Swedish Tech Weekly #297


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 2753 subscribers today.

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Mergers & acquisitions

• Codemill (Umeå, publicly traded SaaS-centric digital product and service studio) received an acquisition bid from the US-based company Ateliere, which values Codemill at SEK313.3M (€29M, $31M) (English).

• Swedish PE firm Standout Capital acquires a significant minority stake in Denmark-based startup Resights, a provider of real estate data (English).

Funding news

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

• Alight (Stockholm, solar developer and independent power producer): €46M ($49M) in debt funding from ABN AMRO and SEB, for the company's first Finnish project (English).

• Echandia (Stockholm; energy storage solutions for the maritime industry and heavy-duty industrial applications): SEK220M (€20M, $21M) in a funding round led by Industrifonden and Alantra/Klima (English)

• Aira (Stockholm, D2C heat pump subscription service): €20M ($21M) from undisclosed investors in another Series B extension (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• Bookboost (Malmö, hospitality CRM platform): €3.6M ($3.8M) in a funding round led by Vendep Capital (English).

• Chromafora (Stockholm, technology for selective removal of PFAS and heavy metals from water streams): SEK40M (€3.6M, $3.8M) from existing investors including Ragn-Sells and Flerie Invest. ➡️ First covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on March 3.

• Barnebys (Stockholm; the world’s leading search service for art, antiques and collectibles): SEK20M (€1.8M, $2M) from existing investors. The company's new CEO Therese Agerberth also participated (Swedish, machine translation).

• Footway OaaS (Stockholm, provider of shared e-commerce infrastructure): SEK20M (€1.8M, $2M) from existing investors Industrifonden and Solberget Invest (Swedish, machine translation).

• PainDrainer (Lund, app that lets patients self-manage chronic pain): SEK9.5M led by new investors Tramontane Invest and ReThink Capital, for the continued commercial rollout in the US (English).

• SeaPattern (Linköping, technology to enhance electricity generation in existing hydropower plants and streams): SEK8M (€730K, $780K) from Norrsken Launcher (English, Swedish).

• Plussa (Stockholm, mental coaching app for parents, founded 2022): SEK3.9M (€360K, $390K) in an angel round (Swedish, machine translation).

• Local taste (Oskarshamn, delivery service for locally produced food): SEK3.8M (€350K, $370K) in a funding round led by angel investor Ludvig Friberger (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in June 2023.

• Nextgen Classroom (Växjö, AI-powered education platform for schools and teachers): SEK3.4M (€310K, $320K) from existing investors Kick Capital and Almi Invest, among others (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in April 2024.

• ParkingAid (Stockholm, app and technology for finding a parking spot): SEK2.5M (€230K, $240K) led by Almi Invest, with participation from Soläng and others (Swedish, machine translation).

• Fifty (Åre & Stockholm; solution that connects property and industrial assets, and optimizes them with intelligent features such as load shifting and peak shaving): undisclosed amount from E14 Invest and angel investors (English).

• Nordic fund manager and property owner Areim has raised €450M ($480M) in a mix of equity, loans and bonds, from unnamed investors for its Stockholm-headquartered data center company EcoDataCenter (EDC) (English).

News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• Intellectus, a Stockholm-based startup founded last year, launched its AI assistant for teachers.➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in April 2024.

• Profile of bootstrapped Stockholm-based healthtech wearable startup HAALE, and interview with Olof Jakobsson, one of the two founders (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in May 2024.

• Jetson, Stockholm- & Palo Alto-based eVTOL developer, published a video of the company's "first production Jetson ONE, Serial Number 1" (English).

• 23 Swedish companies are included in the Financial Times' ninth annual FT1000 ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, based on the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue over the period 2020 to 2023 (English).

• Swedish enterprise AI trailblazer Sana will soon launch a "personal AI tutor" for business-related learning (English).

• Depict, Stockholm-based startup offering a visual merchandising app for online stores on Shopify & Centra, bagged over 800 upvotes on Product Hunt for the launch of its feature "Supergrid" (English).

• EasyJob is a newly launched AI agent for job seekers in Sweden, created by Stockholm-based startup Kundy.

• Turnpike, Stockholm-based developer of wearable technology solutions for frontline communication, is expanding into Norway (English).

• Zaver, Stockholm-based payments provider featuring size-agnostic checkout solutions, is expanding into Finland (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Medbeat, Malmö-based maker of an ECG device that can measure heart signals anywhere and anytime, was named Startup of the Year at the annual Malmö Business Awards (Swedish).

• The UK-based startup Revive DNA, which utilities remote health monitoring, DNA sequencing and the latest research in immunology to provide tailored nutrition plans, has chosen Sweden as one of its launch markets (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• The applications for the new BLING Incubator are open. Founders/founding teams that get selected participate in a 12-month program, and may also receive a SEK300K investment (English, Swedish).

• 🎧 Lovable founder and CEO Anton Osika talks with Harry Stebbings about the Stockholm-based startup's journey and explosive growth (Lovable is nowadays dubbed "Europe's fastest growing startup") (English, 50 minutes).

• 🎧 Another podcast tip: a wide-ranging conversation with Stockholm-based veteran VC and Northzone Partner Pär-Jörgen Pärson (English, 44 minutes).

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Founding Product Manager (Cerve)
• Customer Success Manager (Quartr)
• Founders Associate & other roles (SeaPattern)
• Various Software Engineering roles, and others (Grasp)
• Design Lead (UI/UX) and other roles (Resourced)
• Junior Software Engineer (Spotscale)
• Social Media Specialist (Once Upon)
• Product Designer (Nextory)
• AI Engineer & Fullstack Developer (Fifty)
• Business Development Manager (Digmi)
• Various Software Engineering roles (Aloi)
• Various Software Engineering roles (Konvoj)
• Client Manager (Lysa)
• Technical Customer Support (Digiexam)
• Software Engineers, and other roles (Atlar)

To the listings

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• A quarter of startups in Y Combinator's current cohort have codebases that are almost entirely AI-generated (English).

• Behind every founder wrestling with product-market fit, there's often a partner wrestling with their place in the relationship's priority stack (English).

• Many software companies are seeing their moats rapidly shrink as a result of AI. Complex code is no longer a moat. So which moats remain? (English).


• An analysis of 47,365 male-led Swedish companies founded between 2004 and 2017 shows that companies that added at least one female board member, increased sales by around 45% on average (Swedish, machine translation).

• Apropos: Breakit mapped 399 women in Sweden who have board roles and experience (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Further cuts to interest rates in the short term in Sweden are now looking increasingly unlikely (English).

• In February, food prices in Sweden saw their largest increase in two years (Swedish, machine translation).

• Restaurants in Sweden now need to be able to tell customers where their meat comes from (English).

• Sweden unveiled a national strategy to combat loneliness (English, Swedish).

• February saw plugin EVs take 61.1% share in Sweden, up strongly from 51.8% in February 2024 (English).

• The “Stockholm tree pit” model, is spreading across Europe (English).

• A free tool to read any epub book in easy Swedish (English).