News August 31, 2022: Mavenoid, Billogram, Kreditz, Cellfion, Third Ear Studio, House:ID, Klarna, foodora 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

• Mavenoid (Stockholm, scalable support solution for hardware companies): $30M in a Series B funding round led by Smedvig Capital, with participation from Creandum, Mosaic, Point Nine Capital, NordicNinja and ABB Technology Ventures (English).
• Billogram (Stockholm, invoicing and payments technology provider): €15M ($15M) in a funding round led by Swisscom Ventures, with participation from existing investors Partech, CNI Nordic and Inbox Capital (English).
• Kreditz (Stockholm, platform for letting consumers build their own credit score): SEK25M (€2.3M, $2.3M) from existing investors such as Segulah Ventures, Salénia and Anna Storåkers (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Cellfion (Norrköping, bio-based membranes for electrical energy storage and conversion devices): €1.3M ($1.3M) in a seed round from Almi Invest Green Tech, Voima Ventures, Klimatet Invest, LiU Invest and KTH Holding (English).
• Third Ear Studio (Stockholm, "Scandinavias leading podcast studio"): SEK10M (€930K, $930K) from existing owners Co_Made, Carl Fridsjö and Martin Johnson (Swedish, machine translation).
• House:ID (Malmö, digital homeowner app): undisclosed amount from Svensk Fastighetsförmedlingsgruppen (Swedish, machine translation).
• In a follow-on investment, Creandum participated in a $45M mixed equity and debt funding round raised by German startup Topi, which operates a platform that enables retailers and manufacturers to offer hardware products as a monthly subscription (English).

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News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Klarna posted a net loss SEK6.23B (€580M, $580M) for H1 2022, compared to a loss of SEK1.42B during the same period of last year (English). Here's the complete interim report (PDF) and here's Sebastian Siemiatkowski's obligatory Twitter thread commenting on the report (English). SvD's Björn Jeffery points out that Klarna's revenue in Sweden is actually shrinking, and on its biggest market Germany, Klarna is only growing 6% (Swedish / SvD paywall).
• Food delivery and Q-commerce provider foodora tests a service in Stockholm which allows its users to book various household services (including soon even at-home visits from doctors) through its app (Swedish, machine translation).
• In its app, Spotify is reminding users in Sweden to vote in the upcoming general election (English).
• SSE Business Lab, the startup incubator of the Stockholm School of Economics, is looking for a program manager with a "strong passion for startups" (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• UK-based investment firm Claret Capital Partners announced a €297M ($297M) debt fund for European tech and life sciences startups (English / Sifted soft paywall, alternative URL).
• So far this year, the “Big Four" (Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft) have made just five publicy announced acquisitions of private, venture-backed companies (English).
• Snapchat-maker Snap is laying off approximately 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees (English).
• Within only one week, the "text-to-image" AI Stable Diffusion has led to an explotion of innovation on the internet and absolutely astonishing image creations. It appears to be a really big deal, but comes with serious ethical questions (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Swedens leading tomato grower cancels it cultivation for the winter season due to high electricy prices (Swedish, no machine translation available).

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That's it for today.