Swedish Tech Weekly #370: Nextory, Nilum, Finance Labs, Ekkono, Speya, Kitocoat, PlayMakerAI, Registercentralen, hiasynth, Matrix OS, Cartio Robotics, Axcela Bio, Zeravion, Sandtimer, Neko Health, Aston Harald Composite, Yangi, 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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• Nextory (Stockholm, audiobook and e-book subscription service) is being acquired by Bonnier Books (English). ➡️ Added to the Exits Database for PRO subscribers

• Nilum (Stockhom, agentic second-hand shopping) has been acquired by eComId (Stockholm, shopping passport powering smarter commerce from the very first visit across connected fashion brands) (English). ➡️ Nilum first covered in PRO in November 2025

• Finance Lab (Stockholm, platform that monitors and collects data about new share issues in listed companies in the Nordics) is merging with Stockholm-based investment company Tellus Equity, to form Foremont Group (English, Swedish / Di paywall).

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

• Ekkono (Varberg, edge AI for product OEMS to develop and deploy adaptive automation features for proactive maintenance and performance optimization): SEK15.2M (€1.4M, $1.6M) in a strategic investment from HMS Networks, a publicly traded Swedish supplier of solutions within industrial ICT networks (English / STN PRO).

• Speya, formerly Find My Factory (Stockholm, platform for supplier intelligence): SEK6M (€540K, $630K) from existing investors angel and private investors (Swedish, machine translation).

• Kitocoat (Stockholm, sustainable coating for fruits and vegetables, founded 2022): SEK2.7M (€240K, $280K) grant from the Swedish Board of Agriculture (English).

• PlayMakerAI (Stockholm, football analytics using AI): SEK2M (€180K, $210K) in a funding round from angel investors, including former Swedish ice hockey player Nicklas Lidström, in conjunction with the company's expansion into ice hockey analytics, through the new platform Otto Hockey (Swedish, machine translation).

• Registercentralen (Örnsköldsvik, automated record management for a safer sports environment): SEK1M (€90K, $100K) in first funding from Thoren Tillväxt (Swedish, machine translation). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in September 2026.

• hiasynth (Stockholm, demographic intelligence layer that turns any AI into a European market analyst): undisclosed amount in an angel round led by Further Than Capital (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in July 2025.

• Matrix OS (Stockholm, a computer in the cloud for AI agents): undisclosed amount in an angel round from Mattias Miksche, Siddharth Khullar, Erik Engellau-Nilsson, among others (English). ➡️ Funding first covered in PRO on August 26.

• [PRO last week] Two AI native startups from southern Sweden raised yet-to-be-announced pre-seed rounds, both led by the same Stockholm-headquartered VC firm.

• [PRO last week] A startup building an autonomous security engineer for teams raised a yet-to-be-announced pre-seed round co-led by two VC firms.

• [PRO last week] A stealth mode startup building a staffing agency for legal firms that provides persistent AI agents for end-to-end tasks, raised first funding.

• [PRO last week] A startup developing a headset-based system for robotics skill learning, raised first funding.

I covered many more funding rounds, and more details for each, in Swedish Tech News PRO last week. PRO is ideal for early-stage startup investors, and invite-only. Learn more.

Find thousands of Swedish tech startups and active investors

New startups added daily, many still completely under the radar.

• Cartio Robotics, a Gothenburg-based startup that's building scalable, robust spatial intelligence for autonomous vehicle fleets, has launched (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on August 17.

• Axcela Bio, another Gothenburg-based startup, has emerged from stealth mode, after 18 months of building. The company is offering a platform that connects pharma teams with the right patient communities, and aims to make patient insights actionable at scale (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in October 2024

• One more startup from Gothenburg has come out of hiding: Zeravion, which is developing a toilet-based sensing platform for passive, longitudinal health monitoring. ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO on August 17.

• Sandtimer, based in Stockholm, has launched its solution for automated video post-production, powered by AI (English). ➡️ Startup first covered in PRO in January 2026.

• Swedish startup funding almost doubled in August year-over-year, thanks to Lovable's $400M Series C round (English).

• The voting for this year's Startup 4 Climate competition has opened, featuring 88 Swedish startups that are speeding up the energy transition (English).

