Is the victory train about to go off the rails?

August 28, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 28th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Chip company Nvidia has stopped being seen as a company and has instead become a global phenomenon. It continues to press strongly ahead — but are investors beginning to sense the top is near?

As the ninth company in world history, Nvidia crossed the trillion-dollar threshold — a thousand billion dollars — in market capitalisation. That was in May 2023, but it feels like an eternity ago.

Just two years later, in July 2025, they broke through the four trillion barrier. The company is now the world’s highest valued by a margin over second place, Microsoft, of around 700 billion dollars — more than the entire card company Visa or the retailer Walmart is worth. These are incomprehensible numbers.

When the giant reported its quarterly figures late on Wednesday evening, many already knew the answer: things are going well for Nvidia. The risk lies more in whether investors believe that perhaps this is already enough.

No investor worth the name would admit to being satisfied with less money — that’s the opposite of the point of the profession. But there are other mechanisms that affect why you sometimes sell part of a holding that is still performing well. It might be that a single position has grown too large in the overall portfolio. Or simply that it’s time to take some profits home.

In situations like that, selling is not a review of Nvidia as a company but rather a form of risk balancing. And with such a high market capitalisation and a bubbling anxiety that the red-hot AI sector might be cooling, those kinds of factors can weigh as heavily as the company’s own figures. If you don’t take the profits now, can you be certain you’ll get them at all?

The figures in the quarterly report were strong, as expected. Revenue of 46.74 billion dollars was just above analyst estimates and corresponded to a 56 percent increase year on year. Profitability was also better than expected.

The challenges came when Nvidia looked forward, and the stock fell in after-hours trading. Three areas stood out particularly.

The tensions between the United States and China over chip exports create great uncertainty for the company. In the second quarter, zero H20 chips were sold as a result — despite that being a chip specifically developed for export to China. Nvidia has indicated it believes this issue will be resolved in the near term, but there are currently no guarantees.

The company also announced a share buyback of 60 billion dollars — around 572 billion kronor — on top of what had already been decided. Short-term, buybacks can be positive for a stock, but what does it say about the company and its future? Is there really no more productive use of 60 billion dollars than repurchasing its own shares? That signal can be read as something worrying and lacking in vision.

The guidance for the coming quarter was not impressive either. The sales figure is of course high for a company of this size, but it is growth that the market cares most about. Even if AI interest among the major tech companies does not diminish, it is possible that they will buy chips differently or optimise in other ways. That in turn would create pressure on Nvidia. A certain scepticism could be sensed in the modest guidance figures.

With a sky-high market cap, it does not take much for investors to start fidgeting. If you bought into Nvidia as recently as one year ago, you have already seen a value increase of 40 percent. Go back five years and that figure is over 1,200 percent. As a stock, it has been a rocket that has acted as the locomotive for the entire market.

But is the locomotive possibly starting to slow somewhat now? If that is the case, many will be looking at their handsome returns and considering locking them in. That would mean hitting the sell button — despite the world’s highest valued listed company still growing at more than 50 percent annually.

What more can CEO Jensen Huang do? His enormous success is beginning to look somewhat like a burden. It is a thankless position for the tech company that has become a global success on a scale we have rarely seen before.

A shy giant hiding behind a letterbox

August 27, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 27th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Scammers are using Meta’s platforms to defraud small investors. But when SvD asks questions, there is no one willing to answer.

Next door to Ikea and the Ministry of Defence sits what is probably Sweden’s most successful shell company. You likely know them better as Facebook, or Meta as the company is now called.

When they moved into the offices on Malmtorgsgatan in Stockholm in 2018, then-Sweden CEO Sam Rihani told journalists that the meeting rooms had been named after translated Swedish proverbs. Today it seems that few people are having meetings in the room called “Suspect owls in the moss.”

Despite revenue of around 4.1 billion kronor in the Swedish entity Facebook Sweden AB — and numerous scams defrauding Swedes of their money — there is essentially no one reachable at Swedish Meta. And therefore no one willing to take responsibility for what is happening on the company’s platforms in Sweden.

