This report presents statistics on formal venture capital (VC) investments in Swedish companies in the period 2013-2022. The statistics are based on data from the Swedish Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (SVCA) in collaboration with Invest Europe.

The data use funds’ own classification of portfolio companies into broad sectors and development phases (seed, start-up, other early stage and later stage venture). The statistics are broken down between three types of VC fund: Swedish government funds, Swedish private funds and foreign funds.

Since the data are updated and revised each year, the numbers presented in these annual statistical reports from Growth analysis (Tillväxtanalys) may differ. For reasons of systematic non-response and confidentiality, it is not possible to identify and follow up all portfolio companies.

Summary

VC investments remain at a high level in Swedish portfolio companies during 2022

Since year of 2008, when almost SEK 5 billion was invested in Swedish portfolio companies, investment volumes have decreased. During the period 2010-2020, the average annual investment volume was SEK 2.2bn, and the lowest was SEK 1.5bn in 2015. After a sharp increase in 2018, investments stabilised in 2019 at a slightly lower level. In 2020-21, investment volumes continued to increase sharply compared with the previous year. In 2022, we see continued high level in investment volumes. Total VC volume increased from 9.9 billion (2021) to 10.3 billion (2022).

The increased VC investments in 2022 are mainly due to markedly increased investments from Swedish private funds

Foreign funds increased their investments by 63,6 percent in 2021, while Swedish private funds increased theirs by 44,3 percent. At the same time, government funds reduced their investments by 3,7 percent. The year 2022 has an investment pattern with greatly increased investments from the Swedish private funds. All in all, Swedish private funds invested SEK 4,793m (+21%), foreign funds SEK 4,787m (-12%) and government funds SEK 710m (+25%). We can state that both the Swedish private and government funds' VC investments have increased in Swedish portfolio companies. In relation to the focus of VC investments on investment phases, we see increased investment volumes in the launch phase and reduced in the expansion phase during the year 2022. SEK 445 million more has been invested in the launch phase and 825m less has been invested in expansion phase in 2022 than in 2021. What is new for 2022 is that foreign investments in portfolio companies are higher than the Swedish private and government funds in the seeding and launch phase. The Swedish private funds' investment volumes are higher than the others' in the start-up and expansion phase.

ICT most popular investment sector in 2022

The three largest sectors – information and communication technology (ICT), life sciences and business and industrial products – accounted for 83 percent of total VC investments in 2022. The corresponding figure was 83 percent last year. This means that the degree of concentration in industry investments is still high in 2022.

We can state that there has been increased VC investment in all three major industries, but the biggest change from the previous year has taken place in ICT and business and industrial products. VC investments in ICT increased during the previous year (SEK 971 million). During the year 2022, VC investments in Life Sciences have amounted to SEK 2,209 million (21 percent of the total VC investment volume) and SEK 4,646 million to ICT (45 percent of the total VC investment volume). The increase is largely due to increased investments from Swedish private funds.

The trend break stabilizes in 2022 with sharply increased VC investments in environmental technology

There has been a clear positive trend break in the investment volumes in environmental technology (Cleantech) during the year 2021, which continued in 2022. After peaking in 2008 at SEK 700m, cleantech investments have dropped off significantly. In 2007-2011, many Swedish private funds invested in this area, but since 2013 it has mainly been government funds that have invested in these companies. In 2018, Swedish government funds accounted for almost all investments in cleantech. The positive development that we saw in 2019 with increased investment volumes was slowed down in 2020 and increased in 2021. But during the year 2022, the investment volume has increased to a total of SEK 1,904 million, which means an increase of SEK 994 million from the previous year. The level of investment has more than doubled from the peak years of 2008 and 2009.

33 percent of portfolio companies first-time recipients

In 2022, 113 of the portfolio companies identified, or 33 percent, received VC investments for the first time. This is 5 percentage points lower than in 2021.

VC still concentrated in the big cities

There were no major changes in the distribution of investments between different types of municipalities from 2021 to 2022, and they were again concentrated in metropolitan areas (95 %).