Four startups from the Öresund region have earned a spot on this year’s 33-listan, Affärsvärlden’s and Ny Teknik’s annual list of Sweden’s most promising young tech companies.
The list, which this year spans everything from AI and quantum computing to green chemistry and defence tech, includes two companies from Lund, one from Malmö, and one from Helsingborg.
Staer: The Veterans’ Third Startup
Malmö-based Staer is led by Jan Erik Solem, who has already built two companies sold to American tech giants. With his previous company Mapillary, which built crowdsourced maps and was later sold to Meta / Facebook, he was on the list as far back as 2016.
Staer uses cameras already installed on forklifts and robots moving through warehouses to build 3D maps updated in real time, answering questions about shelf utilisation, product location, and accident risks. The company, founded in 2025 and with 12 employees, has raised around €7.7 million (SEK 88 million), from investors including LDV Capital and Pale Blue Dot. In the long term, Solem sees uses in construction, agriculture, and healthcare.
Klang: Open Swedish AI Speech Recognition From Helsingborg
Helsingborg-based Klang has built an AI platform to transcribe, summarise, and evaluate conversations, with customers in the public sector, insurance, and law, industries with tough demands on data security and GDPR compliance.
Recently, the company released Pianissimo, an open AI model for Swedish speech recognition that can process over an hour of audio in a second. It is important that there is a Swedish AI model with open weights that anyone can download and use locally, says AI lead Mattias Fält. In September, Klang raised about €1.3 million (SEK 15 million), to expand abroad, and is already present in Japan, with launches planned in the Nordics, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Saveggy: Edible Plastic Replacement From Lund
Lund-based Saveggy has developed an edible protection for fruit and vegetables, a micrometre-thin layer based only on rapeseed and oat oil, replacing the plastic around cucumbers. In autumn 2025, the technology was tested together with ICA and Odlarna.se: 167,000 cucumbers were sold with the protection in over 250 stores, with shelf life at least as good as plastic-wrapped cucumbers, according to ICA.
If all Swedish-grown cucumbers received the protection, up to 130 tonnes of plastic per year could be avoided, according to the company’s calculations. Saveggy, founded in 2019 with nine employees, has raised approximately €3.5 million (SEK 40 million), and is now developing the technology for bananas, zucchini, and paprika.
“I am very proud and happy to be part of Saveggy’s great team.”
said Ola Heffler, CEO Saveggy.
NFA Forestry Automation: AI for the Forest, Also From Lund
Lund’s second entry, NFA Forestry Automation, uses cameras and sensors on forest machines to build a picture of the forest around a harvester, helping the driver decide which trees to thin and which to keep, optimised for growth, carbon uptake, or biodiversity.
Third time on the list, the company has delivered to customers in Australia, New Zealand, and the Baltics, extended pilot tests in the US, and raised €4.2 million (SEK 48 million), from investors including Wallenberg Investments, Sveaskog, and Södra. The company estimates that helping drivers make the right timber decisions could save hundreds of millions per year in Swedish forestry alone.
