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Why is Stockholm, a capital metropolis with a inhabitants lower than a million, house to world manufacturers equivalent to Skype, Spotify, Klarna and Minecraft? “I feel it has to do with the Swedish creed,” says Ben Eliass, CEO of bodycare model Estrid. “It is a nation which put emphasis on high-quality schooling and invested closely in telecoms infrastructure within the nineties, so all of us grew up with high-speed web.”
Many additionally credit score a social welfare system that acts as a “security web” for entrepreneurship. “It permits folks to take excessive danger and begin firms, not needing to be too afraid of the downsides,” says Max Junestrand, CEO of legaltech startup Leya. Certainly, Sweden has now produced extra unicorns per capita than every other nation in Europe, apart from Estonia, incomes a status because the Silicon Valley of Europe“Stockholm has a really distinctive ecosystem the place you possibly can stand on the shoulders of giants,” says Colin Treseler, CEO of Supernormal. “They’ve invested an unbelievable quantity of sources into the expertise right here, making a important mass of engineers, designers and product thinkers which can be distinctive at their craft.”
Estrid
As soon as, at a cocktail party, Amanda Westerbom confessed to her pals that she most well-liked to make use of males’s razors. Surprisingly, lots of her pals additionally did—not solely they supplied a greater shave however they have been additionally cheaper. With the assistance of co-founders Alan Aygun and Ben Eliass, Westerbom determined to alter that and, in 2019, they launched razor model Estrid. “We designed the deal with ourselves, purchased a €500 3D printer from a {hardware} store and began iterating,” Ben Eliass, CEO of Estrid, says. “That factor printed tons of of handles, working day and evening. In the long run, it virtually burned down my home as a result of it was underneath such pressure.” The result’s a 5-blade razor with a vegan hydration strip and an ergonomic weighted deal with that the corporate now delivers to over 1,000,000 subscribers throughout Europe. “We’re dethroning one of the dominant client monopolies of the trendy period, changing into a subsequent era, all-encompassing private care model. A subsequent era Dove if you’ll.” estrid.com
Atlar
Joel Wägmark, Johannes Elgh, and Joel Nordström met whereas working at fintech startup Vink, which in 2022 was purchased by Visa for $2.2 billion. “We noticed firsthand how rapidly client fintech was altering,” says Nordström. “However the equal monetary tooling for companies simply didn’t exist. Finance groups on the overwhelming majority of firms use a mixture of Excel, on-line financial institution portals, and legacy methods from the eighties and the nineties. It’s a whole lot of guide work.” Atlar, the bank-to-bank funds platform Wägmark, Elgh, and Nordström launched in 2022, eliminates such complexity by automating funds for companies with a number of financial institution accounts throughout Europe. “We join on to conventional banks and supply quicker, extra UX-friendly instruments with which to handle money, forecast money circulate, and make funds.“ says Nordström. With greater than 35 prospects throughout ten nations, together with the US, UK, France and Germany, Atlar has raised €13M from traders together with Index Ventures and Normal Catalyst. atlar.com
Leya
Leya has developed a GenAI platform that automates repetitive and guide duties achieved by legal professionals. “We noticed firsthand how legal professionals struggled with textual content and admin-heavy duties equivalent to filling in templates and extracting info from numerous paperwork,” says CEO Max Junestrand. “We would like each lawyer to be empowered by AI of their work to perform extra.” The startup—a Y Combinator alumni—was based in 2023 by Max Junestrand, August Erseus and Sigge Labor. In July 2024, they introduced a $25m collection A spherical, led by US VC Redpoint Ventures, totalling $36m in funds raised. They’ve over 100 purchasers in ten markets throughout Europe, together with UK agency Chicken & Chicken, the biggest legislation agency within the Nordics, Mannheimer Swartling, and Spanish legislation agency Pérez-Llorca. ”We’re centered on fixing particular authorized duties,” Junestrand says. “This has differentiated us from the gang the place the main target lies extra on offering a platform of normal LLM capabilities.” leya.law
Lovable
Anton Osika, founder and CEO of Lovable, is on a mission to create what he calls the “final piece of software program”. “We made an AI that builds software program,” he says. “We launched Lovable to let everybody have the identical capabilities that product improvement groups at tech firms have at their fingertips.” Lovable’s product, GPT Engineer, permits customers to construct web sites and net apps by means of a easy chat interface. “Not like different AI instruments that may code, which might take hours to generate outcomes, Lovable provides folks prompt suggestions and permits for fast iteration,” Osika says. Launched in 2023, the startup at the moment has greater than 2,000 customers and a waitlist of 27,000 folks from over 154 nations. Lovable has closed a $7.5 million pre-seed funding spherical led by VCs Hummingbird and by Founders. Additionally backed by traders together with Mattias Miksche, Shopify’s Siavash Ghorbani, Voi’s Fredrik Hjelm, and Creandum co-founder Stefan Lindeberg. “One person constructed a real-time dashboard for monetary knowledge, simply by prompting,” Osika says. “She determined to stop her job to construct startups with AI instruments as a substitute.” lovable.dev
