Swedish Tech Weekly #328: Zimpler, Spotin, Fade, Meva Energy, Magma, Cytely, Zparq, Tribonex, PryvX, Stockeld Dreamery, X Shore, SSE Business Lab, Nordic Founders, Skygaard, Kabloie, Trustyou, ADDEL, 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 3112 subscribers.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Zimpler (Stockholm, instant bank payment platform) is being acquired by UK-based industry peer TrueLayer (English).

• Spotin (Luleå, service that makes content shoppable) has been acquired by Condé Nast, and will power an upcoming creator-led commerce platform named VETTE (English).

• The assets of bankrupt Stockholm-based golf bookings and travel app startup Fade, formerly named Golfer Sweden, have been acquired by Sweden-based Golfamore Group (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

PRO subscribers last week learned more details and background on these deals.

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Funding news

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

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.

• Meva Energy (Gothenburg; modular gasification plants that convert biomass residues into climate-neutral, industrial-grade biogas): €40M ($46M) in venture debt funding from The European Investment Bank (EIB) (English).

• Magma, formerly Matteappen (Stockholm, math learning app for schools): $10M from existing major investor Five Elms Capital, for the continued international expansion (English).

• Cytely (Malmö, platform for end-to-end data-driven microscopy): €3M led by Ugly Duckling Ventures, with participation from existing investor Icebreaker.vc (English). ➡️ Company details added in September 2023 to the New Startup Database for PRO subscribers.

• Zparq (Stockholm, light electric engine for marine vehicles that is up to 10x times smaller in volume than motors with equal power): €2.5M ($2.9M) grant from EIC Accelerator. In addition, Zparq will receive €3M in equity funding from EIC Accelerator as part of the next equity funding round, provided there's a new co-investor (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall). ➡️ EIC Accelerator funding announcement first covered in PRO on June 30.

• Tribonex, formerly Applied Nano Surfaces (Uppsala, solutions for friction and wear reduction in manufacturing): SEK15.7M (€1.4M, $1.7M) from Turbine Capital, Almi Invest GreenTech, and existing investor First Venture (English).

• PryvX (Stockholm; collaborative, private-preserving anti-cybercrime platform): undisclosed amount led by Amigos Venture Capital, with participation from Antler and Sting (English). ➡️ Company details added in January 2024 to the New Startup Database for PRO subscribers.

More funding rounds, and more details, covered in Swedish Tech News PRO last week.

PRO subscribers also get full access to the Startup Database by Swedish Tech News, packed with high quality curated data.

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News from the Swedish startup & tech sector

• Stockeld Dreamery, VC-backed Stockholm-founded maker of plant-based cheese, is shutting down, following the recent "intense decline in plant-based" (English). ➡️ Added to the "Bankruptcies & shutdowns" Database for PRO subscribers.

• The entity that runs the factory production of X Shore, Nyköping-based maker of all-electric boats backed with over SEK1B in funding, is bankrupt (Swedish, machine translation).

• SSE Business Lab, the startup incubator of the Stockholm School of Economics, unveiled its latest batch, described as "the most international cohort yet" (English).

• Nordic Founders is a new community for founders in the New Nordics, launched by Nordic Tech Week founder Ludvig Bergström, and Mina Lindberg. Part of the initiative will be regular events, with the first one titled "Pitch or Die Trying" coming up on November 11 in Stockholm (English).

• Skygaard, Stockholm-based service for authorities and businesses to detect, track, and counter unauthorized drone flights, is creating a joint venture with the Swedish investment firms Front Ventures and Hede Capital, to establish "the first Swedish-Ukrainian drone factory in the Nordics with NATO-standard components" (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ PRO subscribers learned more background on Skygaard, including on funding.

• Kabloie, based in Lund, launched its mobile platform for short-form audio. It's initially available on iOS. Next year, the startup will release a smart ring, to allow hands-free interaction with the content. ➡️ Company added on April 9 to the New Startup Database for PRO subscribers.

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• Trustyou, a Stockholm-based startup founded by serial founder and mother of three Sakina Turabali, launched the private beta for its iPhone app for parents to guide kids in the digital world (English). ➡️ Company added on January 16 to the New Startup Database for PRO subscribers (under its initial working name).

