Swedish Tech Weekly #358: CorPower Ocean, Elonroad, Evam, Gridly, Mana, Headcount, SCAILAB, Tonada, Shippin, Eira AI, OpenIR, Astos, Hemily, Carbon Collective, Inex One, Grale, STILPOD, 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.

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• Pet Media Group, Stockholm-based operator of online marketplaces within the pet category, has acquired German marketplace Deine-Tierwelt (Swedish, machine translation).

Send press releases about funding rounds, and other potentially relevant news, to news@swedishtechnews.com.

• CorPower Ocean (Stockholm; designs, manufactures and operates wave energy farms): added another €14M to its Series B round, closing at a total of €53M (English).

• Elonroad (Lund; developer of electric road technology that allows for automatic charging of EV): SEK90M (€8.3M, $9.7M) in a funding round led by HICO Investment Group, with participation from Tamar Ventures and Butterfly Ventures (Swedish / Di paywall, funding details page).

• Evam (Stockholm, mission-critical mobile data solutions for first responders): SEK38M (€3.5M, $4M) in a Series A funding round led by Fåhraeus Startup and Growth and Industrifonden (funding details page).

• Gridly (Helsingborg, content operations platform for game and software developers): SEK14M (€1.3M, $1.5M) mostly from existing investors, and from new investor Jörgen Larsson (Swedish / Rapidus paywall, funding details page).

• Mana (Stockholm; business platform for yoga, fitness and wellness studios): SEK7.7M (€710K, $830K) in first funding from angel investors (Swedish / Breakit paywall, funding details page). ➡️ Funding first covered in PRO on April 10.

• Headcount (Stockholm; HR system): SEK2.5M (€230K, $270K) in first funding from angel investors (Swedish / Breakit paywall, funding details page). ➡️ Startup and partial closing of this round first covered in PRO last year.

• SCAILAB (Västerås, perception intelligence for synthetic-world training and physical AI deployment): undisclosed amount in first funding from PSV Tech, Wave Ventures, and Further Than Capital (funding details page). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in September 2024.

• Tonada (Stockholm, AI-generated sound platform for retail and hospitality): undisclosed amount from angel investors. With this, Tonada comes out from stealth (funding details page). ➡️ Tonada first covered in PRO on November 10.

• [PRO last week] A cybersecurity startup from southern Sweden raised a major, yet-to-be-announced fundin ground led by a Denmark-based VC firm.

• [PRO last week] An AI-native startup from Stockholm which was founded around eight months ago, is rumored to be raising funding at a $100M pre-money valuation.

• [PRO last week] A new startup specialized in drone-based cleaning of properties raised SEK6M in first funding from a Swedish VC firm.

I covered many more funding rounds, and more details for each, in Swedish Tech News PRO last week. Learn how to get access to PRO.

• Shippin is a new social network for people building in public, founded by the founders of Swedish startup Friskly, Danial Yarbakht and Aria Kalantari (English). ➡️ First covered in PRO on May 26.

• Eira AI, an AI platform helping dental clinics and healthcare providers to automate non-clinical tasks, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Carl Tenberg, has launched. ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on May 4.

• OpenIR, based in Stockholm, has launched a platform helping retail investors "understand the market faster and more clearly" (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on May 11.

• Astos, founded within the venture studio Pinecone Ventures, has been unveiled. Astos will offer AI-powered voice agents for enterprise, to be utilized in high-volume customer interactions (English). ℹ️ Startup first covered in PRO on March 2.

• Hemily has launched, aiming to compete with Sweden's dominating property portal Hemnet. The startup was founded by Swedish celebrity real estate agent Niklas Berntzon and industry colleague Per Johansson, creator of the popular Instagram account Hemnetknarkarna (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in November 2024.

• Carbon Collective is a new service helping businesses manage carbon offsets by extracting CO2 from the air through biochar, initiated by Karsten Deppert, serial entrepreneur and ecosystem figurehead in southern Sweden (English).

• Einride expects to complete its planned SPAC merger with Legato Merger Corp in early June, and to start trading at the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York on June 10, with a market cap of $1.35B (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Inex One, Stockholm-based expert network marketplace, increased 2025 net revenue by 39% year-over-year to SEK144.6M, and turned profitable. ➡️ First covered in PRO May 29.

• Grale, formerly PlasticFri, signed Swedish passenger train operator SJ as customer, to replace plastic lined paper cups and plastic bags with Grale's patented and plant-based alternatives (English).

