Swedish Tech Weekly #330: Eletive, ENVUE, Lylli, Blinto, Corplean, Altris, Hälsa Hemma, Mimbly, DREV, Stardust, Granode, Rebaba, Rivus Batteries, Vorker, Linnovation, FigureFlow, SaaSiest, 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 3126 subscribers.

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• The US-based PE firm Accel-KKR is buying a majority stake in Eletive, Malmö-based employee engagement platform (English, Swedish / Rapidus paywall).

• ENVUE (Gothenburg, optical microscopy technique to achieve a deeper understanding of the nanoworld and molecules of life) was acquired by Germany-based provider of high-precision biophysical analysis tools NanoTemper (English).

• Lylli, formerly Boksnok (Stockholm, subscription service for interactive children’s books) is being acquired by Canada-based global children's entertainment company Spin Master (English).

• Blinto (Växjö; online auctions platform for vehicles, machinery and tools) acquires its Norwegian industry peer ATS Group (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Corplean (Stockholm, building tools for listed companies) acquired MCLogg, a tool for managing insider information and PDMR, from a subsidiary of Swedish Financial conglomerate Spotlight Group (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).

PRO subscribers learned more details, numbers and background regarding these deals.

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• Altris (Uppsala, developer of sustainable sodium-ion batteries): SEK80.75M (€7.3M, $8.4M) from existing investors. The company also announces a "strategic realignment" (English).

• Hälsa Hemma (Stockholm & Gothenburg, digi-physical primary healthcare provider with digital help as well as physical home appointments,): SEK40M (€3.6M, $4.2M) led by Sciety, with participation from Sciety Venture Partners (details page).

• Mimbly (Gothenburg, sustainable laundry solutions): SEK33M (€3M, $3.4M) from new strategic investor Electrolux Professional, and other existing and new investors (Details page, Swedish / Impact Loop paywall).

• DREV (Gothenburg, developer of sustainable battery cleaning technology): €2.8M ($3.2M) in a seed funding round co-led by Butterfly Ventures and Almi Invest GreenTech (details page). DREV also secured a SEK18.8M grant from Vinnova (English).

• Stardust (Stockholm, tool that generates winning ads): €1.7M ($1.9M) in a pre-seed funding round led by Pitchdrive (details page). ➡️ Fundraising first covered in PRO on August 12. Startup first covered in PRO on April 4.

• Granode (Sundsvall, developer of next generation anode material for the energy storage market): SEK19.3M (€1.75M, $2M) grant from Vinnova (English).

• Warmare Ventures (Gothenburg, parent company to the AI accounting tool Gertrud.ai, as well as the accounting service provider Warmare): SEK15.6M (€1.4M, $1.6M) from employees and angel investors such as Bengt Nilsson and Alexander Hars (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Rebaba (Stockholm, developer of circular battery systems): SEK12.4M (€1.1M, $1.3M) grant from Vinnova (English).

• Rivus Batteries (Gothenburg, developer of environmentally friendly organic redox flow batteries for large-scale energy storage): SEK10M (€900K, $1.05M) grant from Vinnova (English).

• Vorker.ai (Stockholm, AI assistant for small businesses): SEK7.5M (€680K, $780K) in pre-seed funding from Peder Holst (Swedish / Breakit paywall). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in September 2024.

• Linnovation (Skellefteå, sustainable solutions that prevent ice and snow buildup in critical energy and infrastructure systems): SEK2.58M (€230K, €270K) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency (English).

Many more funding rounds – announced and unannounced ones – and more details for each, covered in Swedish Tech News PRO last week.

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• The monthly update to the Leaderboards for Sweden's most active VCs and angel investors are out!

• FigureFlow, based in Stockholm, launched its solution that promises to deliver autonomous, AI-driven financial intelligence for modern businesses. ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in December 2023.

• SaaSiest, the Lund-based B2B SaaS community and event company, has "set aside €1M to acquire local B2B communities and forums across Europe" (English).

• Artist Arena, Stockholm-based platform helping artists to succeed with their passion, is teaming up with Swedish office management and business furniture subscription startup Beleco, to offer access to original art "from top emerging artists" via a subscription (English).

• Virtune, Stockholm-based crypto asset manager and issuer of exchange-traded productts, launched a Stablecoin Index ETP on Nasdaq Stockholm, Nasdaq Helsinki and Deutsche Börse Xetra. The company describes this as "first of its kind in Europe" (English).

• Transparent, Stockholm-based maker of timeless, modular electronics, is launching a high-end aroma diffuser for the home, "designed to last a lifetime" (English).

