Swedish Tech Weekly #320: Planima, Zeeds, Yangi, Epishine, BoardClic, CLER, DUCK, Farang, Vaja, StoreSprint, KTH Innovation Launch, Humla, Karma, Health Integrator, Mylla, Leyr, Holiwise, and more

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 PRO newsletters, which are available as daily and weekly version. Today's newsletter was sent to 3008 subscribers.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Monterro, Swedish B2B software investor, is acquiring a majority stake in Gothenburg-based startup Planima, which provides a SaaS platform for strategic property maintenance (English).

• Zeeds (Uppsala, app for increasing the efficiency of cognitive behavioral therapy) was acquired by the Swedish care company Vivant. ➡️ First covered in Swedish Tech News PRO on August 26.

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Funding news

Sweden-based startup founders, request free access to my funding and investor database. Already more than 250 founders have done so.

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.

• Yangi (Varberg, manufacturing technology for dry formed cellulose-based packaging): SEK40.1M (€3.6M, $4.2M) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Yangi also has raised new, not yet officially announced equity funding, partly from new investors. PRO subscribers learned the details.

• Epishine (Linköping, developer of organic solar cell technology for low power electronics): SEK33.7M (€3M, $3.6M) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency (Swedish).

• BoardClic (Stockholm, SaaS platform for digital board performance reviews): SEK19M led by Tom Nyman Holding (English). ➡️ Funding first covered in PRO on June 10.

• CLER, formerly Airission (Stockholm, filter-free air purification technology): SEK19M (€1.7M, $2M) led by Norrsken Launcher, with participation from Science Park Gotland and Almi Invest (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• DUCK, formerly Stratazon (Malmö, stealth startup operating a platform that lets enterprises spot and act on customer conversations in minutes with GraphRAG): SEK18M (€1.6M $1.9M) from the Bonnier family office, Thomas von Koch, as well as former Oatly CEO Toni Petersson (Swedish / Rapidus paywall). ➡️ Funding first covered in PRO on August 6.

• Farang (Stockholm; proprietary AI architecture built for superior reasoning, efficiency, and privacy): €1.5M ($1.7M) seed funding led by Voima Ventures and the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund (English).

• Vaja (Stockholm, solutions for wind-adaptive solar farms): SEK11.5M (€1M, $1.2M) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency (Swedish). ➡️ Vaja first covered in PRO in May 2024.

• StoreSprint (Stockholm, chain operations platform): undisclosed amount in a strategic investment from Swedish warehouse and shop floor process solutions provider Idnet (English).

PRO subscribers learned about many more rounds last week. PRO subscribers also get full access to the unique Startup Database.

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News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• KTH Innovation Launch unveiled batch 21, comprising 18 startups (English). ➡️ PRO subscribers got all the URLs, and more details.

• Humla is a new Stockholm-based startup in stealth mode, that's developing a wearable, embedded AI platform – purpose built "for real world use cases where hands are busy, attention is critical, and traditional devices and interfaces get in the way". The company recently raised pre-seed funding from Norrsken Evolve. ➡️ First covered in PRO on August 18.

• For its upcoming IPO, Klarna reportedly is seeking a valuation of $13B-$14B (English).

• Lovable is reportedly fielding inbound investment offers valuing the company at more than $4B, more than double the price at which it raised its recent $200M Series A round (English).

• Karma, Stockholm-based startup that initially became known for its anti food waste app, is launching "KarmaOS", a "full stack restaurant platform", and says it has crossed into profitability (English).

• Health Integrator, Stockholm-based digital health platform for disease prevention, has "delivered Sweden’s first Health Impact Bond" with full payout. Nearly half of 925 participants at risk of type 2 diabetes that participated in a preventive program are no longer at risk (Swedish, machine translation).

• Lots of startups and tools using AI to analyse Swedish cooperative housing associations have been popping up lately, such as Boanalys, brfAI, Reelai, and BRFRapport. ➡️ Most of them first covered in Swedish Tech News PRO.

• Mylla, Malmö-based online marketplace and SaaS solution connecting local farmers and end consumers, is raising SEK8M through equity crowdfunding. More than SEK5M have been committed so far (Swedish).

• Leyr, Stockholm-based integration platform for healthcare providers, is launching on the Swedish market, two years after going live in Norway (English).

