News June 4, 2024: Renewcell, Circulose, Aira, Instabee, Decade Energy, Vopy, CheckProof, AlixLabs, Hydroyal, Njord Medtech, The Fit, Flic, Arkion, Qurant, GI Lift, and more

Here are today's news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Swedish PE firm Altor acquires the remaining assets of bankrupt Swedish textile recycling company Renewcell, and rebrands the company as Circulose (English).

Funding news

⬜️ publicly traded

• Aira (Stockholm, D2C heat pump subscription service, founded 2022): €200M ($220M) in debt funding from BNP Paribas, to facilitate the installation of heat pumps in homes across Germany (English). A few months ago, Aira closed a €145M Series B round.
• Instabee (Stockholm, operator of last-mile logistic brands, founded 2022 through a merger of Instabox and Budbee): SEK216M (€19M, $21M) in bridge funding led by EQT (not EQT Ventures, which previously invested), with participation from existing investors, at a pre-money valuation of around SEK4.5B. With this funding, the company aims to complete the organizational aspects of the merger, and to reach an operating profit and positive cashflow by late 2024 or early 2025 (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).
• Decade Energy (Paris & Stockholm, upcoming software platform that manages truck operators’ transitions to electric fleets, founded 2024): €3.6M ($3.9M) in a seed round led by Ananda Impact Ventures and Contrarian Ventures (English). I covered Decade Energy in late January. The startup was founded by a team of former operators from Volta Trucks, including founder Carl-Magnus Norden.
• Vopy (Stockholm; SaaS solution helping banks and fintechs in emerging markets to provide their customers with regulatory friendly, international saving- and investment products, founded 2017): SEK10.6M (€930K, $1M) from existing investor Front Ventures, among others. The round was open to the public, since Vopy is registered as limited public company. Around half of the amount is being paid by set-off of previous debt (Swedish, machine translation). I recently covered a deal signed between Vopy and Bangladesh's largest digital bank, and mentioned some more details about Vopy there.
• CheckProof (Stockholm, all-in-one platform for the construction materials industry, founded 2014): undisclosed "significant amount" from Viking Venture, for continued growth across North America and Europe (English). 📊 I covered CheckProof's 2023 numbers on May 14.
• AlixLabs (Lund, method for manufacturing nanostructures which enables the semiconductor industry to scale down in a cost effective manner, founded 2019): SEK2.5M (€220K, $240K) grant from Vinnova (English). The company raised its most recent equity funding of SEK40M in fall 2023.
• Hydroyal (Stockholm, membrane electrode assembly production to accelerate the transition to green hydrogen, founded 2022): SEK500K (€44K, $48K) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency (English). Recently, KTH Holding invested an undisclosed amount in the company. ℹ️ Company details added on December 8, 2022 to the early-stage startup tracker page.
• Spintop Ventures led a €1.3M funding round in Norwegian startup Keenious, which offers an AI-driven academic research tool (English, Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

Unannounced funding