This report presents statistics on formal venture capital (VC) investments in Swedish companies in the period 2009-2019. 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, launch and expansion). 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.

VC investments in Swedish portfolio companies have increased sharply in 2020

Since the peak 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, investment volumes continued to increase sharply compared with the previous year (4,81bn SEK).

The increased VC investments in 2020 are mainly due to markedly increased investments from foreign funds

Foreign funds increased their investments by 61 % in 2020, while Swedish private and government funds increased theirs by 7, 8 %. At the same time, government funds reduced their investments by 1 %. The year 2020 can be compared with the 2018 investment pattern with sharply increased investments from the foreign funds. All in all, Swedish private funds invested SEK 1,931m, foreign funds SEK 2,301m and government funds SEK 582m. We can state that the growth rate of the Swedish private funds' VC investments has slowed down while it has increased in the foreign funds. If we then examine the investment phases in which the investments took place, we see above all that it is in the launch phase that VC investments increased in 2020 compared with the previous year. SEK 1,098 million more has been invested in the launch phase in 2020 than in 2019. The government remains the largest investor in portfolio companies in the seed phase, while investments by foreign and Swedish private funds are very important later on, especially in the launch phase.

ICT and consumer products remain the most popular industries to invest in by 2020

The three largest sectors – information and communication technology (ICT), life sciences and consumer products – accounted for 89 % of total VC investments in 2020. The corresponding figure was 76 percent last year. This means that the degree of concentration in industry investments increased again in 2020.

Much less invested in life sciences in 2020

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 life sciences. VC investments in life sciences fell sharply during the previous year, but in 2020 increased net investments by SEK 411 million. The increase is largely due to increased investments from foreign funds.

Less invested in cleantech in 2020

Investments have decreased in Cleantech during 2020. 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 from foreign funds has slowed down in 2020. The volume of investment is still low in comparison to the peak years of 2008 and 2009, but 2020 is still higher compared to the years 2015-2018.

35% of portfolio companies first-time recipients

In 2020, 125 of the portfolio companies identified, or 35 %, received VC investments for the first time. This is 5 percentage points lower than in 2019.

VC still concentrated in the big cities

There were no major changes in the distribution of investments between different types of municipalities from 2019 to 2020, and they were again concentrated in metropolitan areas (92 %).