News May 2, 2022: Embracer, Pythagoras, Elk, Campcation, Earthbanc, Albert 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

• Embracer (Karlstad, video game holding company) acquires 3 Western video game studios from Japanese game publisher Square Enix, for a total $300M (English).
• Pythagoras (Stockholm, cloud platform for property, real estate, and facility management originally founded in 1996) sells a majority stake (reportedly 60-65%) to the investment from Monterro. The deal values the company at around SEK250M, according to DI Digital (English, Swedish / DI Digital paywall, Swedish #2).

Funding news

• Elk (Stockholm, technology enabling a new generation of connected musical instruments and audio processors): SEK26.25M (€2.5M, $2.7M) from LEDNIL, Bemo Invest, Navare Förvaltning, Augmented Ideas XL and Almi Invest (English, Swedish).
• Campcation (Stockholm, "largest booking site for campsites & pitches in the Nordics"): SEK12M (€1.2M, $1.2M) from Devotion Ventures and angel investors Erik Segerborg, Mikael Söderström and Eric Finnås Dahlström (English, Swedish).

>> 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

• Profile of blockchain-based carbon credit and finance platform Earthbanc which recently raised fresh funding (STN April 7). According to founder and CEO Tom Duncan, the Stockholm-based startup plans to launch an app that will enable users anywhere to invest in and profit from sustainable land management (English).
• Spotify published its "Swedish Podcast Report 2022" (English, Swedish). Meanwhile, the company's stock price crash is bad news for the company's key shareholders Universal Music and Sony Music (English):

• In Germany, Klarna is one of the company's receiving the unflattering "Big Brother Awards" for alleged lack of transparency in regards to customer data handling (German, machine translation).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Albert (Gothenburg, digital learning subscription service for kids and teens): English, Swedish.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Estonian serial entrepreneurs Taavet Hinrikus and Sten Tamkivi created Taavet+Sten, a investment vehicle in which they pool their personal capital to invest in early-stage European founders (English / Sifted paywall, alternative URL).

Other interesting things from Sweden

• A technical problem at Swedbank gave customers a nasty surprise, with their account balances going negative (English, The Local paywall, alternative URL).

+++

That's it for today.