News May 17, 2022: MatHem, Kry, Volumental, Acast, SaveLend and more

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

Funding news

• MatHem (Stockholm, online grocery store): SEK500M (€48, $50M) from existing investors, among them Kinnevik, Axfood, Verdane and AMF, as well as undisclosed new investors (Swedish, machine translation).

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News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Digital healthcare provider Kry plans to lay off around 100 employees (or 10%) of its office workforce (Swedish, machine translation).
• Stockholm-based startup Volumental, which generates shoe recommendations through a combination of 3D foot scans, retail purchase data and AI, and targets retailers, is switching to a subscription model even for its scanning hardware, and expands into the Chinese market (Swedish, machine translation).
• The launch of Stockholm city's own shared e-bike system appears to be rather chaotic, with issues ranging from delayed delivery, to technical problems, to rider expectations that the service doesn't live up to (Swedish / DI Digital paywall, Swedish #2, machine translation).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Acast (Stockholm, podcasting company): English.
• SaveLend (Stockholm, p2p lending platform): English.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Germany-based Earlybird VC closes new €350M fund for Western European startups, with a deeptech angle (English).
• A16Z framework for navigating down markets (English).
• The upside of a downturn (English).

Other interesting things from Sweden

• For the first time ever, more EVs are being sold in Sweden than cars with internal combustion engine (Swedish, machine translation).
• Volvo Trucks will open its first battery assembly plant, in Belgium (English).

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That's it for today.