Swedish Tech Weekly #264

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This newsletter was sent on July 1, 2024, to subscribers of Swedish Tech Weekly. To receive future editions, you can sign up for free on swedishtechweekly.com.


Welcome to the latest from Sweden's startup & tech sector.

I'm Martin Weigert. Swedish Tech Weekly brings you a selection of some of the news I covered in my PRO newsletters last week, and is sent to 2438 subscribers today. Last week's newsletter had a record open rate of 71.5%.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Klarna is selling its Checkout business to a consortium led by BLQ Invest founder and CEO Kamjar Hajabdolahi, in a deal reportedly worth SEK5.4B (€480M, $520M) (English, Swedish).

• TicTac (Malmö, provider of corporate e-learning solutions) acquires Stockholm-based Skillhabit, a platform to train and certify customers, partners and resellers. (Swedish, machine translation).

• Funnel (Stockholm, marketing intelligence platform) acquired the German marketing measurement and optimization startup Adtriba (English).

• Ezeride (Trollhättan, provider of carpooling solutions for companies) has been acquired by Carjoy, an Alingsås-based startup that offers a B2B mobile mechanics service for cars (Swedish, machine translation).

• Medpeople, bankrupt Stockholm-based digital service for healthcare staffing, has been acquired by the Swedish healthcare staffing company Big Care (Swedish, machine translation).

• GreenMerc, publicly traded Stockholm-based developer of fintech solutions and operator of the crypto exchange Trijo, announced its intention to acquire the Finnish cryptocurrency marketplace NorthCrypto (Swedish, machine translation).

Funding news

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• FirstVet (Stockholm, digital veterinary clinic): €20M ($21M) in a Series C funding round led by TELUS Global Ventures, with participation from existing investors OMERS Ventures, Mubadala Capital, and Cathay Innovation (English).

• Billo (Stockholm, digital mailbox service): SEK90M (€8M, $8.5M) mostly from existing investors including Svante Liljevall, Victor Jacobsson, and Peter Dahlberg. New investor Henrik Garvner also participated (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Mavenoid (Stockholm, product support platform for product manufacturers and retailers): $6M in debt funding from HSBC. The startup also announced new AI solutions for automated customer support (English).

• Net Zero Company (Stockholm, carbon removal company): $5.5M seed funding led by Oilinvest, VARO Energy, and SilviCarbon (English).

• Artificial Solutions (Stockholm, publicly traded operator of the AI-powered contact center platform Teneo): SEK50M (€4.4M, $4.7M) through a directed share issue to undisclosed investor(s), before issue costs (English).

• Blodtrycksdoktorn (Lund, digital healthcare provider focusing on hypertension management and weight loss): SEK36M (€3.2M, $3.4M) from LMK Forward and existing investors (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Swedish Algae Factory (Gothenburg, producer of functional materials from algae) SEK15.8M (€1.4M, $1.5M) mostly from existing investors (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall). ➡️ First covered in my PRO subscription on June 20.

• Green14 (Stockholm, technology for decarbonising the production of Silicon): SEK9.4M (€840K, 890$K) grant from the Swedish Energy Agency (Swedish / Di Digital paywall).

• Cellufy (Stockholm, developer of bio-based materials for sustainable industrialisation): SEK9M (€800K, $860K) grant from the initiative BioInnovation, for the project "Bio-based foams as fish guiding systems and artificial floating islands" together with Vattenfall (English). ➡️ Startup covered in my PRO subscription in November 2023.

• Magnowlia (Stockholm, AI-driven data analyst for businesses): SEK5M (€440K, $480K) from angel investors (English, Swedish / Breakit paywall).

• Fejron (Stockholm, portfolio monitoring platform for active investors): SEK2.8M (€250K, $270K) in funding from new and existing angel investors, including Mattias Miksche, Magnus Elm, Rolf Dahlberg, Petter Wiberg, Charlotta Sköldemyr, Per Emanuelsson, Fredrik Granström, and Björn Melinder, as well as from Plingot AB. ➡️ Funding first covered in my PRO subscription on June 26.

• Zenith VC led a €4M seed funding round raised by Finnish pest control startup Valpas (English).

• H&M Group Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in the US startup Rondo Energy, a provider of zero-carbon industrial heat and power (English).

• For PRO subscribers: 8 additional rounds, as well as more details, valuations, and numbers for many covered rounds (English).

• For PRO subscribers: Google Sheet with funding data, 1000+ rounds added during the past 12 months, updated daily (English).

