Swedish Tech Weekly #300


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 2811 subscribers today.

Issue #300 today! Only 700 to go, to get to a first real milestone. 😄 I'm happy you are part of this journey!

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Mergers & acquisitions

• Bokio, Gothenburg-based SME digital accounting platform, was supposed to be fully acquired by Norwegian business software company Visma. But the two parties are reportedly in a legal conflict over the amount due (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• BTS, a Sweden-headquartered global professional services firm, acquired the US-based startup Sounding Board, which offers a leadership coaching management platform (English).

Funding news

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

• Hailey HR (Stockholm, SaaS HR platform): SEK45M (€4.2M, $4.5M) in a mix of equity and debt funding from existing investors, at a doubled valuation (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• PayZlip (Helsingborg, SaaS solution for payroll and time reporting): SEK4.5M (€420K, $450K) in equity funding from new and existing angel investors, and a SEK2.5M loan from Almi. ➡️ Specifics of this funding round first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on March 25.

• Novoplast (Karlskoga, produces and sells recycled plastics): SEK5M (€490K, $460K) from existing investors (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• Pancake AI (Stockholm, AI analyst for novel insights from customer feedback): €100K ($110K) in pre-seed funding from Antler. ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on February 17, funding first covered on March 11.

• SubSynced (Huskvarna, upcoming solution to upload videos or podcasts to multiple channels with a single click): SEK1M (€90K, $100K) in first funding from Daniel Berntsson, founder of Gothenburg-based VPN provider Mullvad. ➡️ First covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on March 24.

• Cordicity (Linköping, software for physicians to get information on a patient's cardiac function): SEK500K (€49K, $46K) from LiU Invest (Swedish, machine translation).

• CHTECH (Jönköping, new type of heat pump for apartment buildings): undisclosed amount from Almi Invest and others (Swedish, machine translation).

News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• 8 Swedish startups and scaleups are included in Time Magazine's list of the World's Top 250 Greentech companies: Polarium, Einride, Candela, X Shore, CorPower Ocean, Eliq, Voi, and Doconomy (English).

• Klarna and Spotify (in that order) are Europe's two most significant "founder factories", according to the fourth edition of Dealroom & Accel’s "Europe and Israel founder factories" report (English).

• SOLDR is an open source, modular soldering station for makers, created by a few Swedes. An ongoing crowdfunding campaign has already exceeded the goal of SEK66K by a huge margin (English).

• Ping Payments, Örebro-based payment service for civil society organizations founded in 2017, grew net revenue 41% YoY to SEK11M, and turned break-even. ➡️ First covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on March 28.

• Blipp, Stockholm-based startup offering a transaction platform for private car deals, has launched the financial group Alwey, which will manage sustainable investment funds, and provide tailored credit solutions to Blipp users (Swedish, machine translation).

• Profile of new Örebro-based startup Steamforce and interview with the founders Åsa Melhus and Navid Tajhizi. They have developed a clinically validated self-disinfecting sink system for hospitals and are ready to scale up (Swedish, machine translation).

• Semanttic, angel-backed Gothenburg-based startup that offered an AI copilot for UX prototyping, has shut down. ➡️ News first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on March 24.

• Interview with Sara Rosberg, founder and CEO of Hässlehom-based startup Transforming Textiles, which creates smart textiles for the three verticals space, healthcare, and textile industry (English).

• Profile of Womni, bootstrapped Stockholm-based digital healthcare provider for women over 40, and interview with the founders Elin Emanuelsson och Naomi Flamholc (Swedish, machine translation).

• Profile of Safetly, Stockholm-based online marketplace for security services founded in 2021, and interview with the founder Rawa Karadaki (Swedish, machine translation).

• Legora, the Stockholm-based AI assistant for legal professionals formerly named Leya, has opened an office in the US (English).

• Sportway, Stockholm-based company offering AI-automated sports video and data production, is expanding into the UK (English).

• Stegra, developer of a fossil-free steel plant being built in northern Sweden, says the Swedish government is "damaging the country’s climate tech ambitions", after having been denied SEK1.65B in public funding (English / Sifted paywall, Swedish / Di paywall).

• GeoGuessr, the bootstrapped and highly profitable Swedish online community game where players have to identify locations based on Google Street View imagery, will launch a desktop version – after 12 years of only offering a web app (English).

• A local Swedish newspaper published a long and pretty interesting interview with Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon (Swedish, machine translation).

• How does AI influence the entrepreneurial experience? KTH Royal Institute of Technology student Sebastian Rios Yunes is writing his Master thesis about that question, and wants to interview founders in the Stockholm area (English).

• The TV show Draknästet, the Swedish version of Dragon's Den, will take a break this year (Swedish).

• UK-headquartered neobank Revolut is launching Tap to Pay on iPhones for its PRO and business users in Sweden (Swedish, machine translation).

• EQT Foundation is awarding grants of €25K to €100K for pioneering researchers tackling women’s health challenges (English).

• Impact Week 2025 will take place on November 18, 2025 and the surrounding days, in Malmö (English). ➡️ Added to the Swedish tech event calendar for PRO subscribers.

• Minc, Malmö-based "Startup House" and incubator, has announced Tomas de Souza as new CEO (Swedish).

PRO subscribers last week learned about 21 new Swedish tech startups, and many more news – lots of them exclusives that have not been covered or curated anywhere else yet.

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Founding Engineer (Strawberry)
• Business Development Manager (Insurely)
• People Operations Specialist (Bookboost)
• Senior Software Engineer (Venga)
• Product Fluent UX/UI Designer (Dibz)
• Marketing Manager (Validio)
• Senior backend engineer (Polar)
• Experienced PHP developer (Car.info)
• Senior AI Engineer (Quantera AI)
• Marketing Manager (ProptechOS)
• Marketplace Coordinator (Foodtel)
• Senior UX-Designer (Mitigram)
• People Operations Officer, and other roles (Volumental)
• Content Creator/Performance marketing specialist (Budi)
• Lead Developer – Integrations (Phyron)
• Flight Simulator Software Developer (Navigraph)

To the listings

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• AI is remaking SaaS – 10 trends to watch (English).

• AI companies are scaling much faster, but it's harder for them to hit escape velocity (English).

• Entrepreneurship is a trauma response (English).


• Personal information of two million people from Sweden has been leaked (including highly sensitive data), following a hack of Malmö-based SaaS platform for sports teams SportAdmin (Swedish, machine translation).

• Stockholm city's energy company Stockholm Exergi will build "one of the world’s largest facilities for capture and permanent storage of biogenic carbon dioxide" (English).

• The Swedish sci-fi movie UFO Sweden will be shown in US cinemas in a version powered by visual AI dubbing. This makes actors look like they were truly speaking in English (English).

• Sweden's first urban drone airport was opened in Skellefteå in the north of the country (Swedish, machine translation).

• Swedish fashion giant H&M plans to create digital twins of 30 models, who will own and control their digital counterparts (English).

• Sweden will borrow an extra SEK300B ($30B) for defense spending, in the biggest rearmament since Cold War (English).

• The Swedish police has reported Facebook owner Meta for allowing fake ads from scam networks on the platform (Swedish, machine translation).

• An individual scored the biggest ever lottery win in Sweden: SEK1.25B (English).