News February 22, 2023: Freemelt, AirForestry, T.Loop, Fondo, Gofrendly, Lektionsakuten, E-GO, Storekey, Replicate and more

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

Funding news

• Freemelt (Gothenburg, metal 3D printing provider, publicly listed): SEK66M (€6M, $6.4M) through a directed share issue from new investors including Coeli Circulus and angel investor Bengt Julander, with participation from the company's management and existing investors such as Industrifonden (English).
• AirForestry (Uppsala, developer of drone technology for forest thinning): SEK30M (€2.7M, $2.9M) convertible note from angel investors, including Fredrik Jung Abbou, Anna Belfrage, Claudia Olsson, Karin Forseke, Peter A. Jörgensen and Alessandro Pace (Swedish, machine translation).
• T.Loop (Stockholm; designs, builds and operates Data Energy Centers – DEC – “on the edge” in buildings with heating needs that match with DEC excess heat): SEK20M (€1.8M, $1.9M) in pre-seed funding from undisclosed angel investors "with large networks and distinct knowledge in the real estate and IT sector", co-founder and CEO Staffan Stymne tells me. The startup previously also received financial support from the Swedish Energy Agency, for the pilot facility which currently is being established in Häggvik outside Stockholm (via mail).
• Fondo (Stockholm, commission free open savings platform offering access to mutual funds): SEK19.6M (€1.8M, $1.9M) from the founders, friends & family, the company's chair Carl-Viggo Östlund as well as undisclosed angel investors with ties to the Swedish private equity sector (via mail).
• Gofrendly (Stockholm, social network for women to make new friends): $1.25M in a funding round led by existing investor JNE Invest, for the UK expansion and improving the app's AI capabilities (English).
• Lektionsakuten (Luleå, edtech platform offering pre-recorded lessons for different school and education types): SEK2.5M (€230K, $240K) from Lunova and undisclosed angel investors (via mail, additional information: Swedish, machine translation).
• E-GO (Stockholm, provider of fantasy esports): $200K in pre-seed funding from members of the founding team, Northern CapSek Ventures and angel investor Christian Frithiof. The company also secured a growth loan of up to $300K from a large Swedish bank (English).
• Tinted (Gothenburg, upcoming D2C brand for design objects for homes): undisclosed amount from angel investors Bianca Ingrosso, Vanessa Lindblad and Julia Frankenius (Swedish, machine translation).
• Ingka Investments, the investment arm of the owner of most IKEA stores, invests €9M in Scottish fintech DirectID, which specialises in credit risk assessment, risk analytics and predictive modelling (English).

>> As subscriber, you have access to my exclusive curated Google sheet with all funding rounds.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Profile of Storekey, the Stockholm-based platform for cashier-less retail which started in 2018 with operating its own automated mini grocery stores under the brand Lifvs, before broadening its concept and offering the platform as franchise. Storekey-operated stores can now be found not only in Sweden but in Denmark, Ireland and Japan, says founder and COO Daniel Lundh  (Swedish, machine translation).
• Andreas Jansson, a Sweden-based former machine learning engineer at Spotify, is one of two co-founders of US-based startp Replicate, which lets software developers run machine learning models in the cloud. Yesterday the company came out of stealth with the announcement of a $12.5M Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Y Combinator and Sequoia (English).
• After 8 years of losses, digital health scaleup Kry (Livi) says it is heading for profitability in 2023, and plans to roll out its combined physical and digital strategy in other markets outside of Sweden (English).
• Sebastian Siemiatkowski talked with TechCrunch about Klarna's apparently major success in the US market (English).
• On June 8, Einride will hold its Einride Mesh event in New York, to "bring together industry leaders and innovators to showcase the latest solutions and brilliant minds at the forefront of a future-proof society" (English).
• Nordic AI Weekly is a new newsletter covering funding, news, and resources for builders, launched by J12 Ventures partner and co-founder Emmet King.

Swedish tech earnings

• Truecaller (Stockholm, global platform for verifying contacts and blocking unwanted communication, publicly listed) published its year-end report 2022 (English).
• SaveLend (Stockholm, p2p lending platform, publicly listed) published its year-end report 2022 (Swedish, machine translation).
• Katalysen Ventures (Stockholm, venture developer, publicly listed) published its year-end report 2022 (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Which SaaS products are getting cut? (English)
• Interactive ML, AI and Data landscape including 1416 companies (English).
• Prompt engineering guide (English).
• Tips for talking to investors about bridges and extensions (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Inside Ikea’s small-format store strategy (English).
• Sweden’s birth rate falls to lowest in 17 years (English, Swedish).
• The loss of consumer purchasing power in Sweden will be the largest since the country's financial crisis in the early 1990s, fears Nordic bank Nordea (Swedish, machine translation).

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That's it for today.