• Holiwise, a London-headquartered AI-powered travel agency founded by the Swedes Kristian Lexeklint and Albin Eriksson Lippe, has raised €1.45M in pre-seed funding (English).

• Ivan Liljeqvist, co-founder of Stockholm-based web3 development platform Moralis (and popular crypto YouTuber), has stepped down as CEO (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• The Finish cryptocurrency service provider Coinmotion is expanding into Sweden (Swedish, machine translation).

• Spotify is getting a direct messaging feature – but messages won't be end-to-end encrypted (English).

• Snap, maker of Snapchat, inaugurated its first own Stockholm office at Birger Jarlsgatan in Stockholm last week. ➡️ First covered in PRO on August 19.

• Velocity Fellows (formerly Snabbt) is again looking for entrepreneurial-minded young people in Sweden interested in joining a fully paid week in Silicon Valley with top Swedish entrepreneurs (English).

• The applications for the SSE Business Lab's Fall 2025 Activate and Incubate program are open (English).

• In a long feature article, Breakit profiles the co-living house Hus24, located in Stockholm's old town. Some of the residents are well-known startup entrepreneurs (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Foodtech Forum 2025 will take place on November 18 in Malmö (English). ➡️ Added to the Swedish tech event calendar

• Two new investment firms from Sweden officially launched last week: Fredlim Capital and Altea Capital. ➡️ First covered in PRO last week.

• Flat Capital, Sebastian and Nina Siemiatkowski's publicly traded investment firm, is investing SEK458M in the newly formed Swedish defense group Defensor, and becomes the majority shareholder (English).

• byFounders, Nordic early-stage VC firm, has promoted Stockholm-based Magnus Hambleton to partner (English).

• node.vc, Swedish early-stage VC firm, has recruited Soo Min Hong as investor and Jakob Vaghult as analyst in Stockholm. Olivia Lyng joins as investor in Copenhagen (English).

Exclusives in PRO last week

• Global top tier VCs participated in a yet-to-be-announced $4M+ first funding round raised by a Stockholm-based stealth mode startup building something for B2B accounts receivables.

• 27 new Swedish tech startups

• The co-founder of a fast-growing Swedish early-stage startup from western Sweden that's been widely covered in the media, has quietly stepped down as CEO, and appears to have left the company.

• A startup in stealth mode is building what may become an AI chat game creation tool.

• Another startup has emerged from stealth mode, aiming to both cut online shopping returns, and to turn unavoidable returns "into a growth engine".

• A startup offering an AI-powered app aiming to simplify golf bookings and travel, is bankrupt.

• An airline planning automation startup is raising a first larger funding round.

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Co-founder (Moorula)
• Client Experience Lead (Mingla)
• Content Manager & Community Builder (AUR+A)
• Frontend Engineer (Encube)
• Various Engineering roles (LexEnergy)
• Fullstack JavaScript Developer (Kliently)
• Research engineer (IntuiCell)
• C/C++ and Rust Developer (UXStream)
• Industry Collaboration Program Manager (Collegial)
• Customer Success Manager (Evify)
• Product & Customer Success Lead (Substly)
• Senior Java Fullstack Developer (Telcred)
• Partner Manager (Sitoo)

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

• Norwegian VC-firm SNÖ won't raise a third fund. The partners will instead all launch their own funds (English).

• Sifted is now offering free subscriptions for startups across Europe (English).

• OpenAI's planned $6B secondary stock sale probably is the largest non-founder employee wealth creation event in tech history (English).

• The rise of hot AI companies has fueled a parallel frenzy in Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) – often with highly complex and convoluted structures (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• The AI Sweden initiative is working hard to prevent that each of Sweden's 290 municipalities reinvents the wheel, when it comes to applying AI to their processes (Swedish, no machine translation available).

• A cyberattack on Miljödata, an IT systems supplier for roughly 80% of Sweden’s municipal systems, has caused accessibility problems in more than 200 regions of the country (English).

• The Swedish Consumer Agency proposes to completely ban telesales calls in Sweden (English).

• Sweden's prison population almost doubled from a decade ago (English).

• In Malmö, Sweden’s first noise sensor cameras have been installed to capture license plates of vehicles that create excessive noise – though at the moment, no prosecutions are possible (Swedish, machine translation).

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

Martin