Nordic EdTech News is the best way to keep up with the EdTech ecosystem across 8 Nordic and Baltic countries. I curate it from company updates and a wide variety of international sources. It’s a passion project of mine - the rest of my time is spent advising / consulting the companies who lead the future of learning. If you’d like to find out more, drop me an email.
Hello and welcome to today’s Nordic EdTech News. Huge thanks to the hundreds of people who have signed up to the waitlist for the Nordic EdTech Summit announced in a special newsletter last Monday. I’ve been blown away by the response and look forward to announcing the date and full programme in due course.
If you’ve not signed up yet, this link has all the latest information.
For the third year, I’m delighted to publish the 2024 Nordic EdTech funding report in an exclusive collaboration with Brighteye Ventures.
The link to download the full report follows below, but in summary:
EdTech VC funding in the Nordics in 2023 was slightly down on 2022 levels. It totalled $108 million compared to $140 million the year before. This represents the region’s second highest-ever total - it’s $28 million more than 2021.
With 38 deals (only one less deal than in 2022), 2023 represented a relatively strong year for the Nordic EdTech ecosystem.
This deal count places the region second behind the UK in European markets and fourth by funding secured, after the UK, France and Germany.
Swedish EdTechs topped the charts with $58 million raised. Norwegian EdTech ran out winners with 16 deals across 2023.
Huge thanks to Hege Tollerud and Rhys Spence at Brighteye Ventures for all of their help and hard work in pulling this together. Your support is always much appreciated!
This Nordic report should be read alongside Brighteye’s 2024 European Edtech Funding Report. That gives a great summary of the key continental trends.
In unexpected deal news from Sweden, Roger Akelius, a billionaire real estate investor, has become a major shareholder in Academedia (Link). He acquired 24.4% of the shares for just over SEK 1.7 billion to take over a group with 680 institutions (including preschools, primary schools, upper secondary schools and adult education) and over 680,000 students.
In an interview with Dagens Industri, he revealed both his motivation ("Why? Because I'm a pedagogy geek.") and his ambition to overhaul Sweden's school system and curriculum: “The new pedagogy that I recommend is based on using more senses. Imagine being able to learn mathematics through hands-on outdoor play, using new tools and by running and imitating."
Integration and closer cooperation with Albert, Akelius’ other EdTech investment seems unlikely, however, at the time of writing.
It’s a particularly interesting move given the “back to basics” policies currently being pursued by the Swedish government. The last fortnight has also seen further similar moves in other Nordic countries. In Denmark, Mattias Tesfaye, the Minister of Children and Education has announced his 12 recommendations to limit the use of screens in school (Link). School leaders agree that the recommendations are useful and relevant (Link), while others worry that better offline teaching cannot be achieved through screen bans alone.
There’s depressingly similar news from Norway where Udir, the Norwegian Directorate of Education has also recommended that mobile phones and smart watches should be removed from classrooms in both primary, secondary and upper secondary schools (Link). The response from students is, of course, not surprising!
Perfect timing therefore for new research from the British Educational Research Association which identifies an inverse relationship between phone bans and student outcomes: “the more a country bans phones, the lower their PISA score.”
At this time, it’s interesting to note that Oslo municipality has purchased 110,000 GPT-3.5 Turbo licences for students and teachers (Link). Staff would have liked more time to make the decision, but commented: “We had no other choice.”
The financial reporting season continued with Sanoma publishing their 2023 full-year results including a “strong performance” from the Learning division. Its net sales were up 17% to €795 million from €681 million in 2022. There’s lots more detail on this link to their investor presentation.
Hugely positive FY 2023 results from Skolon, who passed the SEK 100 million turnover mark from more than over 700,000 paying users. That’s an increase of SEK 41.4 million or 66.8%. from FY 2022, in what Oliver Lundgren, CEO refers to as a “troubled environment.”
For more context / detail on that, my exclusive interview with Neil Selwyn might be helpful. As would his latest blog post: “Taking technology out of Swedish schools … and the search for what the ‘science’ says (notes on Forsler & Guyard 2023).”
