News October 18, 2022: Sproud, Mason, Yazen, Doconomy, Vässla, Polarium, Daymi and more

Here are today's news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News .

Funding news

• Sproud (Malmö, producer of a milk drink made from peas): SEK22M (€2M, $2M) in a bridge funding round from undisclosed family offices (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Mason (Stockholm, productivity app for data analytics): $1.7M in a pre-seed funding round led by Creandum, with participation from angel investors Tobi Lütke, Christian Reber, Renauld Visage, and Fredrik Björk (English).
• Yazen (Lund, digital healthcare provider to help people in Sweden lose weight): SEK11.2M (€1M, $1M) from Fåhraeus Startup & Growth, SmiLe Inject Capital, and others. The startup was founded last year by Min Doktor co-founder Magnus Nyhlén and is being led by CEO Fredrik Meurling (English, Swedish).
• Doconomy (Stockholm, creator of climate-friendly fintech solutions): undisclosed amount from Clearvision Ventures, in conjunction with the company's just announced US expansion (see news item further down) (English).
• Cristina Stenbeck participated in a $4.3M seed round raised by German corporate governance platform Fides (English).

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Vässla, Stockholm-based micromobility company, says it will have to reduce its workforce by 40% "due to the recent economic downturn" (English, Swedish).
• Founders and early investors of Stockholm-based smart modular energy storage startup Polarium sold shares to a total of SEK1.1B+ (€100M+, $100M+) to a group of investors comprising of Alecta, Formica Capital and Absolute Unlisted. The transaction was done on the same terms and valuation per share as the equity raised in the spring and summer of 2022 (English).
• Doconomy opens a New York office and thereby starts its expansion into the US. Additionally, the Stockholm-based creator of climate-friendly fintech solutions announced a partnership with Plaid "to provide the world’s leading climate impact calculations for financial transactions to Plaid’s network of 12,000+ financial institutions" (English).
• Daymi is the new name of Stockholm-based SaaS startup for managing recurring tasks and processes previously known as Strivr (English).
• A Spotify survey hints at $19.99 ‘Platinum’ plan that would include HiFi streaming (English).
• Nominations for the award "Årets AI svensk" (roughly translated "Swedish AI expert/innovator of the year") are open (Swedish).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• VC firm Accel published a 51 page slide presentation for its "2022 Euroscape" report, which investigates the state of the Cloud and SaaS sector in Europe after the market reset (English).
• So far in 2022, $3.6B has been invested across 15 deals in the rapid delivery e-grocery sector according to PitchBook data. This represents a marked decrease from last year's peak, which saw 36 rounds worth a total of $7.6B (English).
• Stability AI, the London- and San Francisco–based startup behind Stable Diffusion, raises $101M (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Sweden's new cabinet: The list of all new ministers (English / The Local paywall, alternative URL, Swedish).
• Swedish households reduced their electricity consumption by 18% in September 2022 compared to the same month of 2021 (Swedish, machine translation).
• During Q3 this year, Swedish households on average spent SEK714 (around €65, $65) on media consumption, 10% more than during Q3 2021 (Swedish, machine translation).
• Hilma af Klint: The Swedish mystic hailed as the true pioneer of abstract art, almost 80 years after her death (English).

+++

That's it for today.