Bold beats easy.
Conviction beats comfort.
Deep tech doesn’t bend to hype cycles. It rewrites the rules. In this week’s newsletter, which includes our latest podcast episode with Industrifonden’s Mala Valroy, we dive into what it really takes to secure a term sheet in 2025, why “resilience” and “sustainability” are inseparable, and why the best founders are often just a little bit difficult.
Whether Daniel Ek and Sebastian Siemiatkowski are “difficult” leaders we’ll leave to others to decide. But they both show up in this week’s flow, alongside a €5M hydropower bet and a new IVA report on Sweden’s tech strengths and gaps.
Nordic Hardtech Partners 🤝
Nordic Hardtech is a community for builders of complex tech companies based on physical products. Here are some of our outstanding partners.
- Lightbringer: AI-powered patent platform helping tech companies protect their edge fast, with in-house legal expertise. Book an intro.
- Recuro: Growth partner for hardtech and deeptech. Scale with profit.
- SISP (Swedish Incubators & Science Parks): The network for 60+ incubators and science parks in Sweden. Find yours here.
- The Yard: Gothenburg’s hub for co-working, community, and serious hardware. Explore their memberships.
Nordic Hardtech Podcast 🎧
This Week: Mala Valroy on deep tech, founders and future bets.
From stubbornness to breakthroughs — the case for difficult founders
"Outsized returns won’t come from yesterday’s technology"
Some investors chase hype, others chase comfort. Industrifonden is betting on founders who refuse to play nice and on technologies bold enough to bend the future, a perspective shared by Mala Valroy.
When Industrifonden looks at startups, it isn’t charm or consensus they’re after. What matters most is conviction.
Mala Valroy knows this from both sides of the table. As Investment Manager at Industrifonden, she works on the fund’s deep science and hard innovation portfolio. Her own path started in biochemistry and cancer research, moved through startups and heavy industry at Atlas Copco, and later corporate innovation at Ericsson. That mix of lab science, entrepreneurship, and global industry now shapes how she approaches venture investing.
– I want a difficult founder. I want someone full of conviction, brave enough and slightly crazy enough to take on this journey. It’s so hard to take something out of the lab and into the real world. You need audacity.
We’re still stuck in a "lagom box"
Mala’s attitude goes hand in hand with Industrifonden’s evergreen structure. Founded in 1979, the Stockholm-based fund reinvests all returns directly back into the portfolio. No limited partners, no ticking fund cycles. Instead, a patient pool of capital that stays with companies from seed through scale.
– We know this journey takes a while. We write the first check and then stay with you all the way through, says Mala.
That patience is crucial when dealing with frontier technologies. Industrifonden is active across advanced materials, new chip designs, fusion energy and biotechnology. Every deal requires more than a financial commitment. It requires deep diligence.
– This isn’t superficial tech, and it doesn’t allow superficial investing. We bring in experts, verify the claims, and spend the time it takes to really understand if performance is world-class, Mala explains.
The Nordic ecosystem offers strong academic spinouts and a history of industrial strength, but Valroy believes the region still needs to stretch further.
– In San Francisco, no dream is too big. Do you want to mine asteroids? Go ahead. Here we’re still stuck in a "lagom box". We need to stretch. The outsized returns won’t come from yesterday’s technology.
You need to soft launch your fundraise
So where will the next breakthroughs come from? For Industrifonden, frontier bets include energy storage, compute infrastructure and quantum.
– Quantum is going to be such a difficult problem, and such a mission critical one. I think it’s moving faster than people realize, Mala predicts.
Whatever the technology, Industrifonden ties everything back to resilience, whether in sustainability or in long-term relationships with founders. That’s why the fund prefers to engage well before a round begins.
– You need to soft launch your fundraise before you ever say you’re raising. If you only reach out when you’re desperate, you’re too late.
It’s advice that comes from experience. Valroy has seen companies fall into the two classic valleys of death: first at proof-of-concept, and later when scaling internationally. Closing those capital gaps will require bigger sums, and a new comfort with risk.
– Innovation can’t be decoupled from failure. If we don’t get comfortable with both the sums and the risks, we won’t build the future.
Lately ⏮️
Selected news from the hardtech ecosystem
- Sweden is strong in space and autonomous vehicles, but lagging in AI and robotics. A new IVA report mapping Sweden’s global position across 48 strategic technologies shows untapped potential in MedTech, synthetic biology, semiconductors and VR/AR. The verdict: we’re good at science, but too weak at turning it into tech leadership. (If you're not up for reading, watch the seminar below).
- 109M SEK to fuel Sweden’s hardest tech! Tillväxtverket’s new fund backs research-born ventures in materials, biotech, quantum and robotics, managed by Trio Impact Invest.
- Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s Flat Capital invests SEK 47M in US-based Cerebras, an AI chip maker out to rival Nvidia. With Sam Altman among the backers, the race for next-gen AI hardware is heating up.
- Spotify reshuffles leadership as Daniel Ek moves to Executive Chair in 2026. Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström step in as co-CEOs, while Ek keeps capital and strategy in his grip. The shift comes as Ek faces heat over defense tech bets, tying Spotify’s future to geopolitics as much as playlists.
- Fresh out: this year’s Svenskarna och internet report shows that nearly 3 in 10 Swedes already use AI at work. For hardtech, it signals a baseline shift in how people expect to interact with products. Full report.
Up next ⏭️
What's brewing in the community?
- Next week! 👉 Science Week meets Sveriges Innovationsriksdag in Södertälje. With one year to the 2026 election, 1000+ leaders meet in to shape Sweden’s innovation agenda. Nordic Hardtech’s Jonas Åström joins on stage and seats are still available.
- Also next week! 👉 Innovationsveckan kicks off across Sweden, spotlighting new solutions in the public sector. Activities both digital and local.
- Self is looking for an IoT/robotics architect to design an event-based system powered by AI-driven development. Consultant or full-time. More here.
- Voi is hiring an Embedded Software Engineer to push the envelope of its next generation IoT solution. Join the team and make an impact across the industry. Apply here!
- SeaPattern pulls in €5M with Industrifonden at the helm, marking one of Europe’s biggest private hydropower bets. Next stop is commercial rollout of its plug and play solution.
Looking for the bigger picture?
Check out the Nordic Hardtech Funding List — updated weekly with hundreds of deeptech and hardtech frontrunners across the region.
Nordic Hardtech is a platform for the hardtech ecosystem — sharing knowledge, bringing inspiration, and building community through podcasts, newsletters, events, and more.
💸 Fuel up. Scaling takes capital — The Nordic Hardtech Funding List shows you where to find it.
💥Get involved. Pitch a topic. Join the podcast. Get on the investor list– if you're hardtech.
→ Spotify | LinkedIn | nordichardtech.com
📩 hello@nordichardtech.com
