News January 23, 2023: Spark Vision, Fuzed, Tada Group, Spotify, Pihr, Northfork, Swedish quantum computer, GPT-SW3 and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Nordic B2B software growth investor Monterro and the investment company JCE acquired a majority stake in Spark Vision, a Gothenburg-based company founded in 2004 offering sales support SaaS for online and point-of-sales. Financial terms were not disclosed (Swedish, machine translation).

Funding news

• Fuzed (Stockholm, esports company that wants to create membership-based gaming hubs across Sweden): SEK15M (€1.3M, $1.5M) from investors including Modelio Equity and Stronger founder Joel Almqvist (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
• Tada Group (Stockholm, developer of the patented "ReLink" technology which prevents accidental disconnection events in healthcare settings): SEK10M (€900K, $970K) convertible note from undisclosed institutional and angel investors (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

• Spotify cuts 6% of its workforce, impacting 600 people (English). Here's Daniel Ek's letter to the employees. He writes Spotify isn’t efficient enough to ensure the company’s long-term success (English).
• Pihr, Stockholm-based SaaS platform for achieving a more equal pay, announced 3 new board members, including Anna König Jerlmyr – former Mayor of Stockholm – and Anna Ljungdahl of Industrifonden. The company writes it has an ARR of over SEK20M (€1.8M, $1.9M) and strong growth in all of its markets (Nordics, UK, Ireland, and most recently Spain ) (English).
• Northfork, Stockholm-based startup that so far focussed on providing a solution for making recipes on third party sites and services shoppable, is expanding beyond the boundaries of the grocery sector, by connecting publishers with large retailers who provide a wide range of goods (English).
• Chalmers University of Technology plans to build a copy of its existing quantum computer, to be made available as a test bed for companies and researchers to run algorithms starting from 2024 (English, Swedish).
• The researchers of AI Sweden announced the pre-release of GPT-SW3, a its large language model for Swedish (English).
• Nordnet, Swedish digital savings and investments platform, has launched the "Power Women in Tech" podcast (in Swedish), which aims to offer inspiration for women in Sweden's tech sector (Swedish, machine translation).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Microsoft confirmed a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment with OpenAI (English).
• UK-based Highland Europe has announced the close of its fifth fund at €1B ($1.1B), for investments in high-growth European internet, mobile, and software companies with over €10M in annualised revenues (English).
• Twitter is now down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers (English).
• What it’s like to fundraise while pregnant (English).
• VCs love founders that respond to email almost instantly (English).

+++

That's it for today.