H2 Inexperienced Metal
In January 2024, cleantech startup H2 Inexperienced Metal raised €4.75 billion to finish its flagship mission in Boden, a metropolis in north Sweden: the world’s first large-scale inexperienced metal plant. Because of its reliance on coal, customary metal manufacturing is chargeable for as much as 9 p.c of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. Based in 2020, H2 Inexperienced Metal goals to decarbonize steelmaking through the use of hydrogen fuel, which produces water vapor slightly than carbon dioxide. The Boden plant is because of start iron manufacturing by 2026, and expects to produce about 5 million tonnes of the metallic by 2030. Shoppers embody automakers BMW, Porsche and Volvo. h2greensteel.com
Supernormal
Fabian Perez and Colin Treseler spent weeks brainstorming concepts earlier than they conceived their startup Supernormal. “Know-how ought to give tremendous powers to information staff,” Treseler says. “We drew inspiration from our earlier groups at GitHub and Meta, the place one of many core work rules was that if a gathering wasn’t documented, it didn’t exist.” Supernormal helps staff earlier than, throughout, and after conferences, with instruments starting from computerized note-taking creating and sharing detailed agendas and insights from conferences. Greater than 325,000 purchasers use the software program, together with Pink Hat, Motorola, Harvard College, Salesforce, Energy Digital, and Forbes. They’ve raised a $10m seed spherical led by Balderton Capital. supernormal.com
Fever Power
Fever Power develops digital energy crops (VVP)—swimming pools of distributed power sources, like photo voltaic panels or batteries, that can be utilized to ship power to the facility grid. “A VVP is rather like a conventional energy plant,” says Ruben Flam, CEO of Fever Power. “An awesome instance can be a fleet of electrical autos that may discharge power again to the facility grid.” Based by 2022 by Flam, Klas Johansson and Ron Stolero, in February 2024, it raised a €10m seed spherical led by Normal Catalyst with the participation of Norrsken VC and La Famiglia. The startup can’t disclose purchasers’ names, however claims they’re already working with giant utility firms and EV producers. fever.energy
Neko Well being
Since its launch in 2023, almost 5,000 folks have visited Neko’s well being middle in Stockholm. Contained in the clinic, they underwent a $230 non-invasive full-body scan in lower than an hour that checked for indicators of potential pores and skin, metabolic and cardiovascular illnesses. In response to the corporate, the scans recognized doubtlessly critical circumstances in a single p.c of that cohort, together with aortic aneurysms, extreme diabetes and pores and skin most cancers. Launched by Spotify founder Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, the healthtech startup has raised €60 million from traders that embody Atomico, Normal Catalyst, and Lakestar. A brand new Neko well being middle in London will likely be opening quickly. nekohealth.com
Evroc
Based in 2022 by Mattias Åström, Andreas Birnik, and Andreas Jönsson, Evroc launched out of stealth in 2023 with €13 million in funding from backers equivalent to EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC. In August 2024, it raised an extra €42 million. The mission? To construct a sustainable hyperscale cloud in Europe. “Europe has sadly fallen behind in cloud companies and American gamers at the moment management greater than 80 p.c of the entire cloud market,” says Åström. “We’re based evroc to place an finish to this overseas dominance.” Building of their flagship knowledge middle in Arlandastad will begin on the finish of 2024. “We may even search for appropriate areas for our personal knowledge facilities in France and Germany,” says Åström. “By 2030, we count on to have a community of 10 hyperscale knowledge facilities throughout Europe.” evroc.com
PaperShell
In Might 2024, Italian furnishings designer Arper launched a brand new version of the workplace chair Catifa 53. The unique was made with leather-based, metallic and plastic; the brand new model makes use of, as a substitute, a sustainable composite biomaterial manufactured from kraft paper and resins, which is as sturdy as a fiber composite and as weather-resistant as plastic. This wooden substitute was invented by PaperShell, an organization launched in 2021 by Anders Breitholtz and Mathieu Gustafsson. The fabric shouldn’t be solely fully fossil free however may, on the finish of its life cycle, be transformed into biochar. The corporate has raised €13.3 million. papershell.se
This text first appeared within the November/December 2024 version of WIRED UK.
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