Swedish Tech Weekly #325: Atlantic Quantum, Waitwhile, Einride, Legora, Infobric, Zendr, Blykalla, Westra, Meetric, Metamorfish, HikmaAI, Specific, Brickanta, Daniel Ek, Lovable, Plantvation, ImagineCare, Saveggy, Candela, and more

Welcome to 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 3075 subscribers.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Atlantic Quantum (Gothenburg & Cambridge MA / US, developer of scalable quantum computers) was acquired by Google (English).

• Waitwhile (Stockholm & San Francisco, queue management and appointment scheduling system) was acquired by Ireland-headquartered, NYSE-listed security products provider Allegion (English). This was announced already in July, but went unnoticed by the tech media.

• Jacob Kihlbaum, one of the founders of bankrupt Örebro-based startup Appetite, has bought the company's assets, and will restart under the old name Binary Brains (Swedish, machine translation).

• Vitec Software Group, Umeå-based publicly listed provider and acquirer of standardized software and SaaS solutions for various niches, acquires 80% of the shares in the Polish software company NMG (English).

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Funding news

Sweden-based startup founders, request free access to my funding and investor database.

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.

• Einride (Stockholm; provider of digital, electric and autonomous shipping technology): $100M from a mix of existing and new investors including EQT Ventures and IonQ. Reportedly, the valuation was $1.2B (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Legora, formerly Leya (Stockholm, AI assistant for legal professionals) is reportedly in talks to raise $100M-$150M in a fresh funding round led Bessemer Venture Partners, at a $1.8B valuation (English).

• Infobric (Jönköping, provider of digital solutions for a safer, more productive, and sustainable construction industry): undisclosed amount in a growth investment from KKR, which also acquires all existing shares from Summa Equity (English).

• Zendr (Stockholm, logistics platform enabling companies to manage all their shipments from package to pallet with ease): undisclosed amount in equity funding from Copilot Capital, which becomes majority owner (English).

• Blykalla (Stockholm, developer of modular nuclear reactor technology): $5M in a strategic investment from US-based sector peer Oklo (English).

• Westra, formerly n-Ink (Norrköping, develops and supplies advanced conductive polymers for modern electronics): SEK42M (€3.8M, $4.5M) from new investors Voima Ventures and Lotus Singapore Group, as well as existing investors (English).

• Meetric (Stockholm; conversation intelligence platform): SEK21M (€1.9M, $2.3M) led by Spintop Ventures (English).

• Metamorfish, formerly Nano Textile Solutions (Linköping, nanotechnology solution that allows a single textile product to become multi-sized): SEK8M (€730K, $850K) led by Almi Invest (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• HikmaAI (Malmö and Sardinia / Italy; platform to continually evaluate, secure, and control AI agents for security, compliance, and efficiency): €500K ($590K) in an angel round (English, Swedish / Rapidus paywall).

• Specific (Stockholm & San Francisco, platform for engineers to build backends without code): $500K from Y Combinator. The company also emerged from stealth mode (English). YC participation first covered in PRO on September 23.

• Brickanta (Stockholm, AI-native platform for construction and real estate development): $500K from Y Combinator. The company also emerged from stealth mode (English). ➡️ Company details added on July 7 to the New Startup Database for PRO subscribers. YC participation first covered in PRO on September 29.

PRO subscribers learned more details for most of these rounds, as well as about many more rounds last week – including those done by Swedish VCs abroad.

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News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek will step down as CEO at the end of December, but remain Executive Chairman. Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström will become co-CEOs (English).

• Lovable launched two new major features: Lovable Cloud allows vibe coders to create backend infrastructure with a prompt. And with Lovable AI, builders can add Google's Gemini LLM to their app (English). “My challenge to our community is simple: let’s build the next AI unicorn using Lovable AI before the end of next year", says co-founder and CEO Anton Osika (English).

• Plantvation, Sundsvall-based startup offering cultivation technology for forestry, agriculture & vertical farming, has sealed a major deal with Canada-based company Planteva, to bring "Seedling-as-a-Service" to the North American horticulture market (English).

• ImagineCare, Stockholm-based provider of a digital health self-monitoring solution, is part of Ukraine's "first remote monitoring project" in which patients with heart failure and hypertension are connected to ImagineCare’s platform for home-based follow-up (English).

• 4 1/2 Swedish startups are included in the Norrsken Foundation's annual Impact/100 list: Syre, SeaPattern, Paebbl, and evroc. Plus, French/Swedish company Decade Energy (English).

• Saveggy, based in Lund, is launching a commercial one-month pilot for its additive-free, edible protection for cucumbers together with Sweden's largest grocery retailer ICA, and Odlarna.se (English).

