News July 12, 2022: Spotify, TicTac, Xenergic, Hedvig and more

Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Spotify (Stockholm, audio streaming service) acquired Wordle-inspired music trivia game Heardle. The acquisition price was not disclosed. The game, which has "millions of current players", remains a standalone website for now (English).
• TicTac (Malmö, provider of corporate e-learning solutions) acquires German provider of digital learning solutions Interlake. Financials were not disclosed (English, Swedish).

Funding news

• Xenergic (Lund, low-power memory solutions for integrated circuits): €2.5M ($2.5M) grant through the European Union's EIC Accelerator (Swedish, machine translation).

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Breakit published a list of all the major Klarna investors and how much the value of their shares has decreased between 2021 and 2022 (Swedish, machine translation).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Hedvig (Stockholm, digital insurance provider) accumulated a loss of SEK181M (€17M, $17M) during 2021, mostly due to costs for marketing and investments in the technical platform. The company says the result is totally in line with the plan (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world

• German insurtech startup Wefox has raised a $400M Series D, increasing its post-money valuation from $3B last year to $4.5B today (English).
• Global VC fund Cathay Innovation has revealed its newest fund, totaling €1B, aimed at supporting startups from across the world working in enterprise software, AI, fintech, digital health, new mobility, retail, and energy sectors (English).
• The founder as the shock absorber for the startup (English).

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That's it for today.‌