Swedish Tech Weekly #304
Welcome the latest from Sweden's startup & tech sector.
I'm Martin Weigert. Every Monday morning, Swedish Tech Weekly brings you a selection of some of the news I previously covered in my daily PRO newsletters. Today's newsletter was sent to 2858 subscribers.
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Mergers & acquisitions
• Hercare (Stockholm, digi-physical healthcare provider for women) was acquired by Norway-based women's healthcare company CMedical (Swedish, machine translation).
Funding news
Are you a founder in fundraising mode? Get free access to the FOUNDER version of my funding and investor database. Closed a funding round? Submit it here.
Note to first time founders: Raising VC funding is not a goal in itself, and not every company is a fit for it. If you plan to choose that path, make sure to understand the implications.
• Froda (Stockholm, digital loan provider for small businesses): €20M ($23M) in a Series B funding round led by Incore Invest, for the continued European expansion (English).
• Freja (Stockholm, publicly traded electronic ID provider): SEK32M (€2.9M, $3.3M) before issue costs through a directed share issue to new and existing shareholders (Swedish, machine translation).
• SampleFacts (Uppsala, next generation blood sampling technology): $1.8M led by Nordic Science Investments (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in September 2023.
• SICS (Stockholm, developer of an AGI foundation model for robots): SEK16M (€1.5M, $1.7M) convertible note from angel investors. This comes in addition to previously announced €2.4M grant funding from EIC Accelerator (English).
• TerraBarrier (Karlstad, coating technology that virtually eliminates the challenges of hydrogen permeation and embrittlement): SEK15M (€1.4M, $1.6M) from existing investor Klint Ventures, and new investor Almi Invest (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Partial closing of this round first covered in PRO on April 14.
• Kobb (Gothenburg, developer of seaweed-based food products): SEK4.3M (€390K, €440K) from unspecified new and existing investors (Swedish, machine translation).
• Empley (Gothenburg, AI-based scenario & simulation tool for HR): SEK3M in first funding from Foundry ventures (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on February 3.
PRO subscribers learned about various unannounced rounds last week (including one raised by a Swedish startup aiming to become Europe's response to Palantir) and more details for each round.
PRO also includes:
• Exclusive daily PRO newsletter, ideal for startup investors and analysts
• Full access to the Startup Database with data on funding and investors, new startups, bankruptcies/shutdowns, and fast growers.
• Access to exclusive Google Sheets with data on funding, new startups, bankruptcies/shutdowns, and fast growers.
News from the Swedish startup & tech sector
• Berget AI, a Stockholm-based startup offering an EU-compliant inference service and AI infrastructure founded last year, has emerged from stealth mode (Swedish). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on March 10.
• Strawberry has launched a pre-beta version of its previously announced AI browser on ProductHunt (English).
• DREM, fast growing Stockholm-based startup offering a seamless solution for heat pump deployment in residential properties, is bankrupt, after failing to raise a Series A round – despite existing investors being willing to keep backing (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).
• Lovable has reached an ARR of $40M, five months after launch (English). The AI web app builder also released version 2 (English).
• The newly launched BLING Incubator has announced 12 Swedish startups participating in the first cohort (Swedish, machine translation).
• Emmel, a Stockholm-based startup founded last year, has revealed the full-scale prototype of its electric Utility Terrain Vehicle (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on October 4.
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• Grewbik, a new startup from western Sweden, revealed the first prototype of its modular children's bicycle that grows with the child (Swedish, machine translation).
• Scaleout, Uppsala-based federated learning platform for leveraging siloed, business sensitive and regulated data in ML pipelines, is expanding into the defense sector (Swedish / NyTeknik paywall, Swedish #2, machine translation).
• FashionLab, a Gothenburg-based startup founded last year, has announced leading Swedish online fashion retailer Bubbleroom as a pilot customer for its AI-powered solution to create fashion shoots (English, Swedish). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on November 25 .
• Tzafon is a new "R&D lab dedicated to advance the frontiers of machine intelligence" based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, founded by the Swedes Noah Löfquist and Simon Mattias Koser. The startup announced a $4M pre-seed funding round and unveiled a first tool. (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on September 17.
• Listen Labs, San Francisco-based AI-first research platform founded by the Swedish serial entrepreneur Alfred Wahlforss, has raised $27M led by Sequoia (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO in summer 2023 (when it was named Merlin).
• The Swedish startups/scaleups Consupedia and Lifesum team up to build "the world's most informed and inclusive food database" (English).
• Again, Stockholm-based startup that allows consumers to share anonymized payment card purchase data in return for rewards, says it hit the milestone of 100 million transactions (Swedish, machine translation).
• The inspiring bootstrapping story of Stockholm-based AI sales tool startup Prospexs (Swedish, machine translation).
• Profile of Baibe and interview with co-founder and CEO Eva Leach. The Stockholm-based startup, founded last year, cites 65,000 users of its AI companion app, most of them men (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on August 26.
• A visual map highlighting where key players of Stockholm's tech ecosystem are located (English).
• The applications for the Norrsken Accelerator 2025 are open (English).
• This year's Startup 4 Climate competition will be launched on May 21. As usual, SEK2M are up for grabs for Swedish startups and scaleups that speed up the energy transition (English).
• Propel Capital, the investment firm that invests in selected startups from the programs run by Stockholm-based accelerator/incubator Sting, launches its seventh angel fund, backed with SEK27M (English).
• Nordic Angels' soon-to-be-opening "Angel House", a previously announced physical member club in central Stockholm for angel investors, now has a website and allows for member signups.
• Kinnevik has sold its 8% stake in the still unprofitable ten-year old Denmark-headquartered digital bank Lunar, at a loss (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
PRO subscribers last week learned about many more news – including exclusives that have not been covered or curated anywhere else yet – and about 17 new Swedish tech startups.
Selected Swedish tech startup jobs
A non-exhaustive selection of open positions at Swedish tech startups.
• CEO (Valys)
• Customer Success Specialist (Telink)
• Junior Technical Support & QA Specialist (Jubel.ai)
• Business Intelligence Analyst (Candela)
• Go-To-Market Associate (Intric)
• Junior accountant (Matsmart-Motatos)
• Senior & Junior R&D Lab Engineer (Argus Eye)
• Customer Support Specialist (Dibz)
Special shout-out to my partner Eivora for providing me with access to their awesome AI-powered ownership database of Swedish companies.
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
• People are using the latest ChatGPT models to figure out the location shown in pictures (English). What will this mean for Sweden's GeoGuesser?
• One reason why founders do angel investing: "Being a founder is lonely. Angel investing helps with that. You get energy, ideas, and perspective" (English).
• Every once and a while, there is a move that end questions and competition for startups in a market (English).
• For startups, every marketing channel sucks right now (English).
• In the era of vibe coding, the real scarcity shifts from doing to choosing what to do (English).
• Unforced errors founders make in the VC fundraising process (English).
Other interesting things related to Sweden
• Sweden's possibly most critical digital service, the bank-owned digital identity solution BankID, was down for hours, following a massive DDoS attack (English, Swedish).
• Sweden will relax its strict rules on alcohol sales in June, and allow microbreweries, vineyards and distilleries to sell their drinks on-site to visitors – but it'll be mandatory to listen to "a lecture" with an educational element first (English).
• When Swedish doctors moved to Norway following a substantial increase in physician wages, this led to a persistent rise in mortality in Sweden, with no corresponding health gains in Norway, according to a study (English).
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That's it for this week. Thank you for being a subscriber!
Martin