At major tech companies, Sweden is typically folded into a Nordic business area, itself falling under the acronym EMEA — which bundles Europe, the Middle East and all of Africa into a single division. The exception is usually Ireland, where Silicon Valley companies maintain large presences — direct flights between San Francisco and Dublin are one result. It is not Ireland’s innovative capacity the companies are after, but its tax advantages. And as an EU member, it becomes a natural European home.

When SvD tries to reach Meta and its press department, there was accordingly no expectation that CEO Mark Zuckerberg would pick up the phone. But it would be fitting for a billion-kronor company to offer some kind of comment on why scams consistently arise on its platforms. No such comment is forthcoming, other than that the company has spent a lot of money cleaning up various WhatsApp groups.

The cleanup does not appear to have been sufficient. Moa Langemark, consumer protection economist at Finansinspektionen (the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority), told SvD: “There is every reason to direct criticism at Meta, which owns WhatsApp and Facebook. It is obvious that they are not doing enough to keep their platforms clean from this type of criminal activity.”

The criticism is, however, difficult to direct when there is no one in Sweden who intends to receive it.

The situation is, to put it mildly, peculiar. Meta owns the platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Millions of Swedes use them every day. They are the foundation of many companies’ marketing and external communications. Large amounts of money flow through the system. Meta as a whole generated around 464 billion kronor in revenue in 2024. And yet there is no one willing or able to answer questions about the advertisements from scammers that have contributed to that revenue.

Meta’s income is 97 percent advertising purchases. Despite all the investments in AI, the metaverse and VR headsets, it is the advertising business that carries the weight. The scams using well-known Swedish figures like Jacob Wallenberg and Günther Mårder to defraud small investors are therefore contributing to the core business. And more pointedly — the scams need Meta to function. It is through Meta’s platforms that they buy the ads that reach Swedish audiences.

If a company were to buy advertising space on bus shelters claiming that financier Christer Gardell was tipping a particular stock, it would be reasonable to expect the owner of the advertising space to check whether this was true. But when the advertising is digital, this responsibility apparently disappears entirely. The very idea is so absurd that one wonders whether any human being reviewed these advertisements before they were published — or whether it was perhaps an automated AI system.

Whatever the case, the review of advertisements has failed. Many Swedes have been affected.

A frustrated Jacob Wallenberg. Irritation at the Riksbank. And a crisis meeting at Finansinspektionen. The stock market fraud on Facebook and WhatsApp has forced action at the highest levels of Swedish finance.

It is not only financial professionals whose identities are being hijacked to deceive small investors into losing large sums of money. Now Sweden’s most powerful business figures are being drawn into the web of AI-generated clips and fake advertisements.

In recent days, two of the Stockholm Stock Exchange’s most powerful individuals — Investor chairman Jacob Wallenberg and Industrivärden chairman Fredrik Lundberg, as well as Riksbank governor Erik Thedéen — have appeared in video clips on Facebook, owned by Meta with Mark Zuckerberg as CEO.

In the clips, fraudsters make it appear as though the three financial leaders are offering stock tips to viewers. But it is all fabricated.

Jacob Wallenberg has reacted with frustration at the fake clips, according to sources at SvD. He does not wish to comment personally at this stage, but Investor confirms that it has contacted Meta.

“We have the same experience as other parties — it is not entirely easy to get in touch with Meta. But we have noted that the clips have now been removed,” says Jacob Lund, head of communications at Investor.

Whether the company will pursue the matter further, for instance with a police report, remains unclear.

“We note and understand the criticism that Finansinspektionen and the Economic Crime Authority have previously raised — that Meta’s actions to date to remove fraud from its platforms have not been sufficient,” says Jacob Lund.

Lundbergs has also attempted to contact Meta, SvD has learned. There too, getting through to the tech giant has proved difficult.

At Finansinspektionen, the situation is being monitored on a daily basis. On Thursday the authority called a crisis meeting. Around sixty people from affected securities firms attended the hastily convened gathering, including representatives from SEB, Nordea, Swedbank, Avanza and Nordnet.