• STILFOLD, Stockholm-based provider of "software-defined manufacturing" based on origami, kirigami, and curved-folding methodologies, has launched STILPOD – a vertiport for drones shipped flat in a single standard container, touted to be "operational in hours rather than months" (English).

• Atonemo, the Stockholm-based startup which recently launched its "Streamplayer" device that turns any speaker into a smart wireless system, is expanding into the Indian market (English).

• Profile of Gävle-based startup Machindex and interview with the founder Anton Jonsson. The company is developing a blockchain-powered digital machine registry that verifies ownership, history, and status through a shared, tamper-proof source (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in July 2025.

• Readioo, Stockholm-based AI-powered edtech platform that transforms kids books into interactive adventures, will soon launch products in English, marking a first step toward an international expansion (English).

• Lassie, Stockholm-based provider of digital insurance services for pet owners, has reached €100M in ARR (English).

• NATO has appointed LEAD, the Linköping-based incubator, as an accelerator site in the DIANA (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) network (English, Swedish).

• Stockholm ranks #19 in Dealroom's Tech Ecosystem Index 2026, down from #17 last year. In Europe, only London and Paris rank higher (English).

• Sweden urgently needs a long-term, cross-party strategy for entrepreneurship and AI – one that does not risk change with every election cycle – argue several founders and investors in an op-ed in Dagens industri (English, Swedish).

• Nordtech, Swedish acquirer of niche software companies, plans to go public at Nasdaq Stockholm next month (English, Swedish).

• byFounders, the Nordic VC firm which was first to invest in Lovable, announced their third fund, "oversubscribed" at €130M+ (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall). ℹ️ recent investments in Sweden

• Kinnevik announced the appointment of Helena Saxon as the new CEO (English).

• [PRO last week] A defense tech startup building autonomous co-warfighters to defend Europe, is raising raising €500K in pre-seed funding.

• [PRO last week] Another defense tech startup, which is working on a platform for first-person drone pilots, has quietly emerged from stealth mode.

• [PRO last week] Also quietly out of stealth: A startup from western Sweden that's developing robotics technology for elderly care.

• [PRO last week] A Swedish SME financing startup founded last year has launched an open source accounting system built for the AI era.

I covered many more news – many of which have not been reported elsewhere – and more details for each, in Swedish Tech News PRO last week. Learn how to get access to PRO.

Find hand-curated information on thousands of Swedish tech startups

• Cleantech Capital Day – June 2-3 – Gothenburg
• Midnight Sun CTF Conference – June 4-5 – Stockholm
• ARCTIC15 – June 11-12 – Helsinki (FI)
• Super Human (Global Human Improvement Summit) – June 13 – Stockholm

For subsequent major/flagship events, check the Swedish tech event calendar.

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

• CEO (Dx4Life)
• Various incl Head of GTM, AI Engineer, QA Engineer (Oplane)
• Founding Engineer (Stilta)
• Founder Associate (Airspot)
• CTO (Anyfin)
• Customer Success Manager (Swegreen)
• Remote Support & Service Specialist (Relox Robotics)
• Senior Frontend Developer (React) (Subtonomy)
• Founding UX/UI Designer (ENDA)
• Data Engineer (Legora)
• Patent Attorney (Lightbringer)
• Data Engineer (Flower)
• Senior AI Engineer (Paligo)
• Accounting Specialist (DigitalTolk)
• Embedded Developer (ReVibe Energy)
• AI-native Designer (Lifesum)

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.

• Stop telling European founders to move to the US (English).
• Gartner expects AI software spending to grow 60% to $453B in 2026, and another 41% to $638B in 2027 (English).
• Notes on selling SaaS in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. "In the US or UK you sell the opportunity first, and later you mitigate the risks. In Germany, you have to do it opposite" (English).

• An autonomous bus launched in Gothenburg last week, and lasted exactly one passenger trip before a tram collision (English).

• Ericsson is moving its global headquarters from the Stockholm suburb Kista, to a new city campus in the Hagastaden district, north of central Stockholm (English, Swedish).

• The Swedish police may use AI for real-time facial recognition, following a parliamentary decision (Swedish, machine translation).

• The parliament also decided that grocery stores and pharmacies will be required to accept cash starting July 1 (English, Swedish).

• Sweden has reached its goal of having less than 5% of the population smoke on a regular basis — which now means it's considered to be a "smoke-free" country (English).

• Residents of Stockholm county now have the longest life expectancy in Sweden (English, Swedish).

• The prices for monthly tickets for public transport across Sweden will be halved during the period July to December (Swedish, machine translation).

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

Martin