News June 15, 2022: Flowbox, Proxify, tendmill, Tipser, Epidemic Sound, Repli5, Grafana Labs, Storytel, Safello, Sting and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Flowbox (Stockholm, SaaS visual marketing platform for brands) bought its Spanish competitor Photoslurp. Financial terms were not disclosed (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).

Funding news

• Proxify (Stockholm, platform connecting developers with growing companies): SEK50M (€4.7M, $4.9M) from existing investor byWiT at a pre-money valuation of SEK900M (Swedish, machine translation).
• tendmill (Stockholm, solution to streamline public procurement in the food service industry): SEK7.5M (€700K, $740K) from among others Esmaeilzadeh Holding and Holmströmgruppen (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

• Tipser, Stockholm-based software solution to transform any content platform into an e-store, which in December 2021 was acquired by US-based checkout technology company Bolt, is reportedly laying off more than half of its workforce, according to Breakit (Swedish, machine translation).
• Epidemic Sound, Stockholm-based music licensing provider for creators, increased revenue in 2021 by 40% to SEK808M (€76M, $80M), with an EBITDA loss of -SEK53M but an improving margin. CEO Oscar Höglund says no further cash injection is needed (Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
• Gothenburg-based startup Repli5 builds software that automates the creation of synthetic data and digital twins in order to simplify the development of autonomous vehicles (Swedish, machine translation).
• Grafana Labs, Stockholm- & New York-based observability platform, open sourced its on-call management tool for DevOps "OnCall" (English).
• Storytel, Stockholm-based audiobook and ebook subscription service, launched Kazky.com, a site offering free fairytales for Ukrainian children (Swedish, machine translation).
• The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority closes its investigation of Swedish crypto exchange Safello in relation to money laundering and terrorist financing rules (English, Swedish).
• 12 Swedish startups pitched their ideas at the most recent Sting Demo Day (Swedish, machine translation).
• As of September 1, it will be prohibited to park e-scooters outside of specifically designated parking areas (Swedish, machine translation).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• German VC firm Project A Ventures raises $375M, its biggest fund ever to back best early-stage tech startups in Europe (English).
• Thoughts on the "right" order for the slides in a pitch deck (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Swedish software engineer Simon Arledal created a site showing real time and historic airport security waiting times for the airports Stockholm, Arlanda and Gothenburg, Landvetter (Swedish).
• The car crash in which controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks and 2 police officers were killed in October 2021 was an accident, concludes an investigation (Swedish, machine translation).

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That's it for today.