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Stockholm is a city long renowned for innovation, sustainability, and progression. No surprise then, that its hottest startups this year have individual and collective well-being at their core—from preventive health apps to environmental platforms. The tech ecosystem is further boosted by its biggest unicorns, such as Klarna and Epidemic Sound, producing a fresh batch of entrepreneurs while alumni from Swedish heavyweights like Spotify, Volvo, and Einride launch new startups. It’s this clash of old and new that sparks innovation done the Stockholm way—over coffee.
“Stockholm is the perfect city for starting up a new venture, due to its strong entrepreneurial ecosystem, top-tier education system, supportive government grants, and high quality of life,” says Jonas Lindberg Nyvang, founder of electric scooter startup Stilride.
PaperShell
This sustainable startup converts paper into a material that is stronger than wood. After extracting hemicellulose from plants and cellulose fibers from kraft paper typically found in packaging, they transform and bond these natural fibers in the lab to form a new, heat- and water-resistant composite. Among the startup’s prototype products is the Paper°Surf—a snowboard made from PaperShell’s patented material. “We’re currently working on sport products and interior architecture to tell the story of its aesthetic potential,” explains Anders Breitholtz, CEO and cofounder alongside Mathieu Gustafsson. Gustafsson says that future large-scale production will target industries such as transportation, architecture, consumer goods, and electronics. Founded in 2021, the startup has raised €9.7 million ($10.6 million) and began production in spring 2023. papershell.se
Milkywire
When Nina Siemiatkowski quit her job as a marketing director to become a wildlife photographer in the savannas of Kenya, she came face-to-face with the rapid decline of lion populations. Upon returning to Sweden in 2018, she established environment tech platform Milkywire to connect environmental initiatives and supporters. “Only 2 percent of donations typically reach environmental causes, and there can be a lack of transparency and efficiency in the sector,” explains Siemiatkowski. “Yet I saw a strong desire to contribute to the environment—and an opportunity to leverage digital technology.”
Rather than traditional carbon credits, the Milkywire platform enables direct donations to curated portfolios of environmental projects, with comprehensive reporting on contributions and impact metrics. Milkywire takes 10 percent of every donation. Over the past three years, it has boosted turnover by 200 percent, raising more than $20 million (around €18 million) in contributions to its impact funds. Entrepreneurship runs in the Siemiatkowski household: Husband Sebastian is the CEO of Klarna. milkywire.com
Hypertype
The average knowledge worker spends around 30 hours a week checking emails. Teenie Fung and Beatrice Baltscheffsky’s AI-powered technology aims to slash that figure, and the startup claims it can boost efficiency tenfold. Hypertype fetches employees’ most relevant information from their emails and documents and, through natural language processing, can then synthesize long email threads and output auto-generated responses.
“Before ChatGPT was released, many companies were still skeptical about integrating AI solutions into their daily operations,” says Baltscheffsky. “Today, we get several requests per week to implement our models into their systems. Businesses are aware they need to start working with AI but are overwhelmed about everything that is happening.” Founded in 2021, Hypertype has raised $1.5 million (around €1.37 million) in pre-seed and angel funding from Luminar Ventures. hypertype.co
Neko
In February 2023, Spotify founder Daniel Ek opened the doors to his new business: health tech venture Neko. Located in the heart of Stockholm’s shopping district, it has a full-body scanner that can collect 50 million data points and 15 gigabytes of health data in just 15 minutes. Through radar, laser, 3D, and thermal imagery captured by more than 70 sensors, Neko can screen for certain types of cancer, cardiovascular problems, diabetes, and skin irregularities—detecting abnormalities down to 0.2 millimeters in just seconds.
