With Sonder Labs, former Northvolt co-founder and CEO Peter Carlsson returns to the energy space
News first covered in the daily PRO newsletter on August 10.
Not long after the collapse of Swedish battery maker Northvolt, co-founder and former CEO Peter Carlsson was back in the entrepreneur's seat, as co-founder of agentic manufacturing startup Aris Machina, alongside Northvolt's former AI chief Siddharth Khullar).
But that's not all: Carlsson has quietly co-founded another startup; and this one even closer to his former company's space:
Sonder Labs, like Aris Machina headquarted in Stockholm, is aiming to upgrade electrical grids, to make them "high-performing, sovereign and cost-efficient".
Sonder remains technically still in stealth, so information is sparse. But a few days ago, Carlsson mentioned it for a first time in a LinkedIn post, highlighting that Sonder will focus on sodium based battery storage.
Sonder is clearly getting ready for its public launch, as both Carlsson, as well as co-founder and CEO Andreas Haas, have added the company to their LinkedIn profiles. Haas previously led Northvolt's sodium-ion division. He and Carlsson have also recruited a number of former Northvolt leaders to Sonder.
The new energy infrastructure startup has already raised substantial funding. On June 1, I covered Sonder's first round in Swedish Tech News PRO, as it was registered with the Swedish Companies Registration Office (sourced via Eivora). This funding amounted to €4.5M, raised at a pre-money valuation of around €10M.
The raise has not been officially announced yet, as far as I can tell. But according to Pitchbook, Germany-based Ananda Impact Ventures and Vireo VC, and US-based Streetlife Ventures, are among the investors.
The legal entity Sonder Labs AB and involvement of Carlsson was first spotted by Folkbladet in March. I covered more initial details in PRO on March 10.
