Nordic EdTech News #134: 2025-05-12

Your Weeks 18 to 19 update from the Nordic and Baltic EdTech ecosystem

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, hit reply!

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Hello and welcome to today’s Nordic EdTech News. It’s great that there are 111 new subscribers since my last issue. I’m very pleased to see you here and hope that you’ll find value in these updates moving forwards.

The transformational impact of AI on education and learning has been a key theme for many of these newsletters recently. But as I’ve written about previously here and on other platforms, not all governments in our ecosystem have been convinced of its value for schools and compulsory education.

Sweden has been notably slow to get moving. Jannie Jeppesen, CEO of Swedish Edtech Industry, wrote recently that the government's lack of interest in AI in schools was a big problem. As she notes, they even banned their own AI ​ Commission from making proposals for the school system!

And then suddenly, it was announced last week that the Swedish AI Reform will give 2.3 million Swedes free access to advanced AI. The move was confirmed at the Sana AI Summit and provides free access to Sana’s AI platform for teachers, students, non-profits and public sector employees across Sweden. Access to more tools may come over time.

The initiative has been praised by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who spoke via link at the conference. His speech reiterated that technology “is not a threat, but an opportunity” and highlighted the benefits of taking “technology to the masses.” If you’ve been following his government’s actions and words over the past 3+ years then you might, like me, be scratching your head at this complete about-turn. Let’s see what happens next, but big kudos to Sana and partners for making this amazing initiative come to life.

Of course, Estonia has been at the other end of the spectrum with AI adoption. So it’s interesting to see that Kristina Kallas, Estonia’s Minister of Education and Research, was invited to speak in Stockholm at Skolriksdag 2025. She provides a helpful summary of her speech here, but one quote leaps out at me: “Tech is a tool – the teacher remains the compass.” (Link)

One other notable policy update from Finland, where the government will change the Basic Education Act to prohibit students from using mobile devices during lessons (Link). It’s worth noting that phones may be used for learning, for health reasons or as a learning aid with the teacher's permission. The new law comes into force on 1 August.

There are three notable investment rounds to update readers on from the last 2 weeks. All, unsurprisingly, have AI at their core.

• Norway’s Pistachio confirmed a $7 million Series round to expand the world’s first fully automated cybersecurity awareness training platform. The round was led by Walter Ventures. (Link)

• Denmark’s Alice.tech secured $4.8 million in a new seed round, led by Cherry Ventures. This will accelerate the expansion of the company’s AI learning platform to students worldwide. (Link)

• Stockholm’s Bright raised SEK 3.2 million from Foundry Ventures and other investors for their all-in-one learning platform. (Link)

Congratulations to them and to all of the Nordic companies (12 in total) listed in TIME and Statista list of the 350 Top EdTech Companies of 2025.

If your company’s looking to grow to reach those heights, the EduChallenger accelerator is now accepting applications for its third cohort. Whilst the Helsinki Education Hub EdTech Incubator is also now accepting applications for their upcoming programme.

Don’t forget to book your ticket for the Nordic EdTech Summit. Join us for expert sessions, hands-on panel discussions and high-impact networking. You’ll want to be in the room on 10 September at Studio Malmö with 200 other founders, leaders and investors.

At the Summit, I’m really excited that Henrik Appert, CEO of Magma, will be giving a keynote about how they have “cracked the math code” and are “taking the US by storm.” Read this interview with him as an appetiser for the main event at the Summit!

Space prevents me from giving a full review of Sanoma’s first quarter of 2025, but the complete picture is available here. As Rob Kolkman, President and CEO, commented: ”We had a good start to the year driven by improved performance in Learning in a seasonally small quarter.

If you’ve got a story that you’d like me to include in a future issue of this newsletter, please email hello@10digits.org, tag me on X or LinkedIn or use #nordicedtech / #balticedtech.

Thanks for reading, Jonathan

News from Denmark

• “Drop bans and involve students' use of technologies in the fight against the power of algorithms.”

