News October 4, 2022: DBT, SweGaN, Apica, Meitner, Wayout, Fidesmo 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

• DBT (Stockholm, financing provider for SMEs): SEK3.1B (€285M, $280M) in a debt facility from NatWest and Värde Partners (English, Swedish).
• SweGaN (Linköping, semiconductor manufacturer): SEK125M (€12M, $11.5M) in a Series A funding round co-led by Intertech Ventures, Mount Wilson Ventures and Atlantic Bridge, with participation from STOAF of Sweden and MediaTek (English, Swedish).
• Apica (Stockholm, SaaS active monitoring platform that helps solve complex digital performance issues): SEK70M (€6.5M, $6.4M) convertible note from undisclosed investors. This transaction happened in May 2022 (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
• Meitner (Stockholm, education platform for schools): SEK15.8M (€1.5M, $1.4M) from angel investors such as Sven Hagströmer and Joel Almqvist (Swedish, machine translation).
• Wayout (Stockholm, IoT-enabled water purification system that can turn all kinds of source water, even seawater, into drinkable water): undisclosed amount from Raiven Capital (English).

>> 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

• In a FT guest article, Skype and Atomico founder Niklas Zennström encourages European founders of struggling startups not to be afraid of hard decisions – even if it means shutting down the company. "Data shows that founders have a better chance of getting it 'right' the second or third time — if they have the guts to come back fighting" (English / FT paywall, alternative URL).
• Fidesmo, Stockholm-based wearable contactless transaction provider, is launching its service across Europe through a partnership with UK-based "all payment cards in one" solution Curve (English, Swedish).
• The challenging economic environment is leading to an explosion of bankruptcies among online retailers (Swedish, no machine translation available).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Apple's App Store net revenue fell about 5% in September, according to Morgan Stanley, the steepest drop for the business since the bank started modeling the data in 2015 (English).
• Google opens applications for circular-economy accelerator (English).
• Dealroom ranked the "Top 100 Energy Startups to Watch in Europe" (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Ranking of new electric vehicles sold in Sweden during September 2022: VW ID.4 is at top, ahead of Volvo XC40 and Kia Niro. Tesla Model 3 ranked #5, Model Y #6 (English).
• Sweden's Energy Agency launches a campaign encouraging people living in Sweden to cut down on hot water and electricity usage (English, Swedish).
• Report about the most influential/powerful Swedish accounts on social media (Swedish / PDF).

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That's it for today.