Riksbank press officer Tomas Lundberg told SvD: “We warned already in the spring that the Riksbank and the governor were appearing in fake videos offering investment opportunities to individuals.” The authority has recently been made aware that the fake clips are still appearing.

“The Riksbank does not offer investment opportunities or other banking services to private individuals,” he added. According to Tomas Lundberg, Meta acted after the Riksbank raised the issue of the fake clips. “But the fact that this type of false information continues to spread shows that it is still a problem — one that Finansinspektionen and the Economic Crime Authority are also raising.”

SvD repeatedly tried to reach Meta’s press department without result. Jan Elvelid, responsible for policy questions at Meta Nordic, has previously referred to earlier statements in which the company says it has invested large sums in cleaning up fraud in WhatsApp groups, and that this work is ongoing.

The stock scams have become increasingly brazen, and many small investors have lost large sums of money.

Four years ago, prosecutor Jonas Myrdal at the Economic Crime Authority ordered a search of premises as part of an investigation in which three people in southern Sweden were arrested on suspicion of serious market manipulation. That case also involved so-called “pump and dump” — where a share price is manipulated using false information and then large sales are made once a certain price level has been reached.

“Back then there was something homemade about the whole thing, sometimes quite amateurish,” says Jonas Myrdal.

“It is of course terrible for those who have been affected. The blame is in no way on them, but it is somewhat alarming that many investors are probably not sufficiently critical and are too easily attracted by promises of quick money,” he says.

Jonas Myrdal, like many others, questions Meta’s engagement in removing scammers from its platforms.

“Something is clearly wrong when scam advertisements can keep appearing again and again. Meta reasonably needs better control over who advertises and opens accounts with them,” says Jonas Myrdal.

Myrdal also directs attention towards the online brokers Avanza and Nordnet. Both have posted warning texts on their websites since the fraud gained media attention, advising customers how to avoid being deceived.

“Both Avanza and Nordnet are keen to highlight how easy it is to trade shares with them, not least foreign ones. That should come with a certain responsibility — for example regarding identifying sharply increased trading volumes and the reason for them,” says Jonas Myrdal.

He adds, however, that what has now happened was difficult to foresee, and that fraud linked to foreign stocks is essentially a new phenomenon in Sweden. “I also think the new fraud illustrates that the widespread public interest in the stock market in Sweden — rightly held up as a model in Europe — also has a dark side. For instance, there is a risk that individuals are tempted into making quick money through risky transactions.”

Johan Tidestad, representing brokerage firms, rejects Myrdal’s criticism. “I believe that the responsibility for overseeing trading in specific stocks lies primarily with the exchanges, not with us as brokers,” he says.

Casino Capitalism + 4 cultural gems

August 25, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
Newsletters

Friends,

For a few years now, I have taken a special interest in how new technology phenomena affects regular financial markets. For Svenska Dagbladet, I have written about everything from the short squeeze in Gamestop to prediction markets and bitcoin treasury companies.

Underpinning it all is a sense that something fundamental is changing. Why do so many choose to invest their money into these new things? What happened to saving money in a low-cost index fund?

I don’t know for sure, but I do have a theory that I would like to explore further.

A starting point is an article called “Casino Capitalism” that I’ve written. You can find it in English here and Swedish here.

I think there could be a book to be written on this subject too. Massive amounts of money are being allocated to assets that more resemble a lottery ticket than a financial security. The interesting question is both why this is happening – and what it might lead to.

If you think there might be something worth publishing here and would like to help me make this happen – please get in touch!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of some recommendations:

Album: PinkPantheress – Fancy That
Full of samples and interpolations of British 2-step and dance music from 20 years ago – but revisited and made fresh again. Underworld, The Streets and Basement Jaxx are all here in the background.

Book: How we break – Vincent Deary
This British psychologist writes what is essentially a form of manual for life. The tone of the writing is like a soft embrace while whispering that you should take care of yourself.

Song: I don’t want you – Hailey Whitters feat. Charles Wesley
A classic country song from earlier this summer. This duet’s lyrics are a simple, yet beautiful take on misguided love.

