Why is Stockholm, a capital metropolis with a inhabitants lower than 1 million, dwelling to international manufacturers resembling Skype, Spotify, Klarna, and Minecraft? “I feel it has to do with the Swedish creed,” says Ben Eliass, CEO of body-care model Estrid. “It is a nation which put emphasis on high-quality schooling and invested closely in telecoms infrastructure within the ’90s, 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 corporations, not needing to be too afraid of the downsides,” says Max Junestrand, CEO of authorized tech startup Leya. Certainly, Sweden has now produced extra unicorns per capita than some other nation in Europe, aside from Estonia, incomes a popularity because the Silicon Valley of Europe. “Stockholm has a really distinctive ecosystem the place you may 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 essential mass of engineers, designers, and product thinkers which might be distinctive at their craft.”
Estrid
As soon as, at a cocktail party, Amanda Westerbom confessed to her buddies that she most popular to make use of males’s razors. Surprisingly, lots of her buddies additionally did—they not solely supplied a greater shave however they have been additionally cheaper. With the assistance of cofounders Alan Aygun and Ben Eliass, Westerbom determined to vary 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 lots of of handles, working day and evening. Ultimately, it nearly burned down my home as a result of it was beneath such pressure.” The result’s a five-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 some of the dominant shopper monopolies of the trendy period, turning into a next-generation, 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 shortly shopper fintech was altering,” says Nordström. “However the equal monetary tooling for companies simply didn’t exist. Finance groups on the overwhelming majority of corporations use a mixture of Excel, on-line financial institution portals, and legacy programs from the ‘80s and the ’90s. It’s a variety of handbook 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 clients throughout 10 nations, together with the US, UK, France, and Germany, Atlar has raised €13M from buyers together with Index Ventures and Common Catalyst. atlar.com
Leya
Leya has developed a GenAI platform that automates repetitive and handbook duties executed by attorneys. “We noticed firsthand how attorneys struggled with textual content and admin-heavy duties resembling 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 $25 million sequence A spherical, led by US VC Redpoint Ventures, totaling $36 million in funds raised. They’ve over 100 shoppers in 10 markets throughout Europe, together with UK agency Chicken & Chicken, the most important regulation agency within the Nordics, Mannheimer Swartling, and Spanish regulation 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.regulation
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 corporations have at their fingertips.” Lovable’s product, GPT Engineer, permits customers to construct web sites and internet apps by way of a easy chat interface. “Not like different AI instruments that may code, which might take hours to generate outcomes, Lovable offers folks on the spot suggestions and permits for speedy iteration,” Osika says. Launched in 2023, the startup at present has greater than 2,000 customers and a ready checklist 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 buyers together with Mattias Miksche, Shopify’s Siavash Ghorbani, Voi’s Fredrik Hjelm, and Creandum cofounder Stefan Lindeberg. “One person constructed a real-time dashboard for monetary information, simply by prompting,” Osika says. “She determined to give up 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 undertaking 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 accountable 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 fairly than carbon dioxide. The Boden plant is because of start iron manufacturing by 2026, and expects to produce about 5 million metric tons of the metallic by 2030. Shoppers embrace 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 superpowers 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 to sharing detailed agendas and insights from conferences. Greater than 325,000 shoppers use the software program, together with Crimson Hat, Motorola, Harvard College, Salesforce, Energy Digital, and Forbes. They’ve raised a $10 million seed spherical led by Balderton Capital. supernormal.com
Fever Vitality
Fever Vitality 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 Vitality. “An ideal 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 €10 million seed spherical led by Common Catalyst with the participation of Norrsken VC and La Famiglia. The startup can’t disclose shoppers’ names, however claims they’re already working with giant utility corporations and EV producers. fever.power
Neko Well being
Since its launch in 2023, almost 5,000 folks have visited Neko’s well being heart in Stockholm. Contained in the clinic, they underwent a $230 noninvasive full-body scan in lower than an hour that checked for indicators of potential pores and skin, metabolic, and cardiovascular ailments. In response to the corporate, the scans recognized probably critical circumstances in 1 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 well being tech startup has raised €60 million from buyers that embrace Atomico, Common Catalyst, and Lakestar. A brand new Neko well being heart in London might 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 resembling EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC. In August 2024, it raised an additional €42 million. The mission? To construct a sustainable hyperscale cloud in Europe. “Europe has sadly fallen behind in cloud providers, and American gamers at present management greater than 80 p.c of the full cloud market,” says Åström. “We based Evroc to place an finish to this overseas dominance.” Building of their flagship information heart in Arlandastad will begin on the finish of 2024. “We will even search for appropriate areas for our personal information facilities in France and Germany,” says Åström. “By 2030, we anticipate to have a community of 10 hyperscale information facilities throughout Europe.” evroc.com
PaperShell
In Could 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 robust 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 also can, 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.
