News January 20, 2022: Stillfront, Zcooly, Nudge Labs, Univid, Jetson, Opibus and more
Here is today's exclusive curation covering the latest news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, as well as some additional interesting reads.
Mergers & acquisitions
- Stillfront (Stockholm, game publisher) acquires Hong Kong-based 6waves, a publisher of mobile free-to-play strategy games in Japan, for $201M (English, Swedish).
Financing rounds
- Zcooly (Gothenburg, game-based learning app for children): SEK20M (€2M, $2.2M) from Almi Invest, Verdane, and Aggregate Media (English, Swedish).
- Nudge Labs (Stockholm, employee well-being platform): SEK10M (€1M, $1.1M) from Y Combinator, and Nascent Invest (English, Swedish).
- Univid (Stockholm, virtual event platform): €800K ($900K) from Spintop Ventures, JNE Invest, and Quinary, as well as angel investors (English).
News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs
- Stockholm-based flying car developer Jetson plans to deliver the first series of its one-passenger personal electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle later this year (English).
- Opibus, Swedish-Kenyan developer of electric mobility technology for the African market, has started a pilot for the commercial launch of EV buses in Kenya (English, Swedish).
- Spotify had the highest subscription market share in the global streaming business as of Q2 2021, at 31%. This figure was down from 33% in the prior year quarter (Q2 2020) (English).
- Avanza, Swedish stock investing and banking app, grew its operating income in the 4th quarter 2021 by 17% to SEK824M (€80M, $90M) (Swedish, machine translation).
- Dynamic Code, Linköping-based creator of health and diagnostic tests for end consumers, gears up for going public during the first half of 2022 (Swedish, machine translation).
- Swedish seed VC Luminar Ventures has closed a second fund at SEK600M (€60M, $65M) and plans to now invest in the entire Nordic region (English, Swedish).
- German VC firm Cherry Ventures has a new €300M fund (English). Cherry's Swedish partner Sophia Bendz says to Dagens Industri that she's particularly focusing on crytpo/web3 startups from Sweden (Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
- Finland-founded VC firm Inventure, which also has a large presence on the Swedish market, published an early-stage pitch deck template (English).
Other interesting things from the startup & VC world
- 2021 was a banner year for Insurtech in Europe (English).
- The berserk pace of fintech investing outshines the global VC boom (English).
- 8 things that change when your company is acquired (English).
Other interesting things from Sweden
- The City of Stockholm decided against using Microsoft 365 due to privacy concerns (Swedish, machine translation).
- Ericsson sues Apple again over 5G patent licensing (English).
- Stockholm's central station and the area around will receive a massive makeover (English). 📺 Here is a video of what will change (Swedish, 7 minutes).
