News June 3, 2022: Insert Coin, Norrsken VC, Klarna, ClimateView and more
Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.
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Before we start, a vacation notice
Monday is a public holiday (Sweden's National Holiday), and then I'll take the rest of that week and the one after that off to recharge batteries.
The disadvantage of running a one person daily newsletter about an industry that never stops evolving is that there rarely is an ideal moment to take a break, so I do have a bit of a bad conscience. But I shouldn't have of course.
On Sunday June 19, I'll publish and send out a summary of the past 2 weeks, and then on Monday June 20, the daily newsletter will be back. I hope you'll miss it a bit until then (I will miss curating despite looking forward to some off days!), but not so much that it would become a problem, of course.
Funding news
- Insert Coin (Gothenburg, B2B SaaS provider of gamification technology): SEK45M (€4.3M, $4.6M) in a funding round led by Fros Ventures (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).
- Niklas Adalberth's investment in German cleantech aggregator 1KOMMA5° which German media reported about - as mentioned in Wednesday's Swedish Tech News issue - was done through Norrsken VC, which today published a press release (Swedish, machine translation).
>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups. Request access.
News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs
- Klarna insists it didn't "fire" employees but instead got them to quit voluntary, in exchange for a compensation package. According to affected employees that SVT talked to, this description is not accurate: They were locked out from being able to continue working (Swedish, machine translation).
- How Stockholm-based startup ClimateView, which helps cities transform climate planning into progress, came to be (English / Independent paywall, alternative URL).
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
- German mobile and commission-free broker Trade Republic adds another €250M in Series C extension at €5B valuation (English).
- Scaling a startup from an Ukrainian bunker: A true founders story (English).
- It looks like the idea of commercial self driving cars is becoming a real world thing, at least in San Francisco. There, General Motors-owned service Cruise received the green light to start charging fares for its driverless robotaxi service (English).
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That's it for today.
