News May 12, 2022: Sportway, Mindforce Game Lab, LootLocker, Depict.ai, Steven, Insurello and more

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

Mergers & acquisitions

• Sportway (Stockholm, AI-automated sports video and data production) is merging with its Norwegian competitor MyGame in a bid to dominate Europe’s AI production market. The merged company is also raising SEK110M in funding, see below (English, Swedish).

Funding news

• Sportway (Stockholm, AI-automated sports video and data production): SEK110M (€10.4M, $10.8M) from Amedia and existing investors Geltis and Jonas Eriksson (English, Swedish).
• Mindforce Game Lab (Skellefteå, creator of meaningful games that nudge people into healthy habits): SEK28M (€2.6M, $2.8M) from First Venture, Colibri Ventures and Partnerinvest Norr, among others (Swedish / Breakit paywall, Swedish #2, machine translation).
• LootLocker (Stockholm, game backend-as-a-service company): $2.1M in a seed funding round led by IA Ventures, with participation from Acequia Capital, James Gwertzman, Benjamin Boxer and Charles Songhurst (English).
• Spintop Ventures led a €4M ($4.2M) late-seed round raised by Finnish startup Gubbe, which aims to be a complement to traditional elderly home care by connecting young people and students with elderly people needing help with chores or just someone to talk to (English).

>> 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

• Oliver Edholm, the 19-year old founder of Stockholm-based product recommendation software startup Depict.ai, in a brief interview about being a very young founder, and about how the company's AI solution works (Swedish, machine translation).
• Steven, Stockholm-based mobile app for settling debts between friends, launched a Mastercard payment card for shared expenses, powered by Finnish fintech Enfuce (Swedish, machine translation).
• Marcus Janback, founder of Stockholm-based provider of a digital solution to maximize insurance claims Insurello, is stepping down as CEO. Julie Moore Lundell is taking over (Swedish, machine translation).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Codemill (Umeå, SaaS-centric digital product and service studio): Swedish, machine translation.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• SoftBank reported a loss of about $29B on investments at its Vision Fund 1 and Vision Fund 2 for the year ending March 31. The firm says it may cut its startup investments this year by more than half (English).
• US Online grocery delivery platform Instacart confidentially files for IPO (English).

Other interesting things from Sweden

• Swedish inflation rate rose to 6.4% in April, highest since 1991 and more than expected (English / Bloomberg paywall, alternative URL).
• Researchers at Karolinska Institutet use AI to diagnose breast cancer earlier (Swedish, machine translation).

Correction

• The new fintech and crypto fund by UK-based Fasanara mentioned in yesterday's update is targeting $350 million - not billion 😅. Sorry about that.

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That's it for today.