Swedish Tech Weekly #288


Welcome back 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 previously covered in my daily PRO newsletters, and is sent to 2678 subscribers today.

I hope you were able to spent some restful days! Now let's make 2025 better than expected.

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Mergers & acquisitions


• Perific (Stockholm, independent dynamic power management for EV chargers and properties): Latour Future Solutions acquired a 20% stake (English).

Funding news

Do you have unreported funding news you want to see here? Respond to this email.

• Minimist (Stockholm and Vienna; building an AI-powered OS for second hand stores): €230K ($240K) from angel investors, and a €120K grant from Vienna Planet Fund. ➡️ Funding first covered on November 14 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Controla (Stockholm, cybersecurity management for the modern business): SEK1.2M (€100K, $110K) from angel investors including the Debricked founders Daniel Wisenhoff and Oscar Reimer. ➡️ Funding first covered on November 18 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Bright Materia, formerly Proligreen (Stockholm, technology to produce lignin with high purity and well-defined structure): slightly below $100K from VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund. ➡️ Funding first covered on November 20 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• MyCural Therapeutics (Uppsala, developing new cancer therapies for patients with high-risk tumors): undisclosed amount from new and existing investors (English).

• Skillground (Stockholm, AI-powered tools that let organizations create video based micro-learning in minutes): undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by entrepreneur Jon Stenqvist (English).

• Cytely (Malmö, SaaS platform for end-to-end data-driven microscopy): undisclosed amount from existing investor Icebreaker.vc (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in September 2023.

• For PRO subscribers: 6 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

• For founders of Sweden-based tech startups, I'm launching a simple curated database of recent Swedish startup funding, which may help you with gathering information before and during your own fundraising. Details here (Database access is of course also included in the Swedish Tech News PRO subscription).

• Northvolt's loss in 2024 reportedly was SEK62B (€5.4B, $5.6B). This week, the crisis-ridden Swedish battery maker will hold an extraordinary general meeting, to decide whether to go into liquidation or continue operations (Swedish, machine translation).

• BeeSpeaker, Stockholm-based AI-powered language speaking app launched in 2021, reached the milestone of over 250,000 daily active users, and has an ambitious revenue goal for 2025 (English).

• Lovable, the fast-growing Swedish AI web app builder, experienced a stressful Friday, after GitHub temporarily suspended the crucial connection between both services, making Lovable mostly unusable for its "over 500,000 users". The issue was resolved on Friday evening (English).

• SunRoof, VC-backed Stockholm-based company specialized in 2-in-1 solar roofs, declared its Swedish operations bankrupt (Swedish, machine translation).

• Volta Greentech, Swedish developer of feed supplement for cows, moved its headquarter from Stockholm to Gothenburg, and expects a "breakout year for revenue growth" (English).

• Telink, bootstrapped Kalmar- and Stockholm-based telephone exchange and communications platform for businesses, is growing rapidly. A particular boost came thanks to a new AI solution for transcribing phone calls at work (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sebastian Andreescu, the founder of Stockholm-based B2B card-based bill payment platform Billhop, is stepping down as CEO after 12 years. COO Niklas Bothén is taking over (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Klarna decided not to appeal the recent SEK500M fine by the Swedish financial regulator (Swedish, no machine translation available).

• BLING, the Swedish suburb startup movement and pre-seed VC fund (BLING Capital), plans to launch "Sweden's first niche go-to-market incubator", and is looking for someone to run it (Swedish, machine translation).

• The next Women in Tech conference will take place on April 23 in Stockholm (English). ➡️ Added to the Swedish tech event calendar for PRO subscribers.


PRO subscribers also read last week

• 6 new Swedish tech startups tracked, close to 700 during the past 12 months

• 5 Swedish tech startups from various industries declared bankrupt

• Fresh annual financial numbers from up-and-coming Swedish startups

• Early soft pivot by a legaltech startup, which now enters the AI legal assistant space

• A Swedish platform for gamers abolished its website and moved to a Discord channel.

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.

• Product Owner (Junipeer)
• Chief Product Officer (Greenely)
• C++ Developer (Xensam)
• Senior Product Manager – Vehicles (Voi)
• Various, including Cloud Native Engineer and Business Coordinator (Elastisys)
• Senior Full Stack Engineer (Palm)
• Data centric backend developer – Go (Sift Lab)

To the full listings

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond


• Last year, 25% of VC funding in Europe went to AI startups, compared to 15% four years ago (English).

• Last year, the "Big Five” (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and Alphabet) invested in 149 known startup financings of $1M or more. That’s up a bit from 2023, but still the second-lowest total of the past five years (English).

• Huge discounts on startup secondaries are vanishing, a sign that demand for these minority stakes is finally catching up to supply (English).

• In 2024, global investment in online education companies has fallen to its lowest level in a decade, due to concerns about the impact of generative AI (English / FT paywall).

• Solo GP funds have taken off. “It’s the spiritual evolution of angel investing" (English).

• “The real challenge is cutting through the ‘AI washing’ to identify founders who aren’t just using AI as a buzzword" (English).

• Financial planning forecasting tips for AI in 2025 (English).

• 10,141 companies were declared bankrupt in Sweden in 2024 – a new record high and a 23% increase from 2023 (English).

• In 2024, the average electricity price in all of Sweden's four electricity zones was the lowest in four years (Swedish, machine translation).

• The number of new car registrations in Sweden in 2024 was the lowest in ten years (Swedish, machine translation).

• Textiles in Sweden must no longer be thrown in the trash but recycled instead, according to new legislation (English).

• The official list of 32 new words introduced into the Swedish language in 2024 (Swedish).