Swedish Tech Weekly #294


Welcome 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 2719 subscribers today.

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Mergers & acquisitions

• Lawrence (Stockholm, AI lawyer helping companies to solve everyday legal matters) was acquired by online legal services provider Lexly (Swedish, machine translation).

• EasyPark (Stockholm, provider of digital parking and mobility solutions) acquired UK-headquartered sector peer Parkopedia (English).

Funding news

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

• Agteria Biotech (Stockholm; patent-pending molecule that cuts cattle methane emissions by up to 70%): €6M ($6.2M) in a seed funding round co-led by Industrifonden and AgriZeroNZ (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in November 2023 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• ReCarber (Stockholm; commercializing carbon removal projects, financing the infrastructure, and offering a platform to efficiently match emitters with buyers of carbon credits): €5.1M from Spintop Ventures, Luminar Ventures, and Course Corrected (English). ➡️ Startup first covered on November 26 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Dead Astronauts (Malmö, reinventing open world game experiences with technical innovation): €4M in a seed funding round led by Behold Ventures (English). ➡️ Funding first covered on January 23 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Bluebook (Stockholm, AI for accountants & auditors): $3M in a pre-seed funding round led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and angel investors. With this announcement, Bluebook emerges from stealth mode (English). ➡️ Startup first covered on October 1 in Swedish Tech News PRO. Funding first covered on January 16 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• AI Bob (Stockholm; solution that automates the compliance review of blueprints in construction): €2M in a funding round led by CapitalT, with participation from Fund F, NCA, and angel investors (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in March 2024 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Verigraft (Gothenburg, generates personalized tissue-engineered transplants for use in regenerative medicine): €1.2M Eurostars grant to lead a project developing next-generation 3D-printed arterial grafts (English).

• Edda Pay (Trollhättan, upcoming insights and earnings platform for authors and publishers): SEK5.7M (€510K, $520K) led by Almi Invest, with participation from MPO Ventures, and angel investors (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in May 2024 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Medarca (Malmö, smart medicine management solutions for elderly care): SEK5M (€440K, $460K) from Sandberg Development (Swedish).

• Sound Realms (Gothenburg, audio-based solo role-playing game): SEK3.8M (€340K, $360K) from angel investors (English).

• Aima Sense (Karlskrona, developer of products that simplify the hygiene routine for women after sex): SEK2.4M (€210K, $220K) led by Kick Capital (Swedish).

News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• Klarna is reportedly targeting an IPO in the US in April with a valuation of up to $15B (English)

• evroc, the Swedish startup building a hyperscale sustainable cloud for Europe, plans to establish an "AI factory" in France (English).

• Saveggy, Lund-based startup developing plant-based edible vegan coating for fresh fruits & veggies, is launching its first product: "SaveCucumber" (English).

• The Climate Action Agency, a Stockholm-based change agency, has re-invented itself and launched Aimabel, an AI-powered platform for sustainable strategy and reporting (English).

• deWiz, a Malmö-based startup developing wearable tech for golfers, is bankrupt, after having raised SEK200M in total funding.

• Also bankrupt: Phoenix Biopower, a Stockholm-based developer of biomass-fired power generation systems (English). ➡️ Many more tech startup bankruptices covered last week in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Trivec, a Stockholm-based provider of a POS system for restaurants, bars and hotels which generated SEK242M in net revenue in 2023, is entering a corporate restructuring process (Swedish, machine translation).

• For PRO subscribers: 17 new startups (8 of which are in stealth mode) added to the Swedish Tech Startup Database last week.

• Q-commerce company foodora and mobile connectivity provider Tele2 launch drone deliveries in Värmdö and Gustavsberg, outside of Stockholm, powered by the Norwegian drone logistics startup Aviant (English).

• Yazen, the fast growing Lund-based digital healthcare provider helping people lose weight, is once more being criticized for making it too easy to get prescriptions for weight loss medicine, this time by the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (IVO) (Swedish).

• Safello, publicly traded Stockholm-based company which describes itself as "the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the Nordics", surpassed the 400,000 customer mark in Sweden (English).

•  Acast, publicly traded Stockholm-based podcasting platform founded in 2014, achieved its first annual positive EBITDA result in 2024 (English).

• A cybercrime group is said to have exploited a vulnerability in Malmö-based SaaS platform for sports teams SportAdmin, and now threatens to release the data on the Darknet, if the company doesn't pay a ransom (Swedish, machine translation).

• Skipperi, Finland-founded digital boating service, is shutting down its subscription-based boat sharing service "Fleet" in Sweden (Swedish, machine translation).

• The Swedish FinTech Association published their annual report on the state of the Swedish fintech sector (English, Swedish).

• "Day Zero" investor Antler announced the final closing of its second Nordics fund at $100M (English).

• Filip Larsson, a prolific tech angel investor from southern Sweden, has bought the Malmö co-working space The Ground (English).

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Head of Marketing and Communication (AI Bob)
• CTO & co-founder (Mellow Kids)
• CTO (Nimt.ai)
• Client Manager Growth (Proxify)
• Senior Full-Stack Engineer (Wingbits)
• UX designer (Stravito)
• Full-stack developer (Plussa)
• Product Manager, AML (Verified)
• Frontend Developer (Mavatar)
• Senior Mechanical Engineer (MicroDri)
• Image Analysis Scientist (VoxlBio)

To the listings

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• In 2024, European startups in the segment "Defense, Resilience, and Security" (DSR) secured a record $5.2B in VC funding, representing an all-time high of 10% of all VC funding in Europe (English).

• An estimated 517 global unicorns raised their last known round more than three years ago (English).

• The “downturn” in B2B SaaS is over. If a startup still hasn't recovered, there's nothing external to blame anymore (English).

• Tips for executive startup staff on presenting to the Board of Directors (English).


• Sweden drops to #8 in the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, from #6 last year (English).

• The WWF and AI Sweden published a report on how AI can unlock the green transformation (English).

• The Swedish Armed Forces are making the open source encrypted messenger Signal their official communications app (Swedish).

• Sweden's Generation Z prioritise money over idealism and have become more traditional in their views on dating, according to the annual Youth Barometer report (Swedish, machine translation).

• In Stockholm, there are now more restaurants than retail stores (Swedish).

• Slussen, major transportation hub and urban area in central Stockholm, is nearing the final stages of its massive redevelopment project. Unlike the old, scruffy Slussen, the new draws upscale restaurants and bars (Swedish).