• Neko Health tops the third Sifted 100: Nordics Leaderboard — an annual ranking of the 100 fastest-growing companies in the region, calculated using a two-year revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR) (English).

• Aston Harald Composite, a Gothenburg-based composites manufacturer, completed the first test flight of an unmanned hydrofoil vessel called GhostFoiler in the waters of Stockholm (English).

• Yangi, the Varberg-based company building manufacturing technology for dry formed cellulose-based packaging, is moving into the US market, initially targeting the quick-service restaurant and foodservice segment (English).

• Cleean, a VC-backed Stockholm-based provider of drone-powered facade, window and roof cleaning, has operated without the required licence from the Swedish Transport Agency. The company acknowledges the mistake while also criticising the agency for excessively long processing times, and for not providing information about an alternative, simpler option (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Lovable has hired Sophie Rogers, a Stockholm-based tech evangelist and content creator with a strong LinkedIn presence, as its Nordic Community Manager (English).

• Norrsken's new Norrsken House Amsterdam has opened its doors (English).

• [PRO last week] A stealth startup building hardware that users arrange themselves, and that comes with an on-device AI acting as modular senses, is raising a first funding round.

• [PRO last week] A high-calibre founding team is building "the next generation of banking".

• [PRO last week] A startup is gearing up to launch its solution allowing individuals to share their taste with the tap of a button, to get curated, personalized results that align with who they are.

• [PRO last week] A social app startup which quietly was backed by General Catalyst, has shut down.

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. PRO is ideal for early-stage startup investors, and invite-only. Learn more.

• Data & AI Stockholm, Summit 2026, a practitioner-first summit bringing together data professionals, AI builders, researchers, engineers, founders, and leaders from across the Nordic ecosystem, will take place on October 14 in Stockholm.

• Grow Invest, the annual invite-only event gathering investors, founders and operators, arranged by Mindpark, will take place on October 22 in Helsingborg.

• Nordic Tech Week – Sep 7-11 – Stockholm
• Nordic Life Science Days – Sep 8-9 – Stockholm
• European Conference on Computer Vision – Sep 8-12 – Malmö
• Tech Open – Sep 10-11– Stockholm 📢 I will spend some time there on Thursday and Friday!

The Nordic EdTech Summit, which was supposed to take place on September 9 in Oslo, has been rescheduled to November 3-4, due to the funeral of King Harald V of Norway on September 9.

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

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

• Software Engineer (Syntrace)
• Junior Machine Learning Engineer (Eyedentity)
• Senior Software Engineer (NRDSNIPE)
• GTM Manager / Associate (Rebaba)
• Growth Marketing Manager (Krea)
• Audit Engineer, Founding AI Engineer, Founding GTM (Rivisio)
• iOS Engineer, Senior Backend Engineer (Matters)
• Applied AI Engineer, Finance (Ledgentic)
• Member of Technical Staff (Vesence)
• Customer Success Manager (Awaio)
• Senior AI Engineer (Senseworks)
• Software Engineer - Fullstack (Interpreto)
• Operations Engineer / Coordinator (Elvy)
• Data Specialist (Kognic)
• Senior Data Engineer (SeenThis)
• Junior Data and AI Engineer (Kliva)
• Senior Fullstack & DevOps Engineer (Bryntum)

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.

• "I'm so done with the Delaware C-corp-shaming going on in some circles in Stockholm and the Nordics", wrote Inception Fund's Oliver Molander in a LinkedIn post, and got a wide-ranging set of responses (English).

• Norway considers a ban on smart glasses and other camera-enabled wearable headsets (English).

• Reasons robotics is hard (English).

• Volvo Cars will shut down its Stockholm office in early 2027, to "concentrate competences and resources" at the headquarters in Gothenburg, affecting around 450 employees (English).

• A new Swedish AI model has proven to be better than human expertise at interpreting X-ray images and thus finding people at risk of suffering a heart attack (Swedish).

• During the last parliamentary session in Sweden, around 300 motions were written with the help of AI-based chatbots. In no case has the use of AI been disclosed (English).

• The government has presented Sweden's first national intelligence strategy for 2026-2030 (English).

• YouTube launched Premium Lite tier in Sweden, costing 99kr/month, compared to 169kr for the the regular Premium tier (Swedish).

• A record number of tourists visited Stockholm this summer, according to figures reviewed by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (English).

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

Martin

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