Why is Stockholm, a capital with a population of less than 1 million, home to global brands like Skype, Spotify, Klarna and Minecraft? “I think it has to do with the Swedish creed,” says Ben Eliass, CEO of body care brand Estrid. “It’s a nation that emphasized high-quality education and invested heavily in telecommunications infrastructure in the 90s, so we all grew up with high-speed internet.”
Many also credit a welfare system that acts as a “safety net” for entrepreneurship. “It allows people to take big risks and start companies without too much fear of downside,” says Max Junestrand, CEO of legal tech startup Leya. Indeed, Sweden has now produced more unicorns per capita than any other country in Europe except Estonia, earning it the reputation of Europe’s Silicon Valley. “Stockholm has a truly unique ecosystem where you can stand on the shoulders of giants,” says Colin Treseler, CEO of Supernormal. “They’ve invested an incredible amount of resources into the talent here, creating a critical mass of engineers, designers and product thinkers who are exceptional in their field.”
Estrid
Once, at a dinner party, Amanda Westerbom confided to her friends that she preferred to use men’s razors. Surprisingly, many of her friends did too – not only did they provide a better shave, but they were also cheaper. With the help of co-founders Alan Aygun and Ben Eliass, Westerbom decided to change that, and in 2019, they launched the Estrid razor brand. “We designed the handle ourselves, bought a €500 3D printer from a hardware store and started iterating,” says Ben Eliass, CEO of Estrid. “That thing was printing hundreds of handles, working day and night. In the end, my house almost burned down because it was under such strain.” The result is a five-blade razor with a vegan moisturizing strip and a weighted ergonomic handle, which the company now offers to more than one million subscribers across Europe. “We are dethroning one of the most dominant consumer monopolies of the modern era, becoming a cutting-edge, all-encompassing personal care brand. A next-generation pigeon, if you will.” estrid.com
repent
Joel Wägmark, Johannes Elgh and Joel Nordström met while working at the fintech startup Vink, which in 2022 was bought by Visa for $2.2 billion. “I saw firsthand how quickly consumer fintech was changing,” says Nordström. “But the equivalent financial instruments for businesses simply did not exist. Finance teams at the vast majority of companies use a combination of Excel, online banking portals and legacy systems from the 80s and 90s. It’s a lot of manual labor.” Atlar, the Wägmark, Elgh and Nordström bank-to-bank payment platform launched in 2022, removes such complexity by automating payments for companies with multiple bank accounts in Europe. “We connect directly to traditional banks and provide faster, more UX-friendly tools to manage cash, forecast cash flow and make payments.” says Nordström. With more than 35 customers in 10 countries, including the US, UK, France and Germany, Atlar has raised €13 million from investors including Index Ventures and General Catalyst. atlar.com
That
Leya has developed a GenAI platform that automates repetitive and manual tasks performed by lawyers. “We saw firsthand how lawyers struggled with heavy text and administrative tasks such as filling out templates and extracting information from large numbers of documents,” says CEO Max Junestrand. “We want every lawyer to be empowered by AI in their work to achieve more.” The startup – a Y Combinator graduate – was founded in 2023 by Max Junestrand, August Erseus and Sigge Labor. In July 2024, they announced a $25 million Series A round led by US VC Redpoint Ventures, totaling $36 million in funds raised. They have over 100 clients in 10 markets across Europe, including UK firm Bird & Bird, the largest Nordic law firm, Mannheimer Swartling and Spanish firm Pérez-Llorca. “We are focused on solving specific legal tasks,” says Junestrand. “This has set us apart from the crowd where the focus is more on providing a platform of general LLM capabilities.” leya.law
CONSIDERATE
Anton Osika, founder and CEO of Lovable, is on a mission to create what he calls “the ultimate piece of software.” “We’ve created an AI that creates software,” he says. “We launched Lovable to enable everyone to have the same capabilities that product development teams at tech companies have at their fingertips.” Lovable’s product, GPT Engineer, allows users to build websites and web applications through a simple chat interface. “Unlike other AI tools that can code, which can take hours to generate results, Lovable gives people instant feedback and allows for rapid iteration,” says Osika. Launched in 2023, the startup currently has over 2,000 users and a waiting list of 27,000 people from over 154 countries. Lovable has closed a $7.5 million pre-funding round led by VC Hummingbird and the Founders. Also backed by investors including Mattias Miksche, Shopify’s Siavash Ghorbani, Voi’s Fredrik Hjelm and Creandum co-founder Stefan Lindeberg. “One user created a real-time dashboard for financial data, just by request,” says Osika. “She decided to quit her job to build startups with AI tools.” adorable.dev
