Meet the 12 Stockholm Tech Startups at Techarena Challenge 2025

Every June, Almedalen Week (June 24 - 26) transforms Visby into a collision zone for politics, policy, and the people building tomorrow's economy. But for founders and investors in the Nordic tech scene, their focus is on the Innovation Challenge (Techarena Challenge 2025).

This year 25 Nordic startups compete in front of investors, corporates, and policymakers for six titles including Startup Company of the Year, Growth Company of the Year, Audience Award, Social Impact Award, Industrial Award, and the Dream Award.

"Many of this year's finalists are growing at a very high pace, creating impact, and getting results in a much shorter time than we've seen before," said Omid Ekhlasi, CEO & Founder of Techarena.

Last year, Stockholm swept the Techarena Challenge 2024 podium with all six winning startups hailing from there: Rebaba, Flower, Tandem Health, Hypertype, Cellfion, and Stratipath. This year, 12 of the 25 selected startups are Stockholm-based, and in this article, we cover who they are. If you've been reading Stockholm Valley, you've already met two.

Evroc

Evroc is making an audacious play to rewrite Europe’s digital future. Founded in 2022 by serial entrepreneur Mattias Åström, whose track record includes exits to Apple and Nokia, the company has already raised over €50 million in Series A funding, the largest such round in Nordic tech history. Backed by EQT Ventures, Norrsken VC, and France's blisce/, Evroc is setting out to build the continent’s first sovereign hyperscale cloud, aiming to break the stranglehold of American giants like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

The spark for Evroc came from Åström’s frustration with Europe’s reliance on foreign infrastructure, a vulnerability made starker by US laws that can compel American companies to hand over European data. Evroc’s answer: a network of massive, AI-optimized data centers running entirely on renewable energy, designed from the ground up to comply with EU privacy rules and keep European data under European control. "It’s about digital independence," says Åström. "Europe can't lead in AI or tech if we're renting the foundations from someone else."

Evroc's flagship facility, now underway outside Stockholm, will support up to 16,000 GPUs and recycle its waste heat to warm the city, a nod to the company's sustainability ambitions. With plans for ten sites across Europe by 2030 and a goal to create 10,000 jobs, Evroc is doing so much more than just building data centers.

As the Europe's appetite for AI and cloud services accelerates, all eyes are on whether Evroc can deliver on its promise on a homegrown cloud that's as powerful as its American rivals, but built for Europe, by Europe.

Talentium

The Stockholm-based startup Talentium founded by 22-year-old Sebastian Hjärne has already drawn serious attention, raising €3.5 million in pre-seed funding from EQT Ventures and pulling in heavyweight angels like Klarna's Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Sana's Joel Hellermark.

The platform was born out of Hjärne's frustration with cold, transactional hiring processes while building his previous companies. It runs on a proprietary AI engine built to search the web for talent: not just scraping LinkedIn profiles, but parsing GitHub, personal portfolios, and obscure corners of the internet. recruiters type prompts in natural language, and Talentium delivers results in seconds. Think 'Find a machine learning engineer in Berlin with experience at a unicorn' and you're off to the races.

Hjärne, for his part, isn’t interested in building a feature or a widget. He's playing for standards. He talks about making Talentium the default for how companies find people and how people find purpose. Klarna's Siemiatkowski said the product demo was "one of the coolest things" he'd seen, which, considering his track record, isn't a throwaway compliment. Talentium isn't trying to patch up the old way of hiring. It's building the new one. And for the first time in a while, it actually feels like recruitment might catch up with the rest of tech.

Alba Health

Alba Health is betting that the future of pediatric healthcare lies in the gut. Founded in 2022 by Eleonora Cavani, whose own struggles with eczema led her down the microbiome rabbit hole, the company offers at-home gut testing kits for children, utilizing AI to translate results into tailored nutrition plans.

