News January 25, 2023: Yangi, Imagimob, Dogstr, Nextory, Klarna, Migränhjälpen, generative AI startups & more

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

Funding news

• Yangi (Varberg, manufacturing technology for dry formed cellulose-based packaging): undisclosed amount in a strategic investment from German manufacturer of machines for the pulp and paper industry Voith, to further drive decarbonization in the paper industry (English, Swedish).

>> 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

• A spreadsheet listing currently around 200 Spotify employees affected by the layoffs, looking for new opportunities – most of them US-based (English).
• Imagimob, Stockholm-based development platform for machine learning on edge devices, has developed a tinyML model for gunshot detection, trained on sounds from 60+ different gun models including handguns and semi-automatic guns (English).
• Dogstr is a new bootstrapped Stockholm-based startup that will launch its mobile app-based community for dog owners on Sunday. In this brief interview, CEO Emma Feurst says she decided to be the solo founder of the company after her initial co-founder dropped out, despite everyone advising her against it. "I wanted to prove them wrong", she says (Swedish, machine translation / scroll down a bit to get to the interview).
• Nextory, Stockholm-based audiobook and e-book subscription service, has reported competitor Storytel to the Swedish Competition Authority, for alleged abuse of a dominant position (Swedish / Di Digital paywall, Swedish #2, machine translation).
• Clearly inspired by Spotify's "Wrapped", Klarna has launched Money Story, a personal summary of 2022 that provides consumers with insights into their spending habits (English).
• I've created a brief post on LinkedIn listing Swedish startups/companies that I am aware of that have implemented or announced features based on generative AI. It grew quickly to now 15 protagonists (English). Related: Sifted mapped Europe’s 130+ generative AI startups (English).
• Charlotta Tönsgård is new CEO of Migränhjälpen, Stockholm-based provider of digital health services focused on treatment of migranes (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• 🎧 TechCrunch published a 47 min podcast interview with Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• There are many opportunities for new consumer social startups (English).
• Every layoff in bigtech has been a fraction of new headcount added in 2022 alone (via):

+++

That's it for today.