• ADDEL, based i Stockholm, has completed the first installation of its patented method for EV street charging that skips costly and time-consuming dig­ging (Swedish, machine translation).

• Stegra, formerly known as H2 Green Steel, is currently raising urgently needed fresh funding. After this round, Al Gores's climate fund Just Climate may reportedly become the largest owner. Meanwhile, co-founder Harald Mix has stepped down as Stegra's Chairman (English).

• To have the best chance of company news being covered in the media, "Friday is the only weekday where the math is in a company's favor", according to an analysis by Swedish startup Distill, which offers an automated company and industry monitoring solution" (English). ➡️ Company added on January 8 to the New Startup Database for PRO subscribers

• Two Swedish fintechs are each launching their own savings accounts offering for consumers: Zaver and Fedelta.

• Voi, Stockholm-based e-scooter & micromobility operator, touts a record quarter. "We are technically ready for an IPO. But there are no concrete plans for when that might happen", says CFO Mathias Hermansson (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Pricerunner-owner Klarna is seeking approximately SEK78B in compensation in a lawsuit against Google. The trial at a Swedish court just started (English).

• New Nordics AI, a collaboration between AI Sweden and leading national organizations in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, has launched, with base in Stockholm (English).

• The next annual Women in Tech Sweden event will take place on April 22 in Stockholm (English). ➡️ Added to the Swedish tech event calendar

• Two upcoming hackathons in Stockholm in November: Fintech + AI hackathon (English) and one focused on AI health (English).

• Vinnova, Sweden's innovation agency, is backing 45 mostly academic advanced technology projects, as part of a new effort on clusters of excellence (English).

• 🎧 Podcast interview with Hjalmar Didrikson, one of the two founders of Stockholm-based investment firm Alfvén & Didrikson, on the firm's origins, lessons learned, future IPO plans, and the importance of EQ in entrepreneurship and startup investing (Swedish / 62 minutes).

Exclusives in PRO last week

• First funding for three Stockholm-based startups: an AI-powered solution to deploy and host cloud applications; a physical AI platform, and an AI-native system for school libraries

• An energy startup raised a yet-to-be-announced Series A extension

• A serial founder has founded a startup to "turn compliance from a cost center into a growth driver"

• A startup in the circularity space, focused on sanitation, is back after bankruptcy

• Bankrupt/shutdown: a healthtech/fertility startup, a visual shopping discovery platform, and a platform that aimed to help businesses optimize interest on their deposits

• 30 new Swedish tech startups

Selected Swedish tech startup jobs

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

• Senior Research Scientist (FirstQFM)
• Various roles – Fullstack, UX/UI, LLM whisperer (Strawberry Browser)
• Lead Engineer / Future CTO (AgentMaMa)
• Director of Data & AI (Funnel)
• Senior Content Writer (Funnel)
• Lab Engineer – Mass Spectrometry-based Proteomics (ProteomEdge)
• Lead Fullstack Engineer (Nrlyze)
• Fullstack Developer (COPE)
• Feedstock Director (Syre)
• Full Stack Developer (Onefin)

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

• Finland-based Lifeline Ventures, which also invests in Sweden, announced the launch of a new €400M fund (English).

• Rise Europe, an initiative uniting leading startup ecosystem builders from 14 European countries (including Sweden's Sting and KTH Innovation), published its Sciencepreneurship & Tech Transfer Playbook (English / 17 pages).

• On courage in startup investing (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• 37 percent of Sweden's population over the age of 16 say they have used generative AI tools in the past three months, an increase of 12 percentage points year-over-year (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sweden's Social Democrat opposition party has proposed banning under-15s from social media apps (English, Swedish).

• Over 5000 Swedes haven fallen victim to stock-related pump and dumb schemes, often involving AI-generated ads featuring celebrities as fake testimonials (Swedish, machine translation).

• PostNord is resuming deliveries to the United States and Puerto Rico for all customers (English).

• Stockholm's Arlanda airport is the first in Europe to introduce a new air traffic approach concept, which enables more curved approaches, increasing the landings/hour rate and decreasing emissions (English).

• In what's "arguably the biggest sensation in the history of the Swedish league", Mjällby AIF, a team that plays in a village of around 1,500 inhabitants, won the Allsvenskan – the top tier of Swedish soccer (English, Swedish).

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

Martin