Weekly update #102

Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market and the VC industry.

Builders is back with Season 3! Last week, I sat down with Tuomas Toivonen , founder and CEO of Holvi . You can find the full episode here on YouTube, or here on Spotify and here on Apple Podcast.

Tuomas has over 15 years of experience advising governments and global mobile operators on payment systems. He saw the need for a better banking solution for small businesses in Europe. This drove him to create Holvi – a banking-service designed to meet the unique needs of SMEs.

Holvi is an Helsinki based digital bank, offering small businesses, from freelancers to micro businesses and growing startups, a home for their finances. With a business account and Mastercard, invoicing and bookkeeping tools all in one place, Holvi simplifies the time-consuming distractions of financial admin, helping small business owners to manage their balance.

With him, we talked about the experience of launching a neobank in the nordics, the different funding environment in fintech between 2012 and 202, but also the main challenges in financial services in the current environment.

Coming back to us, I’ve been reading a very interesting report this week, the “State of the Swedish ecosystem 2024” by Dealroom.co. Recently, the Stockholm ecosystem is on the rise in Europe as one of the most interesting startup hubs in terms of innovation and capital raising, mostly driven by Lovable success. So I wanted to understand how it evolved over time and the kind of numbers we are talking about. Here the main takeaways:

Between 2020 and 2024, Sweden secured €22.7 billion in venture capital, ranking fourth in Europe after the UK (€105.1B), Germany (€50.3B) and France (€46.8B). However, on a per capita basis, Sweden leads the continent with €2.4K invested per inhabitant, ahead of Switzerland (€1.8K), the UK (€1.7K), Norway (€1.2K) and Denmark (€1.2K). This performance underscores the strength of Sweden’s startup ecosystem, which outpaces larger economies such as France (€753 per capita) and Germany (€663).

Sweden’s VC landscape has grown significantly, rising from €558.6M in 2014 to a peak of €8.1B in 2021, largely driven by Northvolt’s fundraising. Investments stabilized at €5.3B in 2022 and €4.5B in 2023, before reaching €2.3B in 2024. While late-stage funding dominated in peak years, early and breakout stages have maintained steady inflows, ensuring a balanced pipeline of startups. The surge between 2019 (€3B) and 2021 reflects the ecosystem’s maturity, positioning Sweden as a leading European hub capable of scaling ventures from early stage to unicorn status, supported by sustained investor confidence across funding stages.

Around 140 Swedish startups secure their first VC round each year, feeding a pipeline of over 2,000 early-stage ventures (€100K–15M funding), 218 breakout-stage companies (€15–100M), and 41 late-stage firms (€100M+). Sweden accounts for 4–5% of European startups across stages, yet its impact is amplified at scale with 38 unicorns with $1B+ exits. Notably, 33% of Sweden’s unicorns have reached $100B+ valuations, led by Spotify, while Klarna stands in the $10B–100B range.

The combined value of Swedish startups has expanded from €34B in 2015 to €319B in 2025, peaking at €349B in 2021. Growth was driven by a surge in unicorns (€1–10B) and decacorns (€10B+), which accounted for most of the ecosystem’s value, especially in 2020 (€210B) and 2021. Despite some fluctuations, the ecosystem remained strong, with valuations of €237B in 2022, €249B in 2023, and €295B in 2024. This trajectory underscores Sweden’s ability to scale startups into globally significant players, supported by a dynamic pipeline of future unicorns and consistent creation of billion-euro companies.

Anyway we saw a lot of interesting news this week. BVNK made it to the news when they got an investment from Citi, and just days after they got reported in potential talks for acquisition by Mastercard and Coinbase for $2.5B! Both PayPal and Amazon integrated with UPI to land payments in India, OpenAI acquired fintech startup Roi, Ramp acquired Jolt AI (acquired by Ramp), Sequoia Capital is looking to expand their team to invest in Europe, PayPay Corporation acquired 40% of Binance Japan, and Zilch launched Intelligent commerce and Zilch Pay. In the VC market, Wave Function Ventures closed a $15M fund to invest in deep tech, Sugar Free Capital raised a $32M fund, and Inclusive innovation catalyst launched a $30 million fund. In the Italian ecosystem we saw Qualcomm acquiring Arduino , one of the most used open-source platforms worldwide. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Akua, monobank.com, Meanwhile, Jiko, Feedzai, n8n, Coinflow and many others.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days.

