Swedish Tech Weekly #305

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 2870 subscribers.

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Mergers & acquisitions

• Epidemic Sound (Stockholm, music licensing provider for creators) acquires the Portugal- and Ireland-based music tech startup Song Sleuth (English).

• Brick (Stockholm, network for power bank-sharing) acquired the company behind Pluggo, the "leading provider of mobile charging services at festivals across the Netherlands and Belgium" (English).

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.

• Telgea (Stockholm, mobile operator for international companies): $2.7M in a pre-seed funding round from Amigos Venture Capital, Antler, Motivate Ventures, and SSE Ventures (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in July 2024.

• Basic Genomics (Stockholm, develops new methods to study RNA): SEK11.7M (€1.1M, $1.2M) co-led by Segulah Medical Acceleration and Navigare Ventures (English).

• Inossia (Stockholm, developing next-generation bone biomaterials): SEK10.3M (€940K, $1.1M) from existing investors (English).

• Evidence (Stockholm; healthcare demand and capacity management platform): undisclosed amount from Sciety and Sciety Venture Partners (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in August 2023.

• Unna Baby (Stockholm, producer of infant & baby nutrition): SEK3.25M (€300K, $340K) from undisclosed investors (Swedish, machine translation).

• Bright (Stockholm, all-in-one study platform): SEK3.2M (€290K, $330K) from Foundry ventures, Supermarket, and angel investors (Swedish / Breakit paywall). ➡️ Partial closing of this round first covered in PRO on March 20.

• Vakona (Umeå; developing a novel, antiobiotic free topical treatment for acne): undisclosed amount from existing investors Exceca Allocation, Partnerinvest Norr, Phase2Phase Biopharma, STOAF, and new private investors (English).

• Tilda (Stockholm & Malmö; AI-first, science-based process planner for change and learning initiatives): undisclosed amount from Emil Sjödin, and Saminvest (via Annexstruktur AB) English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in June 2024.

• Gympak (Helsingborg; provider of sportswear packs, in-room training equipment & workout apps for hotels, resorts & gyms): undisclosed amount from strategic angel investor Sven Cristea (English).

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News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• Fuels is a new provider of securities-backed loans designed for entrepreneurs and investors, just launched by Stockholm-based fintech 0TO9 (formerly Nstart) (English). ➡️ Initial signs of this first covered in PRO on March 18.

• Qrora has launched, a Gothenburg-based knowledge platform for medical practitioners (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on March 18.

• Heart Aerospace, Gothenburg-founded hybrid-electric airplane maker, is moving its Swedish operations and headquarter to Los Angeles. Most of the company's around 75 employees in Sweden will lose their jobs (English).

• Tandem Health, Stockholm-based startup offering a solution for AI-powered medical notes, signed a deal which will make its solution available to over 200,000 healthcare professionals of the NHS, England's publicly funded healthcare system (English).

• Ngenic, a publicly traded Uppsala-based provider of smart energy solutions, is bankrupt (Swedish, machine translation).

• Globy, bootstrapped Sundsvall-based startup which is developing a chat-based-tool to create high-performance websites in minutes, launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for early access (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on October 16.

• Femma, Stockholm-based startup aiming to build the "world's first women-centric AI coach and personal development app", launched a donation-based crowdfunding campaign (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on March 19.

• Volta Trucks, Sweden-founded electric truck maker which is nowadays based in the UK, is bankrupt again (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• Spotify reported a record €509M operating profit for Q1 2025 (English). In other Spotify news: Apple approved an app update that allows US-based Spotify users to access pricing info and external payment links (English). Also: Spotify has pushed Google from the #1 spot of most attractive employers among IT students in Sweden (Swedish, machine translation).

• Jan Älmeby, Swedish serial entrepreneur and founder of Fortnox, has died at the age of 89 (Swedish).

• EQT Ventures and EQT Growth launched The Founder Six, a "science-backed framework" to "help founders and investors understand and develop the six traits that drive founder success" (English).

• Creandum published an updated version of their "Essential Board Deck Template" (English).

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Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Network Engineer (Lolo)
• Product Manager (Open Payments)
• Senior Web Developer (Qrora)
• Customer Success Manager (Fastighetsloggen)
• Software Developer/Automation Engineer (Ambidex)
• Junior Financial Controller (Zaver)
• Technical Project Manager (Learnifier)
• Fullstack Developers (Migränhjälpen)
• Global Head of Development (Ingrid Capacity)
• Digital Marketer (Tendium)
• Experienced Full Stack Web Developer (PinMeTo)
• Partnerships Manager (Zimpler)
• Partnership Manager (Cetti)

To the listings

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

• German accelerator EWOR raises €60M to challenge YC and find the next $1B founders (English).

• Four approaches to building and funding a company: 1. bootstrapping 2. VC 3. boot-scaling 4. seed-strapping AI-native (English).

• Guide to competitor analysis for startups (English).

• Everything compounds – from money to relationships to knowledge and beyond (English).

• Co-CEOs can work, but they’re tricky (English).

• The AI "killer app": Teaching a computer how to do things that we don't like doing so that we can spend our time on things we do (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Sweden's to date largest solar park has been inaugurated (Swedish, machine translation).

• A government bill wants to make it illegal to buy sexual acts online. OnlyFans is on alert (English).

• The Swedish Bible Society is leading a new translation of the New Testament, the first major update in five decades (English).

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That's it for this week. Thank you for being a subscriber!

Martin