Encore (disclosure: Alliance VC has invested) is getting close to releasing their new product Leap.new. Leap.new is an AI coding assistant for developers that want to write production-ready code and be able to deploy to their own AWS or Google Cloud Product.
Go to Leap.new and sign-up on the waitlist!
Oscar Werner, formerly CEO of Sinch, has become CEO of Gilion (formerly Ark Kapital), a Stockholm-based growth and lending platform. Alliance VC is an investor in Gilion.
Alliance VC, together with angels, has invested in Norwegian/Dutch company Ciloo.
Ciloo helps multinational companies facilitate a shift from centralized mass production to local and on-demand production of products supporting e.g. employer branding, sales and marketing, recruitment, loyalty programs and corporate branding. Ciloo’s platform for internal e-commerce let companies better manage this, leading to reductions in carbon emissions, enhanced brand control, and lower costs.
Norwegian Simployer Group has acquired the Stockholm-based human resources system AlexisHR, an Alliance VC portfolio company. More in Breakit (Swedish) and Finansavisen (Norwegian). Congrats to Nima Samimi & team!
Norwegian maker of humanoid robots 1X has raised a $100 million Series B from new and old investors. The money will be used to take its next generation android NEO, that can be used for assistance with domestic tasks in the home by consumers, to market.
Alliance VC invested in the Series A round in early 2023 and I wrote some notes around it then.
About one year ago Alliance VC invested in Stockholm-based Steep, a company that is building the modern analytics platform. The magic comes from the combination of a beautiful and intuitive user experience and Steep’s semantic layer.
Johan Baltzar, who co-founded Steep with Nino Höglund, has written about how Steep’s reports functionality feels very much like Notion. It is one example how Steep is raising the bar for all business intelligence tools.
Alliance VC has participated in Mjuk’s latest €2.5 million fundraising together with Trind Ventures, Lifeline Ventures, Superhero Capital and others.
We first invested about 18 months ago and have been impressed by how Rickard, Max and Casper has adapted and improved Mjuk in the face of a very tough economic environment where consumers are spending less on furniture and more on interest payments.
To make Mjuk an even better place for furniture re-commerce, Mjuk has added quality inventory directly from brands and increased focus on having very attractive prices.
I believe quality inventory (second hand and non-used) and attractive prices is the right way to build a great marketplace in the very large furniture market.
This morning I travelled to Helsinki for a board meeting and to meet with interesting startups.
Alliance VC invests across the Nordics, which I believe it is an advantage compared to only invest in startups from e.g. Sweden or Norway. The main reason is that the ecosystems give birth to slightly different types of startups, which gives a wider variety of startups on a Nordic level compared to what can be found in any individual Nordic country.
But early-stage investing, and the following 10 year journey of building a company, is to a large extent a local pursuit. That’s why I took the first flight from Stockholm to Helsinki this morning.
At Alliance VC we really like to invest in Nordic fintech startups that use technology, like AI, to create great services. Not least when those services help startups and growing companies raise capital. Arne Tonning, one of the partners at Alliance, has written a blog post about our investments in Deckmatch (uses AI to improve management of inbound pitches) and Ark Kapital (uses AI to lend to startups).
The Nordics, and not least Sweden, has a strong track record in fintech and we’re looking forward to invest in more fintech startups in 2023 and 2024.
Alliance VC has invested in Deckmatch’s pre-seed round. We’re big believers in that founders Leo and Walid are building an AI-driven tool that can make VC firm make better and fairer investment decisions. Read more on TechCrunch and Tech.eu.