News August 30, 2022: H2 Green Steel, Qbtech, Juniper, Revolt, PerceptiLabs, Mojo, Truecaller, Essity Ventures and more

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

Funding news

• H2 Green Steel (Stockholm, developer of a fossil-free steel plant to be built in northern Sweden): €190M ($190M) in the first close of a Series B funding round co-led by new investors AMF, GIC and Schaeffler, alongside existing investor Altor Fund V. Also participating are new investor Swedbank Robur Alternative Equity and existing shareholders Vargas, Kingspan, FAM, Marcegaglia, IMAS Foundation, Cristina Stenbeck and Daniel Ek (English, Swedish).
• Qbtech (Stockholm, provider of a technology-first approach to ADHD assessment founded in 2002): €15M ($15M) from Verdane (English, Swedish / DI Digital paywall, Swedish #2).
• Juniper (Stockholm, D2C brand for sustainably produced, luxury home goods inspired by luxury boutique hotels): SEK4.2M (€400K, $400K) from angel investors Alireza Etemad, Babak Etemad and 4 partners at Cupole Consulting led by Jakob Birgersson (Swedish, machine translation).
• Revolt (Stockholm, solutions provider for building and operating EV charging stations): undisclosed amount from angel investors Peter Clemedtson and Hans Ståhl (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

• PerceptiLabs, Stockholm-founded startup that later moved to San Francisco and built a developer tool for applied deep learning, is shutting down. Due to "a shifting market" and "high complexity", the company "struggled to catch up with the market", which eventually led it to run out of capital. The company had raised $2M in seed funding from Luminar Ventures and Brightly Ventures (English).
• Mojo, Stockholm-based startup offering AI-powered at-home semen analysis, is teaming up with UK-based online healthcare provider Zava to offer at-home male fertility tests to its users (English).
• Truecaller released a major update to its iOS app, touting better spam detection, faster performance, quick onboarding and a smaller app size (English).
• On 1 September, a new national regulation will be introduced in Sweden which means that e-scooters must be parked in bicycle racks or dedicated parking spots. But at least temporarily, there'll be 3 different models in place, depending on the city, as outlined in a blog post by VOI (Swedish, machine translation).
• Apropos VOI: On Monday morning, someone blocked the entrance to the company's HQ in Stockholm with a large pile of e-scooters (photo).
• Swedish global hygiene and health company Essity has launched Essity Ventures, a venture studio and builder based in Munich, Germany (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Sifted published a compact piece outlining what type of stories startups should pitch and how to grab the team's attention. It offers a useful guideline which – with some adaptations – can be applied for pitching stories to other outlets as well (English).
• Benedict Evans on understanding the difference between startups that need to have a pretty good idea of their unit economics before they start, and those for which focusing on rapid revenue/user growth is the way to go, at least for a while (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• There's a shortage of around 7000 taxi drivers in Sweden, particularly affecting certain less populated regions (Swedish, no machine translation available).

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That's it for today.