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Why is Stockholm, a capital with a population of less than one million, home to global brands such as 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 1990s, so we all grew up with high-speed Internet.”
Many also credit a social welfare system that acts as a “safety net” for entrepreneurship. “It allows people to take high risks and build companies, without having to fear the downside too much,” says Max Junestrand, CEO of legal tech startup Leya. In fact, Sweden has now produced more unicorns per capita than any other country in Europe except Estonia, earning it a reputation as the Silicon Valley of Europe. “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 at their craft.”
Estrid
Once at a dinner party, Amanda Westerbom confessed to her friends that she preferred to use men’s razors. Surprisingly, many of his friends did too: not only did they offer 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 razor brand Estrid. “We designed the handle ourselves, bought a 500 euro 3D printer from a hardware store and started iterating,” says Ben Eliass, CEO of Estrid. “That thing printed hundreds of handles, working day and night. In the end, it almost burned down my house because I was under so much pressure.” The result is a five-blade razor with a vegan hydration band and an ergonomic weighted handle that 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 next-generation comprehensive personal care brand. A next generation Paloma, so to speak.” estrid.com
Atlas
Joel Wägmark, Johannes Elgh and Joel Nordström met while working at the fintech startup Vink, which in 2022 was purchased by Visa for $2.2 billion. “We saw firsthand how quickly consumer financial technology was changing,” Nordström says. “But there simply were no equivalent financial tools for businesses. Finance teams at the vast majority of companies use a combination of Excel, online banking portals, and legacy systems from the 1980s and 1990s. “It’s a lot of manual work.” Atlar, the bank-to-bank payments platform launched by Wägmark, Elgh and Nordström in 2022, eliminates that complexity by automating payments for businesses with multiple bank accounts across Europe. “We connect directly with traditional banks and provide faster, more user-friendly tools for managing cash, forecasting cash flow and making payments,” says Nordström. With more than 35 clients in ten countries, including the US, UK, France and Germany, Atlar has raised €13 million from investors including Index Ventures and General Catalyst. atlar.com
read
Leya has developed a GenAI platform that automates manual and repetitive tasks performed by lawyers. “We saw firsthand how lawyers struggled with heavy administrative and text tasks, such as filling out templates and extracting information from large numbers of documents,” says CEO Max Junestrand. “We want AI to empower all lawyers in their work to achieve more.” The startup, a Y Combinator alum, 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, for a total of $36 million in funds raised. They have more than 100 clients in ten markets across Europe, including the British law firm Bird & Bird, the largest law firm in the Nordic countries, Mannheimer Swartling and the Spanish law firm Pérez-Llorca. “We’re focused on solving specific legal tasks,” Junestrand says. “This has differentiated us from the crowd where the focus is more on providing a platform of general LLM capabilities.” leya.ley
Gentle
Anton Osika, founder and CEO of Lovable, is on a mission to create what he calls the “ultimate piece of software.” “We made an AI that creates software,” he says. “We launched Lovable so everyone has at their fingertips the same capabilities that product development teams at technology companies have.” Lovable’s product, GPT Engineer, allows users to create 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 more than 2,000 users and a waiting list of 27,000 people. from over 154 countries has closed a $7.5 million seed funding round led by VC Hummingbird and founders. Also backed by investors such as Mattias Miksche, Shopify’s Siavash Ghorbani, Voi’s Fredrik Hjelm and Creandum co-founder Stefan Lindeberg. “The user created a real-time dashboard for financial data, just by request,” says Osika. “He decided to leave his job to create new companies with artificial intelligence tools.” adorable.dev
H2 Steel Green
In January 2024, cleantech startup H2 Green Steel raised €4.75 billion to complete its flagship project in the northern Swedish city of Boden – the world’s first large-scale green steel plant. Due to its dependence on coal, standard steel production is responsible for up to 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Founded in 2020, H2 Green Steel aims to decarbonize steelmaking by using hydrogen gas, which produces water vapor instead of carbon dioxide. The Boden plant will begin producing iron in 2026 and expects to supply around 5 million tonnes of metal by 2030. Its customers include car manufacturers BMW, Porsche and Volvo. h2greensteel.com
Higher than normal
Fabián Pérez and Colin Treseler spent weeks exchanging ideas before conceiving their startup Supernormal. “Technology should give superpowers to knowledge workers,” says Treseler. “We were inspired by our previous teams at GitHub and Meta, where one of the basic working principles was that if a meeting was not documented, it did not exist.” Supernormal helps workers before, during and after meetings, with tools ranging from automatic note taking, creating and sharing detailed agendas and meeting insights. More than 325,000 customers use the software, including Red Hat, Motorola, Harvard University, Salesforce, Power Digital and Forbes. They have raised a $10 million seed round led by Balderton Capital. supernormal.com
fever energy
Fever Energy develops virtual power plants (VVPs): collections of distributed energy resources, such as solar panels or batteries, that can be used to send power to the electrical grid. “A VVP is like a traditional power plant,” says Ruben Flam, CEO of Fever Energy. “A great example would be a fleet of electric vehicles that can discharge power to the electrical grid.” Founded in 2022 by Flam, Klas Johansson and Ron Stolero, in February 2024 it raised a €10 million seed round led by General Catalyst with participation from Norrsken VC and The Family. The startup cannot reveal customer names, but says they are already working with large utilities and electric vehicle manufacturers. fever.energy
Health Neko
Since its launch in 2023, almost 5,000 people have visited the Neko health center in Stockholm. Inside the clinic, they underwent a $230 non-invasive full-body scan in less than an hour that looked for signs of possible skin, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. According to the company, the scans identified potentially serious conditions in one percent of that cohort, including aortic aneurysms, severe diabetes and skin cancer. Launched by Spotify founder Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, the healthcare technology startup has raised €60 million from investors including Atomico, General Catalyst and Lakestar. A new Neko health center is opening soon in London. nekohealth.com
Evroc
Founded in 2022 by Mattias Åström, Andreas Birnik and Andreas Jönsson, Evroc launched by stealth in 2023 with €13 million in funding from backers such as EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC. In August 2024, it raised 42 million euros more. The mission? Building a sustainable hyperscale cloud in Europe. “Unfortunately, Europe has lagged behind in cloud services and US players currently control more than 80 percent of the total cloud market,” says Åström. “We founded evroc to put an end to this foreign domination.” Construction of its flagship data center in Arlandastad will begin at the end of 2024. “We will also look for suitable locations for our own data centers in France and Germany,” says Åström. “By 2030, we hope to have a network of 10 hyperscale data centers across Europe.” evroc.com
paper shell
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; Instead, the new version uses a sustainable composite biomaterial made from kraft paper and resins, which is as strong as a fiber composite and as weather resistant as plastic. This wood substitute was invented by PaperShell, a company founded in 2021 by Anders Breitholtz and Mathieu Gustafsson. The material is not only completely fossil-free but, at the end of its life cycle, can also be converted into biochar. The company has raised 13.3 million euros. papershell.se
This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of WIRED UK.
