News February 25, 2022: Hexagon, Voicemachine, For Real! Foods, Flightradar24, Klarna, Northvolt, Qred, Chalmers Ventures, byFounders and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Hexagon (Stockholm, provider of digital reality solutions, combining sensor, software and autonomous technologies) is acquiring ETQ, an US-based provider of SaaS-based QMS, EHS and compliance management software, for $1.2B (English, Swedish).

Financing rounds

• Voicemachine (Stockholm, B2B web app for professional voice-talents and media-clients): SEK17M (€1.6M, $1.8M) from Moor Holding as well as previous investors Annika Sigfrid and Åsa Riisberg (Swedish, machine translation).
• For Real! Foods (Skärhamn, foodtech startup producing healthy frozen pizza): SEK9M (€850K, $950K) from PINC, Njord Ventures and angel investors (English).

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Flightradar24, global flight tracking service from Stockholm, is being used by thousands to watch Russia's Ukraine invasion (English).
• Klarna has conducted a stock split, fueling speculation about an upcoming IPO (Swedish, machine translation).
• Northvolt plans to transform a closed paper mill in Borlänge into a new gigafactory (English, Swedish).
• Qred, Stockholm-based small business lending platform which dubs itself "Sweden's fastest growing fintech", is launching in Norway (English, Swedish).
• Chalmers Ventures, Gothenburg-based incubator and accelerator, plans to support more deeptech startups (Swedish, machine translation).
• Denmark-based VC firm byFounders has raised around SEK1B (€94M, $106M) for its second fund, aiming for SEK1.2B in total. The firm, with new Swedish partner Sara Rywe, will invest in Swedish startups as well as companies from other Nordic and Baltic countries (Swedish, machine translation).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Pagero (Gothenburg, provider of a cloud solution to streamline business processes between buyers and sellers): English.
• Awardit (Stockholm, SaaS provider of loyalty programs): English.
• Linas matkasse (LMK Group) (grocery bag delivery service): English.
• Streamify (Östersund, live video shopping platform): Swedish, machine translation.

Other interesting things from Sweden

• Sweden's Coronavirus Commission published its final conclusions. It approves the overall choice of strategy, but criticises how it was implemented  (English / The Local paywall, alternative URL).
• Swedish Olympic champion Nils van der Poel gave one of his 2 gold medals to the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Swede held in China (English).

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That's it for today.