News from Swedish startups & the tech sector

• Oliver Edholm, the 21-year old "AI wunderkind" and co-founder of the well-funded Stockholm-based startup Depict, has quietly stepped down as CEO and from his operational role, to do a sabbatical and "reclaim his youth", he shares in an interview with the SvD Tech brief podcast. New CEO is John Tan (🎧Swedish / 36 minutes).

• VISS.AI, Jönköping-based AI startup, built and released SWE-LLM, a fine-tuned version of Llama 3 70B, described as "the Largest Language Model for Swedish to date" (English).

• Neovici, Stockholm-based developer of autonomous AI tools to make finance teams more efficient, announces its planned public listing at the Nordic Growth Market on July 2 (Swedish, machine translation).

• Grönska, Stockholm-based technology provider for the global vertical farming industry, is bankrupt. Co-founder and CEO Robin Lee suggests that Grönska will be liquidated, and then reemerge in some new form later this year (Swedish / Impact Loop paywall). ➡️ In my PRO subscription, I last week also covered the bankruptcy of another Swedish startup in the same space.

• Innoscentia, a startup from the greater Malmö/Lund area, is since 2015 developing sensor technology for a more accurate shelf life determination of food, to reduce waste. Here's an interview with CEO Erik MĂĄnsson on the company's solution and plans (Swedish, machine translation).

• Bower, Stockholm-based recycling app, will soon start an equity crowdfunding campaign (English).

• Open Payments, Stockholm-based SaaS solution providing infrastructure for open banking, is expanding to the Netherlands (English).

• Orbital, Malmö-based manufacturer of smart water solutions for consumers previously named Orbital Systems, announced its expansion into global markets. So far the company mostly focused on Sweden and Denmark (English).

• Northvolt is experiencing its most challenging period to date, following safety concerns, scrapped orders, and a factory up in the air (English).

• Swedish heat pump startup Aira opened its first factory, a €300M plant in Poland, with a plan to roll out full capacity of 500,000 units per year (English).

• Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and the US space transportation company Firefly Aerospace plan to jointly launch satellites from the newly inaugurated spaceport at Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden, starting in 2026 (English).

• The new project Swedish Space Innovation Cooperation (SSIC), backed with SEK35.5M in public funding, aims to position Sweden as innovation leader in European spacetech (Swedish, machine translation).

• The State of Women in Tech 2024 report for Sweden has been published (English / PDF with 31 pages).

• Sweden's three leading universities – Lund, Uppsala, and KTH – have spun off 1081 startups since 2010, according to a joint report (Swedish, machine translation).

• Sweden Tech 30 is an index that tracks the 30 largest, publicly traded tech stocks in Sweden, equally weighted. It was created by SvD tech analyst Björn Jeffery.

• The nominations for The Nordic 100 are open. The initiative is run by TechBBQ and The Nordic Web, and aims to recognize "the 100 most impactful and influential figures in the Nordic tech scene each year".

• The Nordic Software AI Hackathon will take place in Stockholm on August 20.

• Arctic Ventures 3 is a new early-stage angel fund of SEK10.8M supported by Saminvest that invests in startups from northern Sweden (Swedish, machine translation).

• 🎧 Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski guests the Acquired (ACQ2) podcast, and talks about building a disruptive payments company (English, 69 minutes).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond



• State of the Cloud 2024 report: "The Legacy Cloud is dead, long live AI Cloud!" (English).

• BCG, McKinsey, KPMG, and other consultants see rising demand for AI advisory services; BCG earns 20% of its revenue from AI-related work vs. 0% two years ago (English).

• The 2025 edition of the European Prize for Women Innovators has been launched (English).

• Apple plans to withhold the release of Apple Intelligence and some other new features from users in the EU this year (English).

• Pathway to "rescue" a co-founding relationship (English).

• The startup founder is an insurgent; their startup is an insurgency. Every founder is on the side of upheaval, of tearing something down (English).

• Sweden ranks #1 in the WEF's Energy Transition Index 2024 (English).

• Gothenburg defends its title as most attractive city in Sweden among today's and tomorrow's qualified workforce, according to the Talent City Index Sweden 2024. Stockholm ranks #2, and Malmö #3 (English).

• 21 Swedish companies are included in Time Magazine's list of the World's 500 most sustainable companies of 2024.

• The Swedish grocery chain Coop is testing Avocado ripeness scanners in 8 Swedish stores, developed by the dutch startup OneThird (Swedish, machine translation).

• How Sweden's move towards ditching paper money has led to a surge in online fraud and digital crime (English).


đź’ˇ
This newsletter was sent on July 1, 2024, to subscribers of Swedish Tech Weekly. To receive future editions, you can sign up for free on swedishtechweekly.com.