What sets Alba apart isn't just the technology, but the scientific firepower behind it. Targeting a market that's projected to exceed €1.7 billion globally by 2030, they're backed with €4.3 million in funding from investors including Unconventional Ventures and Oura's Petteri Lahtela. Professor Willem M. de Vos, a heavyweight in microbiome research with over 800 publications, serves as chief scientific officer; rooting knowledge in large-scale academic studies like the HELMi Cohort.

Cavani's personal story is central to Alba's narrative, but she's quick to frame the mission in broader terms. "I grew up as the kid who couldn’t play outside because of allergies," she says. "Now, we want to give every child the healthiest and best start in life." The company's pitch is less about miracle cures and more about arming families with actionable, evidence-based insights, something the market has been missing.

With rising rates of allergies and digestive issues, and a growing appetite for preventative care, the company's timing looks well-judged. Whether Alba can turn early momentum into lasting impact will depend on its ability to keep science and usability in balance as it scales.

Solace Care

Solace Care has already secured a SEK 3 million convertible round, attracting notable investors such as Caroline Farberger, former CEO of ICA Försäkring; Mattias Miksche, a serial entrepreneur and tech investor; and Krim Talia, previous CEO of Mindler and Sting.

In Sweden, over 50% of adults have life insurance, but few have access to meaningful emotional or logistical support during bereavement (Finansinspektionen & SCB, 2022). Solace Care aims to fill this gap, providing a platform that extends the value proposition of life insurance beyond the financial safety net. The overall mission is to blend AI technology with human empathy, providing comprehensive support during life's most challenging moments; providing personalized guidance for end-of-life planning and bereavement.

"We raised a few eyebrows when we said we're dedicating the next chapter of our career to 'death-tech'," says CEO Valtteri Korkiakoski. "We're introducing a digital platform that meets a real human need, extending the value proposition beyond the financial safety net. We are here to change the industry standard for the better."

Traditional life insurance has lost appeal among younger consumers, with many preferring wealth management options. According to Bain & Company (2025), nearly half of this demographic is underinsured. Furthermore, Accenture reports that 89% of policyholders globally expect more holistic support from their providers, beyond just financial payouts. Yet, only 28% of insurers currently offer any form of bereavement services alongside claims handling (Deloitte Insights, 2022).

Based at Founders House and surrounded by a community of visionaries, the company is well-positioned to redefine legacy services with a fresh and bold approach.

Meetric

Meetric is a conversational intelligence platform which has quietly established itself as a key player in the Nordics' data-driven business transformation. The company was founded on the premise that traditional meeting and sales tools fail to capture the true value of business conversations. Instead, Meetric leverages AI to transcribe, analyze, and automate insights from every customer interaction, aiming to turn routine meetings into actionable intelligence that drives profitability and growth.

"We believe conversation intelligence is the most exciting thing that has happened since the dawn of the internet, and that we have only begun to scratch the surface," says the team. The platform's core promise is "360 Capture”: recording and transcribing conversations across all channels and departments, then using AI to automate data entry, flag risks, and surface insights that can inform everything from sales coaching to customer retention strategy.

According to Meetric, users can save up to two hours per day on administrative work, and sales teams report up to a 25% increase in hit rates after adopting the platform. The company's focus on Nordic transcription accuracy and GDPR compliance has resonated with regional enterprises, who face unique regulatory and linguistic challenges in deploying AI-powered tools. Although, The platform's impact is perhaps best summed up by its users: "Using Meetric saves us hundreds of manhours every year, and gives sales insights we could previously only dream of," reports one sales leader.

As enterprises in the Nordics and beyond seek to extract more value from their customer interactions, Meetric's blend of AI automation, local compliance, and practical analytics positions it as a company to watch in the rapidly expanding conversation intelligence market.

SimulAir

SimulAir wants to make the phrase “sleeping as bait” obsolete. They have raised SEK 5 million in total thanks to their initial support from KTH Ventures and their March 2025 pre-seed funding round that included participation from First Gate Invest, RadCap, BLING, Propel Capital, and a group of Swedish business angels.