Neko sold out more than 1,500 45-minute appointments in under two hours, with more than 10,000 people now on its waiting list. It’s currently doing up to 14 scans daily. Founded with Hjalmar Nilsonne, whose previous startup specialized in energy data analysis, Neko initially received $30 million (nearly €27.5 million) in funding from Ek and his investment company, Prima Materia, followed by investments from Lakestar, Atomico, and General Catalyst. nekohealth.com
FRESHSOUND
Freshsound provides a licensing platform for commercially released songs, with pricing algorithms and recommendations that enable brands to soundtrack their next campaign in an instant. CEO Stevie Gyasi came upon the idea behind his company after trying to select a short song clip for an advertising campaign and ending up entangled in red tape. “The record label told me I needed to contact six songwriters and negotiate with each of them,” he says. “It can take months to license one song—and you can get a ‘no’ from a 1 percent rightsholder.” In May 2023, Freshsound, which was launched in 2021 by Gyasi and Sara Larsson, closed a seed funding round of €2 million ($21.5 million). freshsound.com
FEVER ENERGY
The typical electricity grid relies upon a central supplier and the end consumer—think large, central power stations transmitting generation loads across long distribution lines to customers in a sprawling region. Fever aims to enable the decentralized grid. By deploying AI and connecting any type of distributed energy resource to the grid, it empowers production to be closer to where it will be used—meaning more renewable energy sources are added. Founded by Ruben Flam, Jonatan Raber, Klas Johansson, and Ron Stolero, Fever raised €1.6 million ($1.7 million) in seed funding in February 2023. It’s now partnering with utility companies, EV makers, and charge-point operators. fever.energy
Treyd
Founded in 2019 by Peter Beckman and Sameh El-Ansary, Treyd takes a “sell first, buy suppliers later” model that thrived during the 2021 supply chain crisis. It works by fulfilling supplier invoices on behalf of businesses, which can then receive and sell their goods, generate cash flow, and pay back their loan within 120 days. Freight prices may have normalized, but merchants’ cash-flow issues persist: High inflation means demand for Treyd continues to boom. It currently serves more than 500 customers, typically small, direct-to-consumer companies, ranging from electronics to outdoor brands. Approximately 30 percent of its customers and revenue now come from the UK, since Treyd expanded there in fall 2022. In total, it has raised around €11.3 million ($12.3 million) in funding. treyd.io
Encore
In 2015, André Eriksson was a backend engineer at Spotify when the streaming giant transitioned to the cloud. This meant tasks suddenly became harder, workflow became slower, and building features became tougher. So, he built Encore as a side project. Enabling cloud services directly in application code, the end-to-end development platform spares developers from wasting hours on daily repetitive tasks—and the agony of dealing with platform-level mismatches from local to cloud. In 2021, Eriksson joined forces with ex-Spotify colleague Marcus Kohlberg to launch Encore as a product, raising €2.75 million ($3 million) in seed funding led by London-based Crane Ventures. encore.dev
Dema.ai
Founded by Marcus Tagesson, Henrik Hoffman, and David Feldell in 2022, Dema.ai is building real-time analytics tools for small, direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands. The B2B platform collects, cleans, and enriches business’ commercial metrics, including operational profitability, in real time. This data, Tagesson says, “has only been available to the top 1 percent of ecommerce businesses.” Generative AI then turns the raw data into actionable insights, such as predictive modeling that can suggest which stock to reorder. “Our clients transition from making gut-feeling decisions to becoming truly data-driven,” adds Tagesson. After raising a pre-seed funding round of €4 million ($43.1 million), led by J12 Ventures, Dema.ai launched in spring 2023, collaborating with 15 ecommerce companies. dema.ai
GydEd
This digital therapy service focuses on the student experience: University undergraduates do a weekly check-in with a chatbot, which then feeds well-being data to campus administrators, who can in turn provide proactive support. App users can also reach out to on-site well-being staff. “Most universities have great resources and support networks,” says Sebastian Thomas, who cofounded the startup alongside Simon Norrman in 2020. “It’s just that students often don’t know how to access them.” Since bootstrapping, GydEd has piloted with four US colleges, identifying thousands of students at risk of depression or dropping out of university. Its full launch is in the autumn. gyded.me
This article appears in the January/February 2024 issue of WIRED UK magazine.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
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