• Candela, Stockholm-based manufacturer of hydrofoiling electric boats and ferries, entered into an agreement to sell 10 ferries to Thailand. They will initially operate between the mainland and the island Koh Kood (English).

• Greenely, Stockholm-based next-generation household energy platform, is launching in Finland – marking the company’s first step in its international growth journey (English).

• GoCimo (formerly GoCiklo), Stockholm-based provider of battery swap services aimed at delivery drivers, launches in Copenhagen (DK) – the startup's first expansion outside Sweden (English).

• Modal, New York-based provider of AI infrastructure for developers co-founded and led by the Swede Erik Bernhardsson, has raised $80M in a Series B round, at a post-money valuation of $1.1B (English).

• Neo4j, the graph database firm founded in 2007 in Malmö and today headquartered in the US, aims to invest $100M "to accelerate its position as the default knowledge layer for agentic systems and critical infrastructure for generative AI" (English)

• The applications for the Sting Test Drive Deeptech program are open, designed for new teams to test their ideas (English).

• Peak Inkubator, Åre- and Östersund-based incubator aimed at startups in the Swedish province Jämtland Härjedalen, is shutting down (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sweden's most active VCs and angel investors – I've published the monthly update to the Leaderboards, featuring various new entries (English).

• Trio Impact Invest closed its SEK109M fund for Swedish deeptech and impact investments (Swedish, machine translation).

• Monterro, Swedish B2B software growth investor, has launched its two latest funds, totaling €1.725B (English).

• Norway-headquartered growth investor Verdane, which is highly active in Sweden, announced the final close of its largest fund to date, at a €2B hard cap (English).

• Partnerinvest Norr has hired Linus Stark as Investment Manager (Swedish).

• 🎧 Podcast interview with Mala Valroy, Investment Manager at Industrifonden, on how the long-standing evergreen fund invests, the state of deeptech in 2025, and the missing puzzle piece in the Swedish startup sector (English / 44 minutes).

Exclusives in PRO last week

• A stealth mode startup building a white-label product for news and media outlets, has raised an eight-digit SEK amount in first, yet-to-be-announced funding.

• A wearable healthtech is raising a Series B round.

• An energy startup from the south of Sweden has emerged from stealth mode.

• A Swedish serial founder is now building an AI-native product in Norway, aimed at the country's oil and gas industry.

• Another repeat founder is now developing a platform that helps people figure out why they have migraine.

• Two siblings are building their second product together, a super app for families.

• 22 new Swedish tech startups

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Co-founder (Parklet)
• Co-founder (Phinder)
• Full Stack Developer (Mana)
• CFO (ABC Labs)
• Engineering Manager (Viking Analytics)
• Product Owner / Software & System Engineer (Candela)
• Tech Lead (Certainli)
• Operations Manager (TrackPaw Scientific)
• Market Expansion Manager - Denmark (Lysa)
• Various roles includig Growth Lead, Android Developer (Lylli)
• Partnerships Sales Manager (Grale, formerly Plasticfri)
• Fullstack Engineer (Worldfavor)
• Aviation Video & Engagement Specialist (Flightradar24)

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

• A16z released a ranking of the 50 AI-native application layer companies, showing where startups spend on AI, based on actually spending data (English).

• "Like the 19th century railroads and the 20th century broadband Internet build-out, AI will rise first, crash second, and eventually change the world" (English).

• 2025 is turning into the year of aggressive B2B SaaS pricing increases, with legacy and older vendors across the board pushing through some of the steepest hikes seen in years (English).

• Founders are counting pilots, one-time deals, or unactivated contracts as recurring revenue, as there’s "so much pressure to be the company that went from zero to 100 million in X days.” (English).

• Users only care about 20% of your application (English).

• Better board meetings with the 3+3 feedback framework (English).

• A group of VCs from western Europe did a road trip across China, and concludes that China’s dominance has left key sectors in the West, such as batteries and “everything around energy,” "uninvestable" (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• The annual "The Swedes and the Internet" report about the internet habits and attitudes of Swedes has been published (English, Swedish).

• Stockholm has become Europe’s busiest hub for IPOs in 2025, raising $6.8 billion so far this year, surpassed traditional centres like London (English).

• Since last week, Swedes who were previously paying by the hour for their electricity, are now being metered for their electricity every 15 minutes instead (English).

• A listeria outbreak linked to a restaurant in Stockholm's affluent Östermalm neighbourhood has left around 20 people needing care in hospital, including four suffering from sepsis (English).

• Three young Swedes have launched Vad kostar Ölen, a map showing the beer price at pubs across central Stockholm (Swedish, machine translation).

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

Martin