Swedish Tech Weekly #295


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 2732 subscribers today.

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Mergers & acquisitions

• LeaseCloud (Stockholm, cloud platform for equipment leasing aimed at small companies) is being acquired by Finnish technology lifecycle management provider 3stepIT (English).

• Omikai (Västerås, all-in-one cloud MIS platform for the printing and packaging industry) was acquired by Belgium-based industry peer CERM (English).

Funding news

Are you a founder in fundraising mode? Get free access to the FOUNDER version of my funding database.

• Blykalla (Stockholm, developer of modular nuclear reactor technology): €15M ($16M) in equity funding and €2.5M in grant funding from EIC Accelerator (English).

• CorPower Ocean (Stockholm; designs, manufactures and operates wave energy farms): €15M in equity funding and €2.5M in grant funding from EIC Accelerator (English).

• Sics.ai (Stockholm, developer of an AGI foundation model for robots): €5M in equity funding and €2.4M in grant funding from EIC Accelerator (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Elvy, formerly Geofy (Stockholm, service that simplifies the shift to sustainable energy with a 15-year fixed-cost subscription model): $3.5M in equity funding and $150M in debt funding. The equity portion was led by Essential Capital (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in November 2023 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Serverpod (Stockholm; open-source, scalable app server for Flutter developers): €2.7M ($2.8M) in a seed funding round led by node.vc (English).

• Saveggy (Lund, plant-based edible vegan coating for fresh fruits & veggies): €2.5M in grant funding from EIC Accelerator (Swedish).

• Windeed (Västerås, floating offshore wind technology): SEK12M (€1.1M, $1.1M) from private investors (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• VoxlBio (Stockholm, technology for advanced genetic spatial analysis): SEK6.75M (€600K, $630K) from Almi Invest, Life Science Invest, and angel investors (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered on February 4 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Payer (Stockholm, solution for automated B2B invoicing): SEK3M (€270K, $280K) from angel investors. Payer went bankrupt last year, but the estate was bought back by the founders for SEK1M (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Gokind (Stockholm; payment enrichment solutions for banks and financial institutions): SEK2M (€180K, $190K) in a bridge round from angel investors (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Cay Collective (Stockholm; digital marketplace for creator-powered lifestyle, fashion and art): undisclosed amount in first funding from angel investors (Swedish). ➡️ Startup first covered in August 2023 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• fixkod (Gävle, QR-code solution for reporting broken equipment or property-related problems): undisclosed amount from one angel in first outside funding (Swedish, machine translation). ℹ️ Startup first covered in April 2024 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

PRO subscribers learned about many more rounds (including unannounced ones) last week, and more details for each round.

PRO also includes:

• Exclusive daily PRO newsletter, ideal for startup investors and analysts
• Access to the exclusive Swedish Tech News Database (data on funding, new startups, and bankruptices/shutdowns)
• Access to exclusive Google Sheets (data on funding, new startups, and bankruptcies/shutdowns)

News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• Vesiro, Gothenburg-based developer of database optimization software, won the TOP46 pitch competition at last week's Techarena conference in Stockholm. ➡️ PRO subscribers last week learned about the funding plans of 15 startups that pitched.

• Strawberry is the new name of Stockholm-based AI agent startup Dendrite. The company is going all in on building an "AI browser", desribed as "executive assistant that follows you around the web". ➡️ News first covered in late January in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Gryning is a new startup from western Sweden founded by a team surrounding fashiontech serial entrepreneur Siri Vikman, that plans to "transform fashion from the ground up" (English).

• Leya, the fast-growing Stockholm-based AI assistant for legal professionals, is rebranding to Legora (English).

• Voxifyer, a Stockholm-based startup founded by Louise Edwards, is building an AI-powered voice licensing platform. The company just emerged from stealth mode (English). ➡️ Startup first covered on February 4 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• JYSYTY, a new startup from Lund, is developing a light cargo vehicle that "needs 90% less energy than delivery vans". ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in September in 2024.

• Avidnote, Gothenburg-based startup that offers an AI-powered tool for researchers to let them take more efficient research notes online, announced having crossed the mark of 120,000 users (English).

• Andsend, recently launched personal customer relationship agent for sales people, launched on Product Hunt, and did very well (English).

• Brief profile of Swedish startup Cellofibers, which has developed a cellulose-based granulate that is intended to become a sustainable replacement for Styrofoam (English).

• Baby Journey, Stockholm-based startup offering an app-based guide for pregnancy and new parents, will launch in Germany in spring – the company's first market outside the Nordics (English).

• Northvolt is selling the division which develops and makes battery systems for heavy industry – one of its few profitable units – to its customer and partner Scania (English).

• KTH Innovation and KTH Holding have launched Pioneer, a programme that brings together research teams with entrepreneurs, in the hope to lead to lots of new deeptech startups (English).

• The nominations for the Nordic Women in Tech Awards 2025 are open (English).

• The applications for Even Founders' spring Startup School are open, aimed at women with a business idea who are based in the Nordics (English).

• Inception Fund, a new Stockholm-based micro VC run by Zenith VC Partner Oliver Molander, will invest €100k-€500k in the very earliest stages, even pre-product, with a focus on AI entrepreneurs with category winner ambitions (English). ➡️ Inception Fund first covered on January 24 in Swedish Tech News PRO.

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Technical co-founder (ENDA)
• CTO & co-founder (Cresnd)
• Frontend Engineer - UI (Hypertype)
• Customer Success Manager – Trademarks & IP (Digip)
• Strategic Marketing Manager (ChargeNode)
• Senior Marketing Analyst (Soundtrack)
• Applied AI Engineer (Voi)

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).


• The National Library of Sweden has released a speech-to-text LLM trained on more than 50,000 hours of Swedish language audio recordings and dialects (English, Swedish).

• Largly due to the Northvolt layoffs, Skellefteå in northern Sweden has experienced a population decline of 785 people during the past 5 months (English).

• Alcohol monopoly Systembolaget is (as usual) Sweden's most trusted company. Northvolt is the least trusted one, according to an annual survey (Swedish, machine translation).

• Swedish online retailers grew total sales by 5% in 2024 compared to 2023, breaking the previous down trend (Swedish).

• Among graduates in Sweden, the unemployment rate is now the highest in 20 years (Swedish).

• A theory that the “Swedish pragmatic" approach to teamwork and collaboration may be responsible for Sweden's success with new businesses (English).

• Social Media is now the news source considered most important among Swedes aged 16–24 (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sweden’s 220 kilometers long Göta Canal Trail was named Europe's Cycle Route of the Year 2025 (English).