Closed deals

• monobank.com becomes Ukraine’s first fintech unicorn with UMAEF investment
• Feedzai secures $75m funding, surpasses $2bn valuation in fight against financial crime
• French cybersecurity startup MokN raises €2.6M to expand deception-based identity protection to the U.S.
• Agio Ratings raises €5M to expand crypto risk intelligence for banks
• Meanwhile secures $82M to scale Bitcoin life insurance and annuities
• Elon Musk’s xAI raises $20 Billion with NVIDIA backing
• Dhan becomes unicorn with $120M funding led by Hornbill Capital
• AiPrise raises $12.5M to build AI-powered global compliance infrastructure
• Jiko secures strategic investment from Coinbase and Blockstream to scale treasury-backed banking
• Egypt’s SABIKA gets six-figure founding round for Sharia-compliant investment platform
• Akua raises $8.5M to build the next-generation payments infrastructure in LatAm
• Berlin’s n8n raises $180M at $2.5B valuation to scale AI orchestration platform
• ICE invests $2B in Polymarket to bring prediction markets to the NYSE
• Increase Alpha secures $3.5M to advance AI-powered equity prediction engine
• Stakk raises $15M to accelerate embedded finance expansion in US and Australia
• Coinflow raises $25M to take on Stripe and Worldpay with Stablecoin-powered payments
• Routefusion secures $26.5M to scale cross-border payments infrastructure

Insights on the VC industry

• Wave Function Ventures launches $15M deep tech fund led by ex-SpaceX engineer Jamie Gull
• Sugar Free Capital launches $32M inaugural fund to back MIT founders in AI and deep tech
• Inclusive Innovation Catalyst launches with £30M to back diverse founders in the West Midlands

News on the market

• OpenAI acquires fintech startup Roi to boost personalized consumer AI push
• Coinbase seeks federal trust bank license to expand custody business
• Wallet in Telegram Messenger partners with Kraken and Backed to launch tokenized US stocks and ETFs
• Monzo Bank considers renewed push for U.S. banking license amid deregulatory shift
• PayPal launches 5% cash back on BNPL purchases for U.S. holiday season
• Ramp acquires Jolt AI (acquired by Ramp) team to accelerate engineering productivity and AI development
• PayPal integrates UPI into PayPal World, strengthening India’s role in cross-border payments
• Walmart-backed OnePay to add crypto trading and custody through zerohash
• keenest 🌈 surpasses €10M milestone to finance sustainable economy startups
• Fifth Third Bank announces $10.9B acquisition of Comerica Bank to create ninth-largest U.S. lender
• ソフトバンク acquires ABB’s robotics division for $5.4B to accelerate “Physical AI”
• Revolut targets to acquire 20M customers in India by 2030
• Amazon Pay launches UPI Circle and expands payments to smartwatches in India
• PayPay Corporation acquires 40% stake in Binance Japan to merge payments and crypto
• Citi Ventures backs BVNK as stablecoin infrastructure demand surges
• Zilch launches Intelligent Commerce and Zilch Pay to drive next growth phase
• Crazy news: Coinbase and Mastercard in talks to acquire BVNK for $2.5B
• Sequoia Capital to strengthen its European presence and expand the team

A special look in the Italian market

• Qualcomm acquires Italian Arduino to merge open-source with advanced AI

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Infintech 2025 | Porto, Montenegro - 09-10/10/2025 (link here)
• 5th Annual Digital Banking Summit | London - 21-22/10/2025 (link here)
• Singapore Fintech Festival | Singapore - 12-14/11/2025 (link here)
• Seamless Saudi Arabia | Riyadh - 17-19/11/2025 (link here)
• MoneyLIVE Payments | Amsterdam - 19-20/11/2025 (link here)
• 22nd Bank Management Conference | Athens - 20/11/2025 (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Startups raising funds

• Loyyal - Loyalty platform from the MENA region, with entities in the US and South East Asia, provides a B2B2C platform to handle multiple loyalty programs and earn rewards all over the world. Raising a $6M Series A
• Freedhome - Proptech and fintech platform, enabling people to be able to gain profit from real estate by renting them to intermediaries. Raising a $1M seed round

• Weagle - B2B Tech startup that provides the very first browser designed for company, with total security for sensitive data. Raising $6 millions for their seed round.

• Shoppy Code:Gift card platform that offers a points based loyalty program. They share part of the profits coming from marketing budgets with their customers. Raising $500k.

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #101