News October 28, 2022: Renewcell, RedLocker, Vembla, Done, Carl Pei, Bower, Klarna and more

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

Funding news

• Renewcell (Stockholm, recycling technology for textile): SEK158M (€14.4M, $14.4M) through a directed share issue, with participation from among others existing shareholders H&M and Girincubator (English).
• RedLocker (Stockholm, provider of machines for free menstrual care products for workplaces, schools and other types of businesses): SEK1.7M (€155K, $155K) from existing investors Dragon Invest, Mountainstone Consulting, Rolf Erik Nilsson and Jon Wimmercranz (Swedish, machine translation).

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Vembla, the Stockholm-based rapid grocery home delivery service which recently was declared bankrupt, just sent an email to customers announcing that it will pivot to focus on "pharmacy and health". No more details were revealed.
• Malin Granlund and Alek Åström are the founders of on-demand home services marketplace Done. They are also a couple. In this interview they talk about their ambitions with Done, and how to build a company with one's spouse (Swedish, machine translation).
• Sifted talked with Swedish serial entrepreneur Carl Pei, who currently is building the consumer electronics company Nothing in London, about his entrepreneurial past and present (English).
• Stockholm-based recycling app Bower officially launched in the UK (English).
• In Germany, Klarna is launching a „save now, buy later“ feature named "Pools" for its bank account product (German, machine translation).
• 📺 Interview with Carl-Erik Lagercrantz, CEO of Swedish impact company builder Vargas Holding (investor in Polarium, Northvolt and H2 Green Steel), about "the Swedish way to make climate unicorns" (English, 27 minutes).

This week, I've added 12 companies to my subscriber-exclusive new Swedish tech startup tracker. The following haven't been mentioned in the newsletters: Foodnest, Goody, HEPU, Dialog Therapy, Hubista, Y/ELM, Xplir, Drifter, Nodon and BrightBid. Click here to see a brief profile of each, including founder names & LinkedIn URLs (log in with your subscriber email).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Nordnet (Stockholm, digital savings and investments platform): English.
• Sleep Cycle (Gothenburg, sleep tracking solution): English.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Last year, Facebook had a market cap over $1 trillion. Now the company is worth about $270 billion (English).
• The Big Tech hiring slowdown is here (English).

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That's it for today.