Article: Growing up Murdoch – McKay Coppins, for The Atlantic
Must-read about the Succession-style drama taking place in the Murdoch family. Incredible sourcing and storytelling.

Bonus: And finally… here’s John Cena (yes, him) schooling you on what makes a great flat white.

Thank you for reading this far. I know you have a lot of options to choose from.

Originally published on Substack on August 25th, 2025.

Behind Meta’s numbers lies a bomb

August 21, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 21st, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Meta is posting record profits and investing more than ever in AI. But look closely at the accounting, and there’s a potential cost bomb hiding in the numbers.

Some phrases become immediately memorable. In 2020, investor Puru Saxena posted the following brief comment on Twitter: “Do you like accounting numbers or do you like making money?”

Saxena was pointing to something most investors already know: there can be a vast difference between the figures a company reports and how things actually look in reality.

When Meta reported its quarterly figures this summer, they showed enormous profit — around 180 billion Swedish kronor for the quarter. Despite that, money was pouring out of the company, and Meta doubled its total debt. The reason: AI — and a gamble in the accounting.

The central question for Meta — and for every other company investing in AI hardware — is how long that hardware remains useful. This determines how long it gets depreciated over. Meta calls this category “network equipment,” and in practice it means chips and servers. In principle it’s no different from when a company buys a property: you make a judgment about how long it will remain usable, and try to follow the standards in the industry.

The trouble with AI chips and large data centres is that there’s no real standard yet. The question is less about whether the hardware can still be used, and more about whether Meta will actually want to use it. The moment chipmaker Nvidia releases new products with higher performance, pressure builds on buyers not to fall behind.

What happens if competitors buy the new chips and Meta gets left behind? In what has become a race on the AI market, caution is in short supply. None of the major AI players can afford to risk falling behind.

At present, Meta’s chips and servers are treated — for accounting purposes — as having a useful life of five to six years. In most contexts that sounds reasonable. But the accounting doesn’t quite match the ambitions of Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He has made it the company’s new goal to create so-called “superintelligence,” and has lured in talent with billion-kronor salary packages. That the company would hold back on investment at such a moment seems unlikely.

Look at Meta’s cash flow and you already see evidence of this. In the first half of the year alone they spent around 300 billion kronor. In early August they also took on debt to build a new data centre in the American state of Louisiana. Bringing in partners to finance large investments is not in itself unusual. But the scale for Meta stands out — and it signals a trend break. In total they are borrowing around 290 billion kronor, which is double what they had borrowed previously.

At the same time as these massive investments continue, a creeping scepticism is emerging both on the world’s stock markets and among potential customers. A new report from MIT shows that 95 percent of those who have run AI pilot projects have been unable to demonstrate any measurable benefit from them. Even the leading figure in AI development, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, expressed concern about expectations for what the technology can deliver in the near term. Last week he said: “Are investors too excited? My view is yes.”

Despite the new scepticism, much suggests that the pace of AI investment for Meta and its competitors will continue to accelerate for some time yet. And with that comes the risk that a hidden bomb has been placed in the accounting, waiting. How much of the hardware will be considered good and usable just one year from now? Nobody knows.

But if it turns out that chip development demands new and faster investment, billions could go up in smoke along the way. And with that — a serious write-down for Meta and the other companies that have bet heavily. It is not easy to sit in the finance department in times like these.

Casino Capitalism

August 10, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

Economic phenomena like meme stocks, SPACs and cryptocurrencies are often presented as the new wave of financial markets. But beneath the surface, what is emerging looks less like a stock exchange and more like a casino.

Theo4. That was one of the big winners of the U.S. presidential election.

After Donald Trump clinched the victory, the pseudonymous Theo4 made a fortune on Polymarket, an American prediction market. For correctly forecasting the outcome, he pocketed more than 78 million dollars.

Is Theo4 a political mastermind? Or simply lucky? In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the anonymous Frenchman shared his thinking behind his bet:

“My intent is just making money.”

Theo4 is far from alone.

Despite the flood of new financial phenomena – from crypto currencies to meme stocks – many function primarily as pure speculation.

