Swedish Tech Weekly #366: Aloi, Bright Day Graphene, Monava, NodeX Cloud, Energy, Incredible, Vesper, Validio, Fairlo, Endra, TIC, För-orten, 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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Send press releases about funding rounds, and other potentially relevant news, to news@swedishtechnews.com.

• Aloi (Stockholm, AI-assisted intelligence for legal teams): €6M ($6.9M) from an undisclosed European VC firm, and existing investors, for the European and US expansion (Swedish / Breakit paywall, ℹ️ database).

• Bright Day Graphene (Stockholm, green graphene for high-tech applications): €3M ($3.5M) in a strategic investment from the Japanese pulp and paper company Oji Holdings Corporation (English / STN PRO, ℹ️ database).

• Monava (Gothenburg, acoustic drone detection): €500K ($575K) in a funding round led by Gungnir Capital, with participation from Foundry ventures and Hede Capital (English, Swedish, ℹ️ database).

• NodeX Cloud (Lund; post-quantum secured decentralized cloud storage built for industries where security, compliance, and control can’t be compromised): SEK1M (€90K, $105K) grant from Vinnova (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in September 2025.

• [PRO last week] A stealth physical AI startup from Stockholm raised first funding.

• [PRO last week] An upcoming AI platform that lets anyone easily create studio-quality explainer and marketing videos, also raised first funding.

• [PRO last week] Another startup that secured first funding: an activity-based dating platform.

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.

The fastest way to reliably access almost any Swedish startup's website and LinkedIn page

• Gabriel Petersson, the Swedish OpenAI alumnus (and former Depict co-founder), has now unveiled his previously teased San Francisco-based startup: It's named Energy, and offers a software aiming to make working and accomplishing goals with AI as easy and seamless as possible (English).

• Incredible (formerly VISS.AI), the Jönköping-based AI startup, recently pivoted, and now offers a personal AI voice assistant for Mac aimed at teams. The company is now looking to enter the US market (English).

• Vesper, based in Stockholm, has emerged from stealth mode. The company is offering an agentic workflow for financial statement control (English / STN PRO). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on June 3.

• Validio, the Stockholm-based agentic enterprise data management platform, has not touched a single dollar of its recently raised $30M Series A funding round, as growth is strong and the company reached profitability and (very) positive cash flow (English).

• Fairlo, Stockholm-based provider of fair consumer financing, grew net revenue in 2025 by 42% to SEK219.1M, while generating a large profit (English / STN PRO).

• Endra, the Stockholm-based AI-powered MEP platform, is expanding to the US and UK, with offices in New York, San Francisco, and London (English).

• TIC – The Intelligence Company, the Swedish credit score and business transparency startup, will soon initiate a European expansion, focusing on the UK, Germany and France (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• The applications for the 2026 edition of the För-orten startup competition are open. As usual, SEK300K is to be distributed to ideas and entrepreneurs from outside the established startup hubs and networks (Swedish, machine translation).

• Spotify‘s premium customers grew to 300 million in the second quarter of 2026. The number of monthly active users is now at 777 million (English).

• [PRO last week] A prolific angel investor and board professional from southern Sweden is building a platform for boards of growth and mid-sized companies, to make their work more efficient, effective, and focused.

• [PRO last week] A new startup in stealth mode, founded by alumni of one of Sweden's fastest growing tech companies, is taking on Substack.

• [PRO last week] Another Swedish "startup mafia" may be forming – this time originating in southern Sweden.

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.

You can upgrade to a PLUS or PRO plan, to get access to the following features:

• Transformation Conference – August 13 – Stockholm
• Nordic Software Summit – August 20 – Stockholm
• TechBBQ – Aug 26-27 – Copenhagen (DK)

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

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

• Commercial Co-Founder (Nielhouse)
• Product Manager (Airspot)
• Founding GTM (Tickivo)
• Various incl. Customer Success Manager, Marketing Manager, Backend Engineer (Validio)
• Various incl. Director Software Engineering, Electric Engineer, Boat Builder (Candela)
• Various incl. Payroll Generalist, Finance Associate, Central Operations Manager (Voi)
• Corporate Legal Counsel (Tandem Health)
• Laboratory Engineer - Organic Flow Batteries (Rivus Batteries)
• Senior Credit Investment Manager (Gilion)
• Bioinformatician - Data Science Team (Epigenica)
• Robotics Systems Engineer (Deep Forestry)
• B2B Sales Representative (Vidde)

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.

• Slush and partners are launching the first Slush 20 Under 20 (English).

• Airtable, the US-based spreadsheet and database startup, is being acquired by Italian serial acquirer Bending Spoons for $1.28B in cash. Founded in 2013, Airtable had raised over $1.4B in VC funding, and was valued at over $11B at its peak in 2021 (English).

• Traits of the post-agentic founder (English).

• Why AI agents aren’t adopted widely: Because delegating is both a learned skill, and comes with additional cognitive cost which do not always make sense (English).

• Women in Sweden work in professions with relatively high AI exposure to a significantly higher extent than men, according to a union report (Swedish, machine translation).

• The stroke mortality in Sweden has more than halved since the beginning of the 2000s (English, Swedish).

• The number of burglaries and thefts in Sweden has fallen significantly over the last few years, as international gangs seem to avoid the country (English).

• Last month, Stockholm Arlanda Airport recorded its highest-ever number of international departing passengers for July (Swedish, machine translation).

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

Martin

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