Swedish Tech Weekly #285



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 2673 subscribers today.

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Mergers & acquisitions


• hitta.se (Stockholm, search engine for people and company information) is being acquired by private equity investor Sponsor Capital, through its Finland-based portfolio company and hitta.se peer Fonecta, for around SEK400M (€35M, $36M) according to Breakit (English).

• SinCode AI (Malmö, all-in-one AI copilot for content creation and copywriting) has been acquired by Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, and now forwards to his platform agent.ai (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in February 2023 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Acamp (Stockholm, campsite marketplace) was acquired by Norway-based industry peer Campio (English).

• Finture (Stockholm, investment platform for the energy sector) was acquired by GreenMerc, publicly traded Stockholm-based developer of fintech solutions (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in May 2023 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Vitec, Umeå-based publicly traded provider and acquirer of standardized software and SaaS solutions, is acquiring Netherlands-based finance software company Figlo (English).

Funding news

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

• DBT Capital (Stockholm, financing provider for SMEs): SEK3.1B (€270M, $290M) in debt funding from NatWest and Värde Partners, earmarked for Swedish SMEs (English).

• Bardo (Stockholm, carbon intelligence platform): €4.7M ($5M) in pre-seed funding from Cherry Ventures, Stegra, and angel investors. The company just emerged from stealth mode (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in August 2024.

• Cerve (Gothenburg & London, platform helping organisations build innovative and custom applications for the food industry): £3.5M (€4.2M, $4.5M) seed round led by SuperSeed, with participation from Zenith VC and others (English).

• Talentium (Stockholm, AI-powered hiring platform): €3.5M ($3.7M) in pre-seed funding led by EQT Ventures (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in August 2023.

• DP Patterning (Norrköping, technology for flexible printed circuit boards): SEK25M (€2.2M, $2.3M) from Byggmästaren (English).

• Magma, formerly Matteappen (Stockholm, math learning app for schools): SEK7.7M (€670K, $700K) grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for a project to develop and implement the company's technology in disadvantaged areas in the US (Swedish, machine translation).

• Big Audience Machine (Stockholm; upcoming AI-driven platform for marketers to create quality, on-brand content across all channels): €350K ($370K) in pre-seed funding from Antler, Dagg AI, Co_Made, and angel investors. (English). ➡️ Funding first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in August 2024.

• Doldadress (Malmö, subscription service helping residents of Sweden to hide their personal data online): SEK2M (€170K, $180K) in an angel round from Filip Larsson, Daniel Öderyd, Anton Stenbeck, Just Arne Storvik, and Tor Erland Fyksen. The startup says its nearing 10,000 paying customers. ➡️ Funding first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in July 2024.

• UrbanVind (Stockholm & Amsterdam / Netherlands, passenger analytics solution for public transportation): €150K ($160K) in pre-seed funding from EIT Urban Mobility (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in March 2024.

• For PRO subscribers: 7 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

• Uniplay, a Swedish game-based, AI-powered ecosystem for corporate learning founded by serial entrepreneur Eric Francia and game veteran (and serial entrepreneur) Linus Blomberg, emerged from stealth mode (English).

• Another startup by serial entrepreneurs that came out of stealth: Mana, Stockholm-based next generation business platform for yoga, fitness and wellness studios (Swedish / Breakit paywall). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in July 2024.

• Lovable reports having reach an ARR of $1M, only eight days after the public launch of the chat-based web app builder (English).

• Stockholm-based startup T.Loop creates the joint venture TSO Link, to enable data centers to provide grid-balancing services (English).

• Flightradar24, Stockholm-based flight tracking platform, has launched a digital collectible card game named Skycards, available as free iOS and Android app (English).

• Local taste, an Oskarshamn-based delivery service for locally produced food, is launching in Stockholm. Malmö and Gothenburg will be next, likey during Q1 2025 (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in June 2023.

• Solo developer Viktor Enzell launched PodReader, a genAI tool to turn newsletters, blog posts, and articles into podcasts (English). ➡️ First covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on November 8.

• Billo, Stockholm-based digital mailbox service, is teaming up with Swedish electronic ID provider Freja, to launch a digital mailbox for communication between Swedish businesses/organizations, and users without a Swedish personal number (Swedish, machine translation).

• Johannes Schildt, founder of Swedish digital healthcare provider Kry, is stepping down as CEO and becomes operational chair of the board (Swedish, machine translation)

• Kristian Rönn, one of the founders of Swedish carbon accounting platform Normative, is stepping down as CEO and away from the day-to-day operations (English).

• Northern CapSek Ventures published its annual report highlighting "the 50 most interesting tech companies that are not based in Stockholm" (Swedish)

• Swedish online pharmacy Apotea had a successful IPO (English).

• Spotify on Wednesday passed the mark of $100B in market capitalization, apparently as the first European company ever (English). The audio streaming company also released its highly anticipated annual listening recap Wrapped. But this year, it was underwhelming (English).

• IonQ, a publicly traded US-based quantum computing hardware and software company, has chosen Gothenburg for its European expansion (English).

• Swedish impact tech news site Impact Loop launched an European site in English.

• Sweden Startup Nation is a new initiative that aims to "become an independent, national knowledge hub that enhances understanding of startups, scaleups, and their ecosystem" (English).

• Unconventional Ventures released the "UV Blueprint for Inclusive and Impactful Investments" (English).


PRO subscribers also read last week

• 15 new Swedish tech startups tracked (634 so far this year).

• Unannounced first funding for a stealth startup applying AI to fire alarm design.

• A digi-physical primary healthcare provider raised unannounced funding at a 76% valuation increase from 2022.

• Serial entrepreneurs launched a search engine and marketplace for events.

• Various up-and-coming startups are currently raising funding.

• Latest financial numbers from Swedish tech startups.

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.

• Bardo: Full Stack Software Engineers
• Medoma: Product Marketing Lead
• Open Payments: Software Engineer
• Altris: Production Manager
• Talentium: various roles including CTO and CPO
• Airolit: Country Manager Finland & Baltics
• Version Lens: Full Stack Product Engineers
• Circulate: Commercial Star
• Novatron Fusion: various roles including Electronics Hardware Engineer
• Taigatech: Mid/Senior Software Engineer

To the full listings

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond



• Heartcore Capital, a Denmark-based VC firm that has made many investments in Swedish startups in the past, closed a fresh $180M fund (English).

• A collaborative Blueprint for implementing the EU Inc, to be shared with the new European commission by January 15 (English).

• Researchers have created AI replicas of consumers from two-hour conversations, which then matched their human counterparts’ responses to personality tests and social surveys with 85% accuracy (English).

• Sweden's migration minister has launched a "business council" with experts from Spotify and other actors in the business sector to provide advice on how to attract highly-skilled foreigners to the country (English / The Local paywall).

• An investigation tasked by the Swedish Government proposes strengthened protection for personal data that is published through Swedish people search engines (Swedish, machine translation).

• Swedish year 8 students, around 15 years old, scored highly in maths in the Timss international study, returning the highest score for their age group in decades (Swedish, machine translation).

• Stockholm climbs 8 spots to #18 in the Quality of Living City Ranking 2024 (English).

74% of Swedes are in favour of banning all forms of telemarketing, and only 9 per cent are against it (English).