Founded in 2022 by KTH Royal Institute of Technology students Maja Åstrand and Simon Lilja, the company's origin story is as personal as it is urgent. Åstrand, an engineer by training, woke up one night to find her bed crawling with bed bugs, a discovery that would lead to eight weeks of acting as human bait during nightly pesticide treatments. Frustrated by the slow, traumatic, and archaic industry standard, she teamed up with Lilja to build something better: a device that mimics human presence to lure bed bugs out of hiding, eliminating the need for anyone to suffer through the ordeal she endured.

The result is Ifigenia, a nod to the Greek princess sacrificed in myth, reimagined here as a machine that spares humans from sacrifice. The device simulates CO2 and body heat, tricking bed bugs into emerging from their lairs. It's powered by an AI-enhanced computer vision system that identifies and counts captured bed bugs, providing real-time data on treatment progress.

“With the support from KTH Holding, we will be able to take the first steps towards bringing our solution to the market. We believe our technology will contribute to a more sustainable treatment process against bed bugs, both mentally and environmentally. Our end-goal is to make sure that no one will be forced to rely on human bait for a successful treatment ever again,” says CEO Åstrand.

For hotels, hospitals, and landlords, the business case is clear: less downtime, lower costs, and no risk of exposing guests or patients to pests. With a market size projected to grow to €5.7 billion by 2033, the team based in Södermalm might be small, but they're certainly ambitious.

Magma

Magma is seeking to reform the way users learn mathematics in the digital age. In 2024, they closed a €35 million Series A round led by Five Elms Capital, with participation from Swedish angels like FROS Ventures, Kim and William Olsson, and Per Emanuelsson.

Founded in 2015 by childhood friends and Chalmers University alumni Henrik Appert and Arvid Gilljam, the company has grown from a local math app into a global platform now used by hundreds of thousands of students in Sweden, the US, and beyond. Its mission: to close the math achievement gap and give every student, regardless of background, a shot at success in a subject that so often determines future opportunity.

The story begins with frustration. Appert and Gilljam, both steeped in systems thinking from their engineering studies, saw the same problem everywhere: the ways students think about math were trapped in notebooks, invisible to teachers until it was too late. "We had to look for new solutions, for the sake of the students and from an economic point of view," Appert recalls.

The product itself is deceptively simple. Students solve problems using a stylus or mouse, drawing calculations just as they would on paper. Magma's engine automatically assesses answers, but more importantly, it captures the student's entire thought process, allowing teachers to review, replay, and discuss real student work in class. The platform boasts over 60,000 problems across the elementary curriculum, supports 140 languages, and sorts tasks by difficulty to enable true differentiation. For teachers, the result is a data-rich dashboard that surfaces learning gaps instantly and saves precious hours on grading and lesson planning.

With more than half of Sweden's municipalities on board and a rapidly expanding international footprint, Magma is well on its way to making good on its founding promise to make math accessible, engaging, and equitable for every student, everywhere.

AI-BOB

AI-BOB is out to fix one of the construction industry's most expensive and persistent problems: preventable errors. Founded in 2024 by Elin Mårtensson, a veteran of real estate development and building code work, the company's origin story is rooted in frustration of "good people, bad systems, expensive outcomes," as Mårtensson puts it. In just over a year since launch, the company has raised €2.3 million, including a €2 million seed round in early 2025 led by Amsterdam's CapitalT, with participation from Fund F, Germany's NCA, and a cadre of strategic angels. Earlier, EB Invest and the Norrsken Foundation backed the company with €300,000 and €130,000, respectively.

After years of watching projects bleed money and time due to overlooked compliance and blueprint mistakes, Mårtensson teamed up with engineers and product optimists Petter Wallberg, Rickard Svedenmark, and Olle Eriksson to build a copilot that embeds regulatory intelligence directly into the design process. The result is a platform that plugs into architectural software like Revit and does away with the old ritual of PDF checklists and post-hoc reviews. Instead, AI-BOB delivers real-time compliance checks and feedback as you work, reducing review times from weeks to minutes and catching costly errors before they ever reach the building site.

The technology includes large language models, computer vision, and a ruling engine that can parse blueprints with millimeter precision, flagging issues that would otherwise slip through the cracks. The ambition is clear—stop buildings from being built wrong, and in the process, make construction smarter, faster, and far less wasteful.

CapitalT's Janneke Niessen summed up the investor perspective: "What impressed us most is how quickly AI-BOB identified a real market problem and developed a smart, effective solution. With a strong team and a clear vision, they have the potential to transform this industry. We look forward to supporting their journey, which is just beginning."

Already, AI-BOB has landed three global clients and partnered with major Swedish architecture firm White Arkitekter to put its technology through real-world paces. By no surprise, AI-BOB's valuation is past €10 million and is continuing to grow as they fuel both product refinement and international expansion.

Wingbits

Founded in Stockholm in 2023 by serial entrepreneur and former Klarna executive Robin Wingårdh and ex-Klarna engineering lead Alex Lungu, Wingbits' origin story is rooted in the realization that flight tracking data is being harvested for free and sold for millions, while the volunteers who make it possible get little more than a thank you. "It’s a broken model, and it’s time for a fairer one," says Wingårdh. In less than two years, Wingbits has raised €8 million, including a €4.9 million round in early 2025 led by Borderless Capital and Bullish Capital, with backing from Tribe Capital, Antler, and other giants.

The company's core technology is a custom-built, cryptographically-secured ADS-B receiver, the WB200, designed to deliver millimeter-accurate, tamper-proof flight data from anywhere on earth. Unlike the hobbyist kits that power legacy networks like FlightRadar24, Wingbits' hardware is professional-grade, weatherproof, and engineered for both aircraft and drone tracking. Contributors who deploy these devices join a blockchain-powered network built on Solana, earning $WINGS tokens based on the quality and uptime of their data.

Wingbits' network has grown at breakneck speed, expanding from 40 antennas at the end of 2023 to over 2,100 stations across 85 countries by mid-2025, six times faster than any flight tracking system before it. Even sweeter, the market opportunity is enormous, with the global flight tracking sector projected to reach €721 million by 2032. Flight delays alone cost airlines upwards of €65.7 billion a year, and with air traffic set to double by 2040, the demand for real-time, high-fidelity data is only growing.

With a 16-person team spanning five countries and deep expertise from Klarna, Spotify, and Volvo, Wingbits is on a mission to change the future of aviation: to be built not on volunteer labor, but on a decentralized, transparent, and fairly rewarded infrastructure.

Sigrid

Sigrid Therapeutics, despite working from a small office in Stockholm, their ambitions are anything but modest. Founded in 2014 by Bosnian war refugee turned serial entrepreneur Sana Alajmovic and Stockholm University physiology professor Tore Bengtsson, the company is on a mission to make chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and obesity not just manageable, but preventable. They have raised €13.3 million over five rounds as of October 2023, with the latest Series A-III round bringing in €3.7 million. Earlier, a €7.3 million round in November 2021 was led by Joyance Partners, with participation from Swedish and Irish family offices and investment firms.

The spark for Sigrid was deeply personal. Alajmovic's father, once a prominent physician in Bosnia, suffered from a chronic illness after the family fled to Sweden. "Watching my father grapple with a chronic illness and everything that came with it [stayed with me], the mood swings, the wounds on his feet, the fatigue," Alajmovic recalls. That experience, combined with Bengtsson's decade-plus of research into metabolic disorders, led to a simple but radical question: could you block the enzymes that break down carbs and fats, and in doing so, slow the metabolic rollercoaster that leads to diabetes?

