News September 1, 2022: Matsmart, LeadCold, Relox Robotics, Hedvig, Zimpler 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

• Matsmart / Motatos (Stockholm, online seller of surplus production and overstocks): €38M ($38M) in a funding round jointly led by existing investors SEB Private Equity and Exor Capital, with participation from other existing investors including Gullspång Re:food Invest and Blume Equity. The funding will be used to accelerate growth in key markets Germany and the UK, among other things (English, Swedish).
• LeadCold (Stockholm, developer of modular nuclear reactor technology): SEK25M (€2.3M, $2.3M) in a funding round led by Norrsken, with participation from angel investors such as Jacob de Geer, Gunilla von Platen, Jonas Nordlander, Filip Engelbert and Carl Manneh (English, Swedish / DI paywall).
• Relox Robotics (Stockholm, provider of autonomous robots as a service, starting with picking golf balls at the golf range): SEK11M (€1M, $1M) from Almi Invest and undisclosed private investors (Swedish, machine translation).
• In a follow-on investment, Gullspång Re:food Invest partipcates in a CHF70M (€71M, $71M) Series B round raised by Swiss foodtech Planted, maker of natural biostructured meat made from alternative proteins (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

• Hedvig, Stockholm-based digital insurance provider, is laying off 12 employees, representing 10% of the work force, to adjust to the new market environment. The company currently has 100,000 customers on 3 markets (Swedish, no machine translation available).
• J12 Ventures updated their templates for creating a compelling pitch story (English).
• Melinda Elmborg of Fast Track Malmö offers 3 tips to first-time founders to succeed with raising a seed round: 1) Fundraising is not like dating – be unfaithful 2) Don't give away more than 20% of capital (applies even to subsequent rounds) 3) Find metrics to brag about (English).

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Zimpler (Stockholm, account-to-account payment solutions for merchants) had net sales of SEK274M (€25.5M, $25.5M) during 2021, up 134% from 2020 (Swedish / DI Digital paywall).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• List of foodtech grants in Europe and some tips on how to get the best out of these "free money" opportunities (English)

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• A software bug in the system of energy provider Skellefteå Kraft made it possible during a few hours to sign up for a power delivery agreement at an extremely low fixed rate. This caused heavy load on the site and around 1000 people managed to score the "deal". However, the company says it will cancel these contracts (Swedish, machine translation).
• Around 400,000 households paid for accessing podcasts in Q2 2022, compared to 185,000 in Q1 2021 (Swedish, machine translation).
• A ranking of the top 100 scientists in Sweden in 2022 on Twitter (English).
• Polestar reported revenue of $1.0B, up 95%, for first half of 2022 (English).

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That's it for today.