with a partner (English).

• Harald Mix, co-founder and shareholder of Northvolt (as well as co-founder and Chairman of Stegra – formerly H2 Green Steel – and Chairman of Vargas Group) published an OpEd in Dagens industri defending Sweden's strong commitment for innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic investments (English, Swedish).

• KTH Innovation Launch is the new name of the KTH Innovation pre-incubator program. The applications for the next batch are now open (English).

• node.vc, Stockholm-based entrepreneur-led early-stage VC firm, has closed its first fund at SEK800M (€71M, $77M), and plans to back around seven startups each year, with an average entry ticket size of €1.3M (English).

• The annual angel investor event Angel Prize took place last week in Stockholm. Here is a list with those who received an award (English).

• Magnus Hambleton, Stockholm-based VC at byFounders, wrote a piece about the increasing fragility of societal systems that are highly optimized for efficiency (English).

🎧 I was invited to talk about the state of the Swedish tech startup ecosystem in an episode of Kodsnack, one of Sweden's major podcasts for developers (Swedish / 67 minutes). Sadly my audio isn't great. But this should be easily solvable with AI, right?!

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• VC firm Accel released its latest annual Euroscape report, which looks at key cloud and AI trends (English)

• A petition for a standardized pan-european ‘EU Inc' corporate structure for European startups has been launched (English).

• Early next year, London-based advisory firm Mountside Ventures is launching Europe’s first VC fundraising accelerator. It’ll take on 15 emerging managers and “help them become better fundraisers” (English).

• "AI Neoclouds" are a new breed of cloud compute providers focused on offering GPU compute rental. Here is a detailed playbook and anatomy (English).

• The new era of hyperfunctional SaaS (English).

• A CPO, CRO, CFO, and COO share advice on how startups can improve annual planning (English).

• The tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla controls the .ai top-level-domain, and quadrupled earnings from domain registration fees last year to $32 million (English).

• Sweden announced plans to launch a global standard for Biocredits in production landscapes (English).

• Two "Nordic travel giants" (quote from the press release) – airline SAS and hotel chain Scandic – are teaming up to offer their loyalty members mutual benefits (English).

• The Swedish police still hesitates to purchase EVs (Swedish, machine translation).

• The number of chain-operated retail stores in Sweden decreased by 250 or 1% in 2023 (Swedish, machine translation).

• Visit Sweden, the government's marketing company, is now promoting Sweden as "destination for sleep tourism" (English).