The answer, after more than 15 years of research, 10+ patents, and four clinical trials, is SiPore: a platform built on micron-sized, engineered silica particles that act as "molecular sieves" in the gut. Instead of being absorbed into the bloodstream, these particles trap digestive enzymes locally, slowing the breakdown of food and flattening the spikes in blood sugar and fat that drive metabolic disease. Sigrid's flagship product, Carb Fence, is a medical-grade, fast-acting liquid formula powered by SiPore.

Alajmovic, who jokes that she's the only one on her 12-person team without a Ph.D., is clear-eyed about what it takes to build something new in healthcare. "Entrepreneurship is 90% execution and 10% idea," she says. "You have your Ph.D. in organic chemistry in physiology. But I have my Ph.D. in execution." Their story is still being written. But with a platform that bridges hard science and everyday usability, and an ambitious team, the company seems to stands out in a crowded field of metabolic health startups.

Cemvision

Cemvision is the Stockholm upstart betting that cement, the world's most polluting building block, can be radically reinvented. Founded in 2020 by industry veterans Claes Kollberg, Paul Sandberg, and Marcus Olsson, the company is on a mission to slash the cement industry's carbon footprint by up to 95%. They have raised €10 million in 2024's largest green cement seed round, with backing from Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy, Polar Structure, BackingMinds, and Zacua Ventures.

Cemvision's approach is to swap out the centuries-old recipe of burning limestone for a process that upcycles industrial waste and runs on green energy, all while delivering cement that's just as strong and fast-setting. The company's Re-ment platform is at the heart of the revolution. Instead of mining and firing virgin limestone, Cemvision uses byproducts from steel and mining, materials that would otherwise be landfill-bound, and processes them at lower temperatures in electrified kilns. The result is a cement that's not just cleaner, but also outperforms traditional Portland cement in early strength and durability.

"You can't sell anything on pure goodwill alone," says CEO Oscar Hållén, a Klarna alum who's steered Cemvision from stealth mode to the global stage. "We're not just making green cement, we're making better cement."

The company's demo plant in Poland is already producing thousands of tons annually, and its technology is being deployed in real-world projects, from Vattenfall's wind farms to Skanska’s construction sites and the UK's STOREX Sunbury warehouse. But the ambition goes bigger. Cemvision plans to retrofit existing cement plants across Europe, aiming for 5 million tons of annual production by 2030.

Braive

Founded in 2015 by Norwegian clinical psychologist Henrik Haaland Jahren and Swedish entrepreneur Hermine Bonde Jahren, Braive is on a mission to democratize access to high-quality mental health care by fusing artificial intelligence, evidence-based psychology, and user-centric design. Braive is a precision engine, personalized and evolving with every user, every session, and every outcome. It reduces drop-off, cuts sick leave, and frees up professionals to do what they do best: treat. Braive claims they're able to boost efficiency by 300% and have helped 80% of patients move from clinical to subclinical symptom levels in just four weeks. In 2025, the company will expand from Scandinavia to India through a partnership with Sukoon.

The spark for Braive came from Henrik's frustration with the inefficiencies of traditional mental health care: "Scarce and mostly confined to pen-and-paper methods, behind closed doors," he recalls. At the heart of Braive's platform is a CE-certified digital treatment system that blends AI-powered diagnostics with personalized, internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (iCBT). The platform can screen and triage patients in under 15 minutes, generating individualized care plans and automating clinical documentation using AI-notes. Grounded in more than two decades of psychological research, Braive addresses everything from anxiety and depression to work-related stress, and is used by major occupational health providers like Avonova, insurance companies including Gjensidige, and is integrated into platforms such as Winningtemp.

Braive’s research pedigree runs deep: the company collaborates with KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the University of Oslo, contributing to peer-reviewed studies and pioneering projects like ALEC2. Alongside this, Braive is supported by board chair Jonathan Forster (an early Spotify executive) and long-term investors like Northzone’s Pär-Jörgen and Annika Sten Pärson via The Inner Foundation. "We've always believed in building for the long run, not just the next funding round," notes Hermine.