Yahoo Finance

Venture capital dealmaking in the Nordics reached its second-highest year to date despite a significant pullback in investments.

Below are six key trends from our 2023 Nordic Private Capital Breakdown detailing how venture dealmaking, exits and fundraising have evolved in the region—which comprises Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden—over the past decade.  
The Nordic region saw €10.1 billion (about $10.7 billion) invested across an estimated 1,267 deals last year, representing a 17.2% decline in deal value and 18.5% decline in deal count from 2021.

Nevertheless, 2022 was still the second-biggest year on record for total capital raised, doubling that of 2020. Last year, the amount invested in the region accounted for 11.1% of overall European deal value.  
Sweden accounted for the majority of capital invested in the Nordics last year with €5.3 billion raised—52% of the region's total. The country was home to Europe's largest VC deal in 2022 with battery developer Northvolt raising €1.1 billion from investors including AMF and Baillie Gifford. 

Iceland and Finland were the only two countries to record a rise in capital invested last year, registering increases of 100% and 11.8% respectively from 2021, albeit from a relatively low bar.  
Deal count across all stages fell in the Nordic region last year, with angel and seed investments seeing the biggest drop at 36.7%.

Early-stage VC once again saw the highest number of deals with 402 rounds, having briefly been overtaken by later-stage VC in 2021.  
US investors pulled back slightly from Nordic VC deals in 2022, participating in 13.2% of all rounds versus 13.8% in 2021.

Many of the region's largest rounds featured US investors including Klarna's $800 million investment, which featured Sequoia and Silver Lake among the backers.  
Public listings in the Nordics took a sharp fall last year with only 17 deals worth an aggregate €200 million—a 96.8% decrease in value from 2021. While the number of acquisitions and buyouts of VC-backed companies also declined last year, the total value of these deals increased significantly by 65% and 452.8% respectively.

Overall, the region saw 123 VC-backed exits worth €5.8 billion in 2022, significantly less than the previous year's 219 exits totaling €9.1 billion.  
VC fundraising in the Nordic region was muted in 2022, with only 10 funds closed raising €2.1 billion.

The region's largest and only mega-fund came courtesy of EQT Ventures, which secured €1.1 billion for its third flagship vehicle in November. The biggest fund outside of Sweden was Finland's Vendep Capital Fund III, which raised €70 million at the start of the year.