H2 green steel
In January 2024, cleantech startup H2 Green Steel raised €4.75 billion to complete its flagship project in Boden, a city in northern Sweden: the world’s first large-scale green steel plant. Due to its dependence on coal, standard steel production is responsible for up to 9% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Founded in 2020, H2 Green Steel aims to decarbonize steel production by using hydrogen gas, which produces water vapor rather than carbon dioxide. The Boden plant is due to start iron production by 2026 and is expected to supply around 5 million metric tonnes of metal by 2030. Customers include carmakers BMW, Porsche and Volvo. h2greensteel.com
Supernormal
Fabian Perez and Colin Treseler spent weeks brainstorming ideas before conceiving their startup Supernormal. “Technology should give knowledge workers superpowers,” says Treseler. “We were inspired by our previous teams at GitHub and Meta, where one of the core working principles was that if a meeting wasn’t documented, it didn’t exist.” Supernormal helps workers before, during and after meetings with tools ranging from automatic note-taking to sharing detailed agendas and meeting information. More than 325,000 customers use the software, including Red Hat, Motorola, Harvard University, Salesforce, Power Digital and Forbes. They raised a $10 million seed round led by Balderton Capital. supernormal.com
Fever energy
Fever Energy develops virtual power plants (VVPs) — clusters of distributed energy resources, such as solar panels or batteries, that can be used to send power to the power grid. “A VVP is just like a traditional power plant,” says Ruben Flam, CEO of Fever Energy. “A great example would be a fleet of electric vehicles that can dump energy back into the grid.” Founded until 2022 by Flam, Klas Johansson and Ron Stolero, in February 2024 it raised a seed round of EUR 10 million led by General Catalyst, with participation from Norrsken VC and La Famiglia. The startup can’t reveal the names of customers, but says it already works with major utilities and electric vehicle manufacturers. fever. energy
Neko Health
Since its launch in 2023, nearly 5,000 people have visited Neko’s health center in Stockholm. Inside the clinic, they underwent a $230 non-invasive full-body scan in less than an hour, which checked for signs of potential skin, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. According to the company, the scans identified potentially serious conditions in 1 percent of that cohort, including aortic aneurysms, severe diabetes and skin cancer. Launched by Spotify founder Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, the health tech startup has raised €60 million from investors that include Atomico, General Catalyst and Lakestar. A new Neko Health Center in London is opening soon. nekohealth.com
Eurocat
Founded in 2022 by Mattias Åström, Andreas Birnik and Andreas Jönsson, Evroc launched out of stealth in 2023 with €13 million in funding from backers such as EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC. In August 2024, it raised another 42 million euros. The mission? To build a sustainable cloud at scale in Europe. “Unfortunately, Europe has lagged behind in terms of cloud services, and American players currently control more than 80 percent of the total cloud market,” says Åström. “We founded Evroc to end this foreign domination.” Construction of their flagship data center in Arlandastad will begin at the end of 2024. “We will also be looking for suitable locations for our own data centers in France and Germany,” says Åström. “By 2030, we expect to have a network of 10 hyperscale data centers across Europe.” evroc.com
PaperShell
In May 2024, Italian furniture designer Arper launched a new edition of the Catifa 53 office chair. The original was made of leather, metal and plastic; the new version instead uses a durable composite biomaterial made from kraft paper and resins that is as strong as a fiber composite and as weather-resistant as plastic. This wood substitute was invented by PaperShell, a company launched in 2021 by Anders Breitholtz and Mathieu Gustafsson. The material is not only completely free of fossils, but can also, at the end of its life cycle, be converted into biochar. The company raised 13.3 million euros. paper shell.se
This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of WIRED UK.
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