News December 5, 2022: Readly, Akribian, Reclaimit, Florea, MonthlyCup and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Swedish news publisher Bonnier News announced a cash offer to buy publicly listed Växjö-based subscription service for digital magazines Readly for SEK455M (€41.7M, $44M), at a 59% higher share price than Friday's price after the market's closing (English, Swedish).
• Helsingborg-based startup investor and builder EdVenture Tech acquired the brankruptcy estate of Akribian, Lund-based developer of gamified learning solutions, and plans a restart (Swedish, machine translation).

Funding news

• Reclaimit (Piteå, SaaS for online retail after-sales): SEK10M (€920K, $970K) from previous investor Spintop Ventures (Swedish, no machine translation available).
• Florea (Stockholm, online store for seeds to enable people to start home cultivation): SEK6M (€550K, $580K) from entrepreneur and influencer Matilda Djerf and other undisclosed investors (Swedish, machine translation).
• MonthlyCup (Halmstad, D2C brand for silicon based menstrual cups): SEK2M (€180K, $190K) from Impact Invest and angel investor Susanne Olausson. The money will be used to develop an incontinence product for women (Swedish, machine translation).
• Norrsken VC participated in a $8M seed round raised by Kenyan social commerce startup Kapu (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

• The current market crash in the tech sector will last well into 2023. Hundreds of startups won't survive, says Swedish veteran VC Pär-Jorgen Pärson in an interview with SvD (Swedish / SvD paywall, Swedish #2, machine translation).
• Microsoft is "concerned" that the Swedish government plans to end the 97 % rebate on data centers' energy tax which was introduced in 2017, by 1 July 2023 (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• French VC firm Partech closes biggest-ever seed fund at €120M, to invest between €300K and €3M in around 50 startups globally (English).
• When to hire a chief of staff as a startup (English)?
• What is the AI chatbot phenomenon ChatGPT? (English). Posting this here mostly for the sake of having mentioned it. Most of you likely read about ChatGPT already and played around with hit. My mind is kind of spinning about all the possible implications.

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• A new study from researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute concludes that around 40 percent of Swedes – especially those living in sparsely populated areas and those with a high dependence on cars – risk being more negatively affected as the country becomes fossil-free (English).
• 39,000 people in Sweden will get their unemployment benefits a few days late, after a suspected cyber attack on Sweden's unemployment insurance funds last week (English).

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That's it for today.