News July 13, 2022: Outpost24, Digital Metal, Quartr, Colix, Steven, Ablemind, Open Doors, Candela, Plejd and more
Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.
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Subscribe to Swedish Tech News to get access to a daily newsletter that brings you a brief overview of news from the Swedish startup & tech sector, curated by Martin Weigert.
Or, if you prefer a free weekly newsletter, subscribe to Swedish Tech Weekly!
Mergers & acquisitions
- Digital Metal (Höganäs, maker of high precision 3D metal printers) is being sold from its current owner Höganäs Group to the US-based industrial 3D printing platform Markforged for $40M (English).
- Outpost24 (Karlskrona, cyber risk management platform) is being sold from its current majority owner Monterro to UK-based private equity firm Vitruvian partners. Financial terms were not disclosed (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).
Funding news
- Quartr (Gothenburg, investor relations app): $2.6M in a seed extension led by existing investor The Öhman Group, with participation from Flat Capital (which announced its participation in the round already in May), Centripetal Capital, as well as existing angel investors. The additional investment takes Quartr's total raised to $7.1M (English).
- Colix (Växjö, SaaS provider of software and app solutions for businesses): SEK15M (€1.4M, $1.4M) from 30 new angel investors and existing investors (English, Swedish).
- Steven (Stockholm, consumer finance app for tracking and managing shared expenses): SEK9M (€850K, $850K), including €750K from an equity crowdfunding round, with the remaining amount coming from existing investors (Swedish, machine translation).
- Ablemind (Malmö, AI-powered clinical method to detect and measure mental illness): SEK7M (€660K, $660K) in a funding round led by Icebreaker.vc. The round hasn't been announced before, but was raised in spring 2022 (Swedish, machine translation).
>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups. Request access.
News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs
- Stockholm-based Truecaller has launched Open Doors, a free social networking-type iOS and Android app allowing for "safe, secure and private audio conversations" between friends. The service will be ad-free, and the company doesn’t have any plans for monetization at the moment (English).
- Electrek rode with a prototype of Stockholm-based Candela's "flying electric boat", and appears quite impressed (English).
- Carl Pei's UK-based smartphone maker Nothing has unveiled its debut smartphone, the Android-based Nothing Phone 1 (English).
- Swedish investment firm Summa Equity, which in January raised Europe's largest impact fund to date, launched a podcast. The guest in the inaugural episode is Summa Equity founder and managing partner Reynir Indahl (English).
Swedish tech earnings reports
- Plejd (Gothenburg, smart connected lighting solutions): Swedish, machine translation.
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world
- Q2 European startup funding dropped 38% from a year earlier to $23.7B (English).
- More competition for Klarna: Deutsche Bank is entering the BNPL market in Germany (English).
Other interesting things related to Sweden
- Polestar is reporting a 125% increase in electric car sales during the first half of 2022 to 21,200 units (English). Also: Polestar and Swedish bike outfit Allebike engineered a mountain bike which will be produced in a limited run of 100 and costs €9,500 ($9,500) (English).
- The northern Swedish city Skellefteå is on Time's list of "the world's greatest places of 2022 (Swedish).
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That's it for today.