In other words: a casino.

Traditional financial analysis has been replaced by a form of wagering.

Prediction markets are not new. The concept is simply to let people speculate on the outcome of very specific questions. Will Jerome Powell cut rates at the next Fed meeting? Will there be a coup in Iran before August ends? Who will buy TikTok?

By betting money on one outcome or another, a miniature stock exchange is created. In theory, the cash at stake ensures participants are genuine in their views.

At times, prediction markets have been framed as an alternative to polling, occasionally showing higher accuracy. Could this be a new way of taking society’s pulse?

Well, probably not.

What once looked like a promising tool for gauging public sentiment has quickly become something else. In June, Polymarket drew 15.9 million visits.

But that surge was unlikely to be driven by a newfound civic interest.

In practice, it is gambling – only with a vastly wider menu of options than conventional bookmakers could ever offer.

Polymarket transactions are often denominated in cryptocurrency, making it a natural bridge for a cohort already comfortable with risk and accustomed to large-scale speculation.

They are also accustomed to losing money fast.

Take Coinfessions.

The X account – a play on “confessions” and “coin” – shares anonymous stories of crypto investing, most about the smaller crypto currencies that have appeared in the back waters of Bitcoin and Ethereum. So called “altcoins”.

A post from June summed it up in a single sentence:

“Got into crypto to avoid getting a job forever, now I need a job to get out of crypto.”

Compared with a global index fund, the price of Bitcoin has moved like a rollercoaster . For those dabbling in altcoins, it looks almost sedate. Altcoins can wipe out an entire stake in minutes.

Their prices move on little more than supply and demand. They serve no broader purpose and have no underlying value beyond the hope of flipping them to someone else at a higher price.

Take the childishly named Fartcoin. Its market cap is just above $1 billion – roughly on par with Swedish confectionery maker Cloetta or the investment firm Creades. Unlike those companies, Fartcoin has no assets and no function beyond speculation.

Skeptics might shrug and say such speculators have only themselves to blame. Perhaps. But the more pressing question is why people are drawn to altcoins and prediction markets in the first place.

Something seems to have shifted. When did these investors give up on savings strategies that ordinary households have used for generations? And why do they risk their savings on crypto tokens and guessing games?

A possible clue lies in Mark Zuckerberg’s inbox.

Back in 2019, Nick Clegg – then Meta’s head of policy and formerly the UK’s deputy prime minister – exchanged emails with board member Peter Thiel. In a reply about millennials’ attitudes, now public, Thiel observed why so many were skeptical of capitalism:

“There seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable […] and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it”

Thiel was describing a political shift, but his analysis can be applied more broadly. If you don’t believe capitalism will work as well – or better – for you as it did for your parents, you may simply stop believing in it.

In that scenario, alternatives become appealing. A sense of resignation can lead to betting on something new. If savings accounts and index funds no longer seem like a viable path to affording a home, what do you do? You try something else.

Housing has become more expensive in both the U.S. and Sweden. Even after Sweden’s recent correction, prices are roughly double what they were in the late 1970s, adjusted for inflation.

The fallout is not just individual.

Society and businesses lose too.

Funds have been a reliable way for households to build savings buffers, but the purpose has always been dual. Money has been invested in companies that created growth and jobs. For the companies it has paid off to have strong and growing financials, since that makes the cost of financing decrease.

What happens with this when people buy altcoins instead? Or when stocks like GameStop skyrocket – not because of faith in its business model, but to squeeze short sellers? Which was exactly what happened in 2021.

It used to be that financing companies generated returns for investors.

Now it’s a guessing game where many get burned.

And it looks set to get worse as these worlds continue to overlap.

In late June, the Trump administration announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the mortgage giants now infamous from the 2008 financial crisis – must count cryptocurrency holdings as assets when assessing new borrowers’ creditworthiness. In practice, owning Fartcoin can now help secure a U.S. mortgage.

New reports also suggest that Trump wants to make it easier to buy crypto with your retirement funds, lifting today’s restrictions.