• Linked to the above, the BFU (the Danish Association for Producers of Teaching Materials) argues that a ban on mobile phones could hinder both pedagogical freedom and students' ability to learn responsible technology use. (Link)

• Lex is working with Aarhus University to develop a Danish chatbot that is based on the content of the National Encyclopedia. (Link)

• KL has published eight examples from different Danish municipalities to help schools navigate the opportunities and dilemmas of AI. (Link)

• The Director of Studievalg Danmark sees both opportunities and dangers in the use of AI to support career and study guidance for students. (Link)

• Congrats to Hatla Færch Johnsen, CEO of uQualio, who was named SaaSiest Women of the Year 2025 at this year’s event in Malmö. (Link)

News from Estonia

• Edtech Estonia welcomed delegations from Israel and Japan, looking to understand the secret to national education success. (Link)

• kood/Võru has now launched as an extension campus of kood/Jõhvi in Southern Estonia. (Link)

News from Finland

• Great programme for the Helsinki EdTech Day on 5th June on the topic of “Edtech in Finland: Where Are We Now and What Does the Future Hold?”

• Code School Finland has confirmed a new strategic partnership to bring AI education to schools in India. (Link)

• HEI Schools launched a new collaboration with Qridi to “elevate IB Education through Finnish teaching.” (Link)

• Keenious has doubled their client base and secured Caltech as a customer through close cooperation with the VC funder, Spintop Ventures. (Link)

• Mobie Oy will take their AI-assisted learning environment to the US through a new strategic partnership with the SMART Community Council USA. (Link)

• Vegemi is undertaking a pilot project in Saudi Arabia, focused on strengthening early childhood nutrition literacy and improving diet-related health and wellbeing outcomes. (Link)

News from Iceland

• Student enrolment for high school places will happen online for the first time this year. (Link)

• Iris Gisladottir, Co-founder at Evolytes, has been nominated in the Nordic Women in Tech Awards. (Link)

News from Latvia

• 75% of Latvian teachers plan to use AI tools more actively in the future, according to research behind the launch of the new digiskola.lv platform from Skolas Vārds. (Link)

News from Lithuania

• Guidelines on the use of mobile phones in schools will be ready “by the beginning of the summer.” (Link)

• 62% of teachers who participated in research by EditAI said that using the platform during lessons increased students' motivation to learn. (Link)

• Vilnius Coding School is introducing a new collaboration with K2 College, which integrates mental fitness into its curriculum. (Link)

News from Norway

• Starting this autumn, Oslo schools will restrict access to the internet for students in grades 1 to 4. They will only have access to learning materials created for the lesson - other content will be blocked (Link).

• Gyldendal and the Red Cross delivered a live lesson for 16,000 students and 800 classes from all over Norway. (Link)

• Vibeke Gwendoline Fængsrud, CEO of House of Math, was named Tech Star of the Year 2025 at the HER Awards (Link) and featured in Aftenposten with tips for handling maths exam stress (Link).

• It’s five years since KS launched their SkoleSec project to “strengthen work on privacy and information security related to digital learning environments.“ (Link)

• Sikt is working on a new technical solution for admission to undergraduate programs at universities and university colleges nationwide. (Link)

News from Sweden

• "The government lacks transparency regarding digital tools in preschool."

• CodeEasy has launched a new Lesson Generator that helps computer science teachers create “a complete lesson, with practice problems, hints, autograding, and assessments in minutes.” (Link)

• Tennessee Connections Academy, part of Pearson Education, has selected Humy.ai for their middle school students for the 2025–2026 school year. (Link)

• Luleå University of Technology has committed to giving all staff at least 40 hours of training in AI. (Link)

• Qrora will be a new digital knowledge platform for healthcare professionals helping them exchange “ideas, insights and knowledge.” (Link)

• Interesting new research from Stockholm University on how data can improve the quality of education in schools. (Link)

• Tilda launched Version 2.0 to help customers “analyse, plan, design and produce” learning and change programmes. (Link)

I’m going to continue the experiment of asking readers who make it this far to hit reply and let me know what your biggest challenge is right now. In return, I'll give you a specific suggestion to help with it.

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