Do check out the Nordic Learner Insights 2024 report from Eduhouse. It’s based on 1,600 responses from corporate customers and employee users across Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
And finally, congratulations to Jannie Jeppesen, CEO of Swedish Edtech Industry, who has been appointed chair of the European Edtech Alliance (EEA).
Thanks for reading, Jonathan
News from Denmark
Municipalities “risk fighting with tech giants after the Chromebook decision” according to the chairman of KL. (Link)
Lenus has launched “the world's first accredited education for online holistic health coaching.” (Link)
2023 was a record year for Lindhardt and Ringhof, with notable growth in their learning business. (Link)
LMS365 ties up with Go1 to “deliver a diverse, world-class workplace learning experience.” (Link)
Shape Robotics have increased their financial expectations for FY 2023 to revenues of DKK 170 million and EBITDA of DKK 8 million. (Link)
Detailed introduction to Tinyfarms, startup of the week in Bootstrapping (Link)
Ugly Duckling Games are joining forces with MyStudyWeb Sweden AB to bring Drama Studio to Swedish schools. (Link)
News from Estonia
ALPA Kids have signed a deal with 47 kindergartens in Tallinn, due to start 1 September 2024. (Link)
Swedbank has signed up to become a key partner of Kood/Jõhvi (Link) and has created a fund of €10 million to invest in Estonian education development. (Link)
News from Finland
Code School Finland expands their collaboration with Miyax Digital to support coding education in Sendai, Japan. (Link)
Eduten's work in Mongolia has been shortlisted for this year’s World Government Summit GovTech prize in the Educational Services category. (Link)
Freeed continue their expansion in Italy and launch curated packs of resources for schools. (Link)
Kwizie now supports 13 languages allowing educators to create quizzes in the same or a different language from the original video. (Link)
See the Good’s global network expands with Peru the latest country to come on board. (Link)
News from Iceland
Good to see that the Ministry of Education is looking at changing the current government-led production of learning resources. (Link)
Bara tala and Elko win notable awards at the Education Day event. (Link)
News from Latvia
The Ministry of Education and Science plans a new conference: "Digitisation of schools: equal access to knowledge and educational resources."
News from Lithuania
Opportunity to test EdTech products in Lithuanian schools between October and January 2025. (Link)
Leya AI secures €1 million in pre-seed funding to transform language learning through its personalised AI tutor. (Link)
Three Cubes have cancelled their Kickstarter campaign and launched a new concept trailer for their upcoming game. (Link)
News from Norway
Norwegian schools are spending four times as much per pupil per year on iPads as on books.
The 2023 Student Barometer offers interesting insight into the use of AI in higher education (Link) as students ask for access to plagiarism checking tools in the light of numerous high-profile cases. (Link)
The Directorate for Higher Education & Skills released the results of a survey into the sector’s digital transformation: “Status, opportunities and challenges 2023.”
A new milestone for Curipod as 3 million students are now “engaged, curious, and excited” on the platform. (Link)
Eirik Wahlstrøm, CEO of Ludenso explores the technological progress that has made AR-activated content more accessible than ever. (Link)
Oslo municipality has chosen Vigilo as the new supplier for administration systems for its schools. (Link)
Congrats to We Are Learning, who were placed second among Europe's Top 100 early-stage SaaS B2B startups by Notion Capital. (Link)
News from Sweden
“Teachers sound the alarm: AI companies want to make money from our work” as Läromedelsföttarna seeks to protect its authors’ content from scraping / data mining (Link).
Investigations ongoing as SEK 260 million in grants for learning materials appear to have not been properly spent. (Link)
Albert has confirmed plans to “increase efficiency and accelerate the integration of acquired companies.” Deputy CEO, Anne-Louise Wirén, is also leaving the business. (Link)
IST Group announced their investment in EdAider - no financial details have been released. (Link)
Leah launches an Income Share Agreement to “tackle the enormous skills gap in the global workforce.” (Link)
Lumi Labs brings in new investment for the development of LingoLooper, described as "The Sims with AI for language training." (Link)
Meitner has acquired Vertyget, a scheduling service to further differentiate its offer to schools and municipalities. (Link)
NUITEQ NEXT has won at ISE 2024’s Best of Show awards in the Tech & Learning category. (Link)
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