The blurring of lines between the establishment and these speculative arenas is also reinforced by Trump himself. The president launched his own Trumpcoin – which has lost about 50% of its value in the past six months.

When the world’s most powerful man signals this, it is hard to pin the blame entirely on a disillusioned generation of young adults. Is it naïve to think you can gamble your way to prosperity? Perhaps. But it is not unique to this generation.

What is unique is how deeply gambling has seeped into so many corners of society – and how a new financial order now exists alongside the old, increasingly overlapping.

Welcome to casino capitalism.

This column was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on July 18, 2025. 

Does Lyten see something everyone else has missed?

August 7, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 7th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

The Northvolt bankruptcy estate is being bought up by the American company Lyten. The sale is a comeback — but it came at a high price.

Bankruptcy administrator Mikael Kubu has probably not had a particularly relaxing summer. After Northvolt went bankrupt in March this year, the work of trying to salvage parts of the battery company has been intense. In early July came the news that American Lyten would take over part of Northvolt’s Polish operations, Northvolt Dwa Ess. Now, just over a month later, they are also taking over the factory in Skellefteå, the development operations in Västerås and the partially built factory in Heide, in northern Germany.

The deal is a form of vindication, as many critics had argued that Northvolt’s bankruptcy was an example of a project that was misconceived from the start. That Lyten is opening its wallet in this way shows that there are more industry players who see value in what Northvolt intended to create.

Lyten’s CEO Dan Cook says in a press release that they will invest in “clean, locally produced batteries and energy storage systems in both North America and Europe.” They could have shortened that somewhat by writing “not Chinese,” because that is in practice the same thing in this context. But the hypothesis is similar to what we heard from Northvolt’s CEO and founder from the very beginning — there is demand for green batteries in the local area.

Whether Lyten is right in its analysis, and manages to deliver what Northvolt itself did not, remains to be seen. But it looks like fairly uncharted territory they are moving into. According to Lyten’s website, they have around 325 employees. Northvolt had, before the bankruptcy, around 5,000. They also write that they have previously secured funding of around 6 billion kronor. The corresponding figure for Northvolt was around 100 billion kronor.

So it is David buying Goliath here.

Which other interested parties looked at the bankruptcy estate, we do not currently know. Previously there had been big question marks around whether a Chinese owner might be conceivable and permitted to own an asset of this kind, but that scenario need not be tested now. Given the outcome, we can assume that Lyten appeared best placed and most realistic to complete the deal — valuing the assets at around 50 billion kronor according to the press release.

If it is a vindication for Northvolt, it came at a high price. Much of the staff has had to look for new jobs and customers were forced to find new suppliers. The brand has taken a serious hit. Many of the investors have attracted heavy criticism, and even if they possibly get a little money back in this deal, it is nowhere near the outcome they were hoping for. It is a fresh start — with all the difficulties and opportunities that come with it.

Was it only the circumstances that caused Northvolt to fail? An overly complex rollout of battery manufacturing combined with poor timing around financing in the later stages? Lyten at least seems to be making that assessment. But realistically, there is still some way to go before Northvolt can fulfil the vision they once sold to Skellefteå, Sweden and the world. Many things need to fall into place.

Bringing in new players who believe in these large-scale infrastructure projects has been a recurring theme throughout Northvolt’s history. Now we have a new one. Do they see something that everyone else has missed or misunderstood? Or will they join the line of those who have staked billions on a vision that has proved difficult to realise? Only time will tell. But finding believers has always been Northvolt’s strength.

Lyten has problems financing its acquisition of Northvolt. The deal was presented in August and the American company has still not secured the money needed, SvD has learned. Anxiety is growing in Skellefteå.

The rescue of the battery giant in the north hangs in the air.

Weeks have become months and months have almost turned into half a year without anything happening.

On 8 August, the deal was presented at a well-attended press conference to nothing but smiles: “This is a pivotal moment for Lyten,” said CEO Dan Cook. Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch also praised the deal and said that tears of sorrow had been replaced by a sigh of relief.

Today, more than five months later, people are still waiting for the final payment to be made.

