The NEN Interview: Henrik Appert - CEO & Founder at Magma Math
Magma raises another $10 million from US investor Five Elms Capital at a record valuation of around $150 million (SEK 1.5 billion)
This special interview with Henrik Appert follows his keynote at the Nordic EdTech Summit in September. An address that, according to post-event feedback, left a lasting impression on attendees.
When Henrik reached out last week with news of an “exciting announcement,” I couldn’t resist finding out more. In the conversation below, he shares details of Magma’s latest funding round, their expansion plans and how their AI-powered platform is changing the way students learn maths.
My thanks to Henrik for taking the time to share these updates with Nordic EdTech News readers. If you enjoy the interview, be sure to subscribe. It’s the best way to get future newsletters and interviews straight to your inbox.
Many thanks, Jonathan
Regular readers of this newsletter will recognise the pattern of Nordic EdTech companies proving they can scale fast and compete globally. But Magma Math is one of the standouts. And under co-founder and CEO Henrik Appert, the Swedish maths learning platform isn’t just expanding, it’s accelerating.
“We’ve been doubling our revenues every single year,” Appert says with quiet confidence. “This year, we’re going to double them again.”
Today the company is announcing a further $10 million investment from Five Elms Capital, the same growth-focused private equity firm that led its $40 million Series A less than a year ago. Sources have confirmed to me that this new raise now values the company at around $150 million (SEK 1.5 billion).
Henrik is keen to clarify what that earlier round looked like behind the headlines. “To be clear, only around $16 million went directly into the company,” he explains. “The remaining $25 million were secondary transactions, which went to previous investors and some employees. Looking just from the company’s perspective, it was $16 million then, and we’re now adding an additional $10 million.”
“This isn’t just about signing term sheets,” he continues. “It’s about delivering on the promise we made last year.” When Magma raised its Series A, he admits, they were “selling the dream.” Less than twelve months later, the numbers match the narrative.
This new investment will help Magma go even faster. “The new funds just allow us to heavily invest in both our AI initiatives,” Appert details, “and to continue our go-to-market expansion.”
While growth is clearly the focus, Appert insists it’s carefully controlled. “If someone forced me to be profitable, I could be profitable by 2026,” he says. “Fortunately, Five Elms and we agree that profitability is not more important than growth at this point. So that’s what we’re doubling down on.”
For now, the US K-12 market remains the top priority. Magma has just opened offices in Dallas and Grand Rapids and is preparing new bases in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami and Toronto, which adds Canada to their global customer map.
The rationale is simple. While many EdTech companies chase scale through screens, Magma is defiantly (and successfully) old-school: knocking on doors, visiting classrooms and building trust face-to-face. “In education, selling is personal,” Appert says. “It’s very hard to build a relationship with someone at a distance.”
Across all markets, Magma’s teams are in schools every week, talking to users, customers and decision-makers. And it’s a formula that’s clearly working.
In the UK, a market notorious for breaking foreign EdTech hopefuls, Magma is, according to Appert, set to “blow past $1 million in annual recurring revenue” in its first year. He’s very clear on how this has been achieved: “We’re really sales-oriented. We have a great product and we know how to talk clearly to schools about the difference Magma makes.”
Typically for a Swede, Henrik’s very quick to praise his team and is modest about his and co-founder Arvid’s contribution: “Our team is full of excellent, super hardworking and very ambitious people. We just try to attract great talent and then get out of their way so that they can do a great job.”
Next up: Germany. With significant national investment through Digitalpakt Schule 2.0 and strong local partners, including Apple, Magma is preparing to test its model in Europe’s largest economy, led by a yet-to-be-announced senior hire. “It will be a real challenge,” Appert admits, “but an exciting one.”
Of course, the real engine behind this global expansion is Magma’s product and technology. Appert doesn’t shy from bold claims here, arguing that Magma is “revolutionising” maths education.
Here’s how. Instead of grading students purely on right or wrong answers, Magma’s platform studies how they think, highlighting the steps, reasoning and logic behind each answer. Importantly this also creates opportunities for deeper student-driven discourse and collaboration.
By leveraging AI, Magma has now developed a raft of “really groundbreaking features that have been incredibly well-received by the market.” One of the most interesting is called Live Activity.
As students work Magma’s AI quietly flags the strongest examples of mathematical thinking and streams them live to a classroom whiteboard, sometimes with names attached, sometimes anonymously. “When teachers activate Live Activity,” Appert says, “the portion of good solutions in the class doubles. That is phenomenal.” He’s particularly proud that “suddenly students go from not showing their work to sharing their thinking with others.”
This is more than just raising engagement; it’s a shift in mindset. Mistakes become milestones and the fear of being wrong gives way to curiosity. Importantly, teachers can now see, in real time, how their students are approaching maths problems, not just whether they got the answer right. “When teachers know exactly where students struggle, they can step in at the moment it matters,” Appert says.
The results are striking. At Hjulstaskolan in Stockholm, Appert outlines, consistent use of Magma has helped reduce the Year 9 maths failure rate from 55% in 2015 to just 5% in 2024. Whilst a US school district that‘s “basically Silicon Valley” has seen results for Year 5 “improve by over 400%.”
But also he’s quick to insist that for Magma to claim all the credit for this impact would be “irresponsible.” Rather he emphasises that “what we do is reduce the time teachers spend on low-value tasks so they can focus on helping students learn and grow.”
When I ask what keeps him awake at night, Henrik doesn’t mention funding or competitors, he talks about culture.
“My biggest challenge is to keep scaling the team and maintaining our unique culture,” he admits. For Appert, Magma’s continued growth depends on keeping the same ambitious, teacher-focused mindset that has fueled its early success. “We need to continue to attract the right talent, set them up for success and ensure that they embody our values.”
At Magma’s Stockholm HQ those values are clearly visible. Team members are seen as “owners,” not employees and they’re encouraged to swap stories from classrooms every week. It’s a small ritual that keeps them connected to the teachers and students behind the enviable hockey stick growth.
Looking ahead, Appert’s next milestone is Magma’s first national licence or a “whole-country” partnership that embeds the platform system-wide. But his ambitions don’t stop there. He imagines a future where school districts and municipalities proudly identify as “Magma districts.” Such customers are data-driven, student-centred and consistently outperform their peers.
But ultimately he wants to see students thinking like mathematicians and not just solving problems. “They accept the challenge when they don’t know the answer. They’re curious. They want to learn,” he says.
If that vision holds, Magma won’t just have rewritten the formula for EdTech success, it will have solved something much bigger. Whilst the much-publicised “reading crisis” has dominated headlines, declining maths achievement is an equally urgent concern. Particularly given that maths performance in OECD countries fell by a record 15 points between 2018 and 2022.
If Magma can help turn maths anxiety into curiosity, its impact will be more than improving test scores. It will be helping to develop a generation of learners that sees problems not as obstacles but as invitations to think.
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