Swedish Tech Weekly #283



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 2650 subscribers today.

Mergers & acquisitions


• Atomize (Gothenburg, real-time price automation for hotels) is being acquired by Netherlands-based hospitality management cloud platform Mews (English).

• Chroma (Stockholm, gesture-based audiovisual technology for mobile devices and commercial applications) has been acquired by UK-based AI music startup Bronze (English).

• Apica (Stockholm, active monitoring platform that helps solve complex digital performance issues) acquired the US-based test data orchestration platform Orson (English).

• Vitec Software Group, Umeå-based publicly traded provider and acquirer of standardized software and SaaS solutions for various niches, is acquiring the Finnish software company Roidu, which offers customer and employee experience survey tools (English).

Funding news

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• Neo4j (San Francisco/Malmö, graph database firm): $50M from Noteus Partners, at a valuation of just above $2B. Co-founder and CEO Emil Eifrem also confirms that Neo4j is getting ready for an IPO (English).

• Liquid Wind (Gothenburg, converting green hydrogen and biogenic CO2 into eFuel): €44M ($46M) Series C funding round led by existing investors Uniper and HYCAP, and new investor Samsung Ventures (English).

• Einride (Stockholm; provider of digital, electric and autonomous shipping technology): SEK500M (€43M, $45M) convertible note from new and existing investors, with an undisclosed company from the automotive industry being a key investor (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Candela (Stockholm, manufacturer of hydrofoiling electric boats and ferries): $14M in a Series C extension led by SEB Private Equity, with participation from existing investors EQT Ventures and KanDela (English).

• Fedelta (Borås, SME loan provider): SEK75M (€6.5M, $6.8M) from an existing undisclosed investor (Swedish, machine translation).

• Kodiak Hub (Stockholm, end-to-end supplier relationship management system): €6M ($6.3M) in a funding round from Oxx, for the expansion into the US (English).

• Paebbl (Stockholm/Helsinki/Rotterdam, developer of carbon-negative construction material): €2.1M ($2.2M) grant from Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), to co-finance the demo plant in Rotterdam (English).

• Dx4Life (Stockholm, point-of-care test for fertility clinics that guides the choice of hormone treatment before IVF): SEK6.4M (€550K, $580K) led by Gobia Enterprises (Swedish, machine translation).

• EsterCare (Stockholm; digi-physical healthcare provider specialized in women's health): undisclosed amount (over SEK5M) from new investor Impact Invest, existing investor Vera Invest, and angel investors (Swedish, machine translation).

• EQT Ventures led a $6.5M seed round raised by Germany-based startup Pruna AI, which offers a platform that allows ML teams to simplify code and streamline models (English).

• First Gate Invest led a €3 million seed round raised by Finland-based startup Delta Cygni Labs, developer of a high-resilience API acceleration solution for ultra low-latency and firewall-friendly data transmission (English).

• Norrsken VC participated in a $7.5M seed round raised by Germany-based startup Juna.ai, which wants to help factories be more efficient by automating complex industrial processes with AI agents (English).

• EQT Foundation participated in a funding round raised by Swiss and US-based startup ClexBio, whose proprietary platform offers a new approach to creating complex, lab-grown tissues for human applications (English).

• For PRO subscribers: 11 additional rounds as well as more details and numbers (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

• Northvolt has voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in the US. Co-founder Peter Carlsson steps down as CEO. The Stockholm-headquartered battery maker "will continue to operate as usual during the reorganization", and also secured $245M in financing support, including a $100M loan from existing shareholder and customer Scania (English).

• Lovable has officially launched its AI web app builder (previously named "GPT Engineer"), described as "the world's first AI full stack engineer" (English).

• Douglas Stark, co-founder and former COO of e-scooter company Voi, has founded Helsa, a longevity startup focused on brain health (English).

• Freedrum, Malmö-based maker of a virtual drum kit which recently was declared bankrupt for the second time in its existence, was reportedly acquired by the previous owner group (Swedish / Rapidus).

• PinnOne, a new startup from Stockholm, launched its tool helping businesses reduce software spend. ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in January 2024.

• DRONEAB, Örebro-based provider of drone services for businesses and individuals, is developing a software to bring autonomous drone shows to Sweden, to replace fireworks (Swedish, machine translation).

• Midday, bootstrapped Stockholm-based platform for running a business smarter, has crossed the mark of 10,000 registered businesses (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in February 2024.