• Lovable is teaming up with Swedish coding education startup imagi to bring Lovable into the classroom. OpenAI is sponsoring $1M in credits (English).

• Candela, Stockholm-based manufacturer of hydrofoiling electric boats and ferries, received an order from the Maldives (English).

• Karma, Stockholm-based all-in-one ordering, payment and loyalty solution for restaurants as well as consumer-focused anti food waste app, is expanding into Japan (English).

• Swedish SaaS companies collectively grew revenue by almost 120% during the past five years. Between 2023 and 2024, their collective losses halved to SEK1.27B (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• The applications for the TOP46 Pitch Competition, to take place at the Techarena flagship event in Stockholm on February 11-12, are open. Both Nordic and international startups are welcome to apply (English).

• Stefan Krook, Swedish entrepreneur and investor who co-founded Kivra, has written a book named "The Laghum Economy", which presents "concrete vision for how markets and sustainability can go hand in hand" (English).

• Mehkar Sheikh is stepping down as CEO of Venture Cup – which runs Sweden's largest entrepreneurship competition – "to pursue new ventures". She will be succeeded by Jennie Kvintåhs (English).

• "If Europe, especially the Nordics, wants to lead in tomorrow’s technologies — from AI to MedTech — then pension funds must invest in VC funds at the same scale as in the US", argues Magnus Bergman, Founding and General Partner at Luminar Ventures (English).

• Inception Fund officially launched its Nordic micro VC fund, with a closed angel and pre-seed fund of €21M (English). ➡️ Inception Fund first covered in PRO on January 24.

• Beers & Batts - The Swedish Battery Reboot – will take place on November 25 in Stockholm, "bringing together the brightest minds shaping Sweden’s battery future; founders, engineers, executives, policymakers, investors and students" (English). ➡️ Added to the Swedish tech event calendar

• 📺 The founder of Berlin-based AI builder community {Tech: Europe}, Bela Wiertz, visited Stockholm, and recorded a YouTube video titled "Inside the most hyped AI city in Europe" (English / 20 minutes).

• An AI-powered conversational shopping and discovery platform raised first funding from Nordic VCs

• A stealth startup launched its website, and will build an AI-powered swappable battery system for a specific, ambitious use case

• Another stealth startup iterated its product pre-launch, now focusing on AI-powered monitoring of podcasts, YouTube, and broadcast media

• A VC-backed HR tech startup from Stockholm saw its net revenue drop by more than 50%, and turned unprofitable

• An EQT alumnus is one of the founders of a new Stockholm-based early-stage investment firm

• A startup developing drone-based camera systems, is raising first funding

• A startup which aimed to revolutionize student financing in Africa, has shut down

• 22 new Swedish tech startups

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

PLUS subscription or higher required:

• Stealth startup in the energy/mobility/transportation space: Various open roles, including ML Engineer, and Power Electronics Engineer
• Stealth AI-native retail tech startup: Fullstack Developer

Join PLUS now. New open roles at Swedish tech startups several times per week.

Free access:

• Founding Engineer, Founding Product Designer (Cheque)
• Various incl. Marketing Manager, Tech Lead (Ingrid)
• Technical Project Manager (Synclair Vision)
• Site Reliability Engineer (Scaleout)
• Junior Mechanical Design Engineer (Teenage Engineering)
• Fullstack/Frontend Developer (Animal OOO)
• Customer Success Manager (AirPark)
• Dev Lead (Milepost)
• Mechanical Structural Engineer (SeaPattern)
• Accounting Manager (Turn Energy)
• Chief Operating Officer (Aura Cloud)
• Founding Full-Stack Engineer (Pango)
• Senior Backend Developer (Leedflow)
• Technical Project Manager (TReqs)
• Fullstack Developer (Caire)
• Head of Engineering (DanAds)

And more! 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.

• US software startups are pulling ahead of their peers elsewhere, according to Stripe data on averaged revenue growth (English).

• Founders see their own startup in the mirror, and all other startups through their press releases or LinkedIn posts, leading to a distorted perception (English).

• Since everybody can build nowadays, founders optimize for the only thing left that feels hard: getting noticed (English).

• Thanks to AI coding agents, software development teams are now "out ahead" of design, flipping the traditional software development process on its head (English).

• The AI era has not changed CMO KPIs (yet) (English)

• Starting today, Swedes can visit China without visa (English).

• How encrypted apps and social media have turned Sweden’s gang war into a digital enterprise (English).

• The government has presented a new bill to strengthen consumer protection in online commerce, entailing new requirements for websites and apps, with a particular focus on e-commerce. The bill also aims to combat so-called dark patterns (Swedish, machine translation).

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

Martin

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