News August 16, 2022: Hygglo, Emulate Energy, Norrsken Impact100, Learning to Sleep, Charge Amps, Pernilla Nyrensten and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Hygglo (Stockholm, online rental marketplace) acquired UK-based competitor Fat Llama for $41.5M (English, Swedish). The deal will create one of the largest peer-to-peer rental platforms in the world. Sifted has the story on how the acquisition came to be. It started in January with a call from Hygglo cofounder and CEO, Ola Degerfors, to Fat Llama co-founder Chaz Englander (English).

Funding news

• Emulate Energy (Lund & Boston, virtual battery platform for electricity retailers): SEK22M (€2.1M, $2.1M) from AxSol, Skellefteå Kraft and Utvecklingsklustret (English).

>> 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

• The Norrsken Foundation has published the new annual list “Norrsken Impact100”, a kind of "Nobel Prize for Impact" which lists “the world’s most promising impact companies” (English). Swedish protagonists on the list are Alight, Aquammodate, Biorestore, ClimateView, Einride, Elonroad, H2 Green Steel, Heart Aerospace, Material Exchange, Molecular Attraction, Northvolt and Volta Greentech.
• Learning to Sleep, maker of a CBT-based digital sleep treatment solution from Malmö, is introducing cost cutting measures. Founder Peter Boye and CEO Micael Gustafsson are leaving (Swedish, machine translation). At smart EV charging provider Charge Amps (whose business is doing well), CEO Anders Bergtoft is out (Swedish, machine translation).
• Pernilla Nyrensten decided to step down as CEO of RevolutionRace, the Swedish online outdoor clothing retailer which wrote history by being the first company in Sweden which both was founded and brought to the public market by a woman (English, Swedish).
• In the UK, Klarna expands its all-in-one shopping app with a new feature that automatically consolidates purchase information — not just Klarna’s — in the company’s app. For that, users have to grant the app access to their email accounts (English).
• J12 Ventures compiled data and created charts showing the most active VC Investors in Sweden and the Nordics by investment stage in 2021/2022 (English):

• Almi Invest ranks #6 in Pitchbook's list of the most active European investors in domestic deals since 2018 to H1 2022 by deal count (English).
• Stina Andersson, CEO of Swedish media giant Bonnier Group, is stepping down over internal differences about the future strategy of the group's venture investment activities (Swedish, machine translation).
• 🎧 Podcast interview with Samir El-Sabini, co-founder and CEO of rapidly growing and scaling banking platform for e-commerce Juni (Swedish, 73 minutes).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Infamous WeWork founder Adam Neumann securing $350M from A16z for its stealthy upcoming real estate startup Flow is raising some eyebrows (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Polestar’s O2 concept will become the Polestar 6 electric roadster, due out 2026 (English).
• H&M returns to Alibaba's Tmall, 16 months after Xinjiang controversy (English).

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That's it for today.