Sweden’s startups will raise $5 billion in 2026. Our secret sauce is 150 years old

How long can a country punch above its weight before someone needs to check the scales? For decades I’ve heard Sweden be called “small” or “scrappy”, usually in the same breath as describing one of our many economic knockouts.

It’s time we moved up a weight class.

Our success is a tonic for all the European doomerism we’re reading at the moment.

The typical analysis of our continent — low growth, little liquidity, endless bureaucracy — doesn’t apply to Sweden.

Our 2026 growth forecast is more than double that of heavyweight countries Germany and France, at a fraction of their public debt level.

Our inflow of FDI investments is the second largest in the EU.

Nasdaq Stockholm attracted more IPO capital last year than any other European exchange.

Swedish startups are on track to raise $5 billion in 2026, up from $3.2 billion in 2025, led by the vibe-coders at Lovable ($13.3 billion valuation), body scanners at Neko Health ($7 billion) and AI lawyers at Legora ($5.55 billion).

This isn’t a new era of Swedish exceptionalism, nor a fleeting moment in the sun (despite the dark Nordic winter around the corner).

This latest group of founders stands on the shoulders of giants from the noughties like Spotify , Klarna, and Skype, who themselves took inspiration from the postwar design empires of IKEA, H&M and Tetra Pak (modernizer of the milk carton).

The precedents run so far back that we even have a Swedish word for the inventor-founded firms of the late 19th century: snilleföretag or “genius companies”.

These include the telecoms leader Ericsson ; ASEA, now part of the $180 billion ABB ; and Atlas Copco, still one of Sweden’s most valuable listed companies more than 150 years after its founding.

Some might read this as no more than a history lesson.

In reality, though, it’s a 150-year-old blueprint for repeatable corporate success.