• Accord, Stockholm-based startup offering an organization app for simplifying the sharing of tasks and responsibilities within groups, scored a write-up by news agency AFP, which means coverage across many international news sites (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in November 2023.

• Interview with Johanna Gauffin and Natalie Navia, founders of bootstrapped Stockholm-based startup Cay Collective, which offers a digital marketplace for creator-powered lifestyle, fashion and art (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in my PRO subscription in August 2023.

• Brief profile of LumberScan, an Umeå-based startup that offers a drone-powered lumberyard inventory solution (Swedish, machine translation).

• Boneprox, Gothenburg-based provider of SaaS solutions for dental imaging and digital dentistry, has created a spin-off named Nanok, focused on developing AI solutions for dental care.

• allabolag.se, widely used platform for accessing public Swedish company information, is facing a backlash following a redesign (Swedish).

• Sifted published its first "Sifted 75: Nordics & Benelux Leaderboard", which ranks the 75 fastest-growing startups across the region by revenue growth. Notably, Stockholm is the top HQ for this ranking, with the Swedish capital notching 26 of the 75 spots.

• KTH Innovation is part of a new pan-European accelerator named AI Launchpad, designed "to transform the landscape of AI innovation by nurturing AI Startups emerging from European Universities" (English).

• Sweden-based tech startups planning to expand into the US (or raise capital there) can now apply to the next cohort of the U.S. Market Access Programme, backed by the U.S. Government, the City of Stockholm and Embassy House (English).

• Flat Capital, Sebastian and Nina Siemiatkowski's publicly traded investment firm, has raised SEK140M (before issue costs) through a rights issue as well as a directed share issue (English).

• Jacob Key, co-founder and General Partner at Stockholm-based Luminar Ventures, outlines in a blog post how his hypothetical next tech startup would have AI and automation at the heart of everything (English).

• The Norrsken Foundation is doing a Morning Rave again. It will take place from 06:30-08:30 on December 13 at Norrsken House Stockholm (English). 💭 Totally crazy if you ask me :D


PRO subscribers also read last week

• 17 new Swedish tech startups tracked (602 so far this year).

• A software startup aiming to dramatically improve and accelerate manufacturing, quietly emerged from stealth mode. Earlier this year the company raised yet-to-be-announced pre-seed funding.

• Serial entrepreneurs are quietly working on a new startup in the AI co-pilot space, and raised unannounced pre-seed funding.

• Trailblazers from western Sweden's tech sector launched a new platform to connect tech and impact startups with investors.

• A Swedish fintech has partnered up with AI search engine Perplexity.

• An automotive startup opened a Series A.

• And much more!

Swedish Tech News PRO gives startup investors, analysts, and VC teams an easy information advantage. Join today.

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

A non-exhaustive selection of open positions at Swedish tech startups. Submit yours.

• Bluebook (stealth mode): Senior Product Engineer (SWE)
• Volta Greentech: Commercial Director, Europe
• Normain: Founding Engineer
• Evroc: Hardware Operations Engineer
• Aniara: technical role (part time) to evolve into CTO
• RENASENS: Business Operations Manager
• CemVision: PR and Content Specialist

To the full listings

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond


• Atomico's annual State of European Tech report for 2024 is out. According to the survey's participants, Spotify is widely considered to be Europe’s biggest tech success story of the past decade (English).

• Politicians in Norway appear to be completely hostile towards startup entrepreneurs (English).

• European VC valuations show a strong recovery in Q3, according to Pitchbook's latest European VC Valuations Report (English).

• Y Combinator's Gustaf Alströmer: "It's depressing to see European companies applying to YC where advisors/angels have 50% of the company after pre-seed" (English).

• Google Sweden and supporting partners including AI Sweden and Internetstiftelsen launched a prompt engineering competition (Swedish).

• Sweden is investigating the case of two damaged telecommunications undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, possibly caused by sabotage (English).

• Sweden drops from #10 to #11 in the latest Climate Change Performance Index" CCPI, which tracks countries' climate protection performance. The first 3 spots are left empty "as countries must speed up implementation" (English, Swedish).

• At Stockholm's Arlanda airport, the largest airport hotel in the Nordics with 656 rooms will be built (English).

• 🎧 The Acquired podcast published a 3 hours 20 minutes long episode exploring and dissecting "the complete history & strategy of IKEA" (English).