First it was said the deal would close in October. Then that it would be completed in December. Now the bankruptcy administrator is talking about January.

SvD has been in contact with sources with insight into the deal and the message is clear: “Lyten has not managed to secure the financing. Not yet at least.”

The company needs to both borrow money from banks or financial institutions and bring in new capital from existing owners — something it has not managed to do. How much money Lyten is chasing is unclear; the size of the purchase price has never been made public.

Much else is also a question mark. The company has not published information about revenue and results and has also not been willing to state exactly which owners stand behind the operations.

What we know is that it is a private battery company founded in 2015 and based in California with just over 300 employees.

According to SvD’s sources, an intensive effort is now under way behind the scenes to find the right financiers. Perhaps the deal is only days away. Perhaps it will take considerably longer.

“A lot needs to fall into place to get the right investors on board. They are not exactly lining up outside Lyten’s door. The recent geopolitical drama has not helped the process either,” says a source with insight into the matter.

A few weeks before the big August press conference, the news agency Bloomberg published information that Lyten had raised around 2 billion kronor from existing investors to finance the acquisition of Northvolt’s Polish factory — but that is a deal that is separate from the one in Sweden. No corresponding information about the financing of the Northvolt acquisition in Skellefteå has been published.

Lyten’s problems are somewhat reminiscent of the green steel giant Stegra’s dilemma. There too, they are chasing more money, and there too it is going slowly, according to information that has leaked out.

Northvolt’s bankruptcy administrator Mikael Kubu is tight-lipped about Lyten’s financing problems: “That is not something I can comment on. However, I can note that since 1 November, Lyten has been paying wages for the staff and covering operating costs for the factory in Skellefteå,” he says.

But the factory is standing still. The roughly 170 employees are working only on maintenance — ensuring that machines and equipment do not collect dust while waiting for the factory to open properly, if or when the deal is completed.

Kubu often returns to the analogy of a property sale: that Lyten, when signing the contract in August, paid a deposit, and that they are now waiting for the final payment. Asked whether it is not his obligation as bankruptcy administrator to ensure that a serious financing arrangement is attached to a bid, he replies: “When the bid came, we made a joint assessment — in consultation with priority creditors, a bank consortium consisting of 17 banks along with Scania — that this was a reasonable bid given the conditions that existed at the time.”

A senior person in the venture capital industry, with extensive experience of acquisitions, takes the view that five months from contract signing to completion is a long time — especially when two deadlines have been missed. “I would probably say that the probability of the deal not going through is fairly high.”

In Skellefteå, questions are multiplying as the days pass without anything happening. “My God, people are extremely worried,” says Victoria Hart, a former Northvolt employee and union representative for IF Metall. “If the deal falls through it is a devastating blow for Skellefteå. Many foreign engineers and specialists will be forced to leave Sweden shortly. It is a race against the clock before the Migration Agency decides they have to get on a plane home.”

SvD has contacted Lyten, which declines to comment on the ongoing financing process. The company instead refers to a statement from marketing director Keith Norman: “This is a complex acquisition and we are eager to complete it as quickly as possible. We have from the outset been optimistic about the timeline for getting everything in place. Some parts are taking longer than expected, but overall the acquisition is progressing according to plan.”

Meta found the answer others are searching for

July 16, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on July 16th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

After investments of hundreds of billions, Meta has now found how to make money from AI. Don’t count on any superintelligence to get there — the answer lies considerably closer than that.

600 billion kronor. That is how much money Meta is expected to invest in chips, computing capacity and data centres in order to develop AI services this year. That figure likely does not include the more than 130 billion kronor they just invested in the AI company Scale AI.

To put it in perspective, the investment is a little under three times the entire market value of Ericsson. And this is, as noted, only for 2025.

Many are now asking what these gigantic bets will actually lead to, and whether there are better ways for Meta to allocate this money. Explanations have been somewhat thin on the ground. Until now.

It is about advertising. That may not sound particularly exciting given competitors like Google’s DeepMind, which mapped protein structures for the first time ever in 2021. But if you look at Meta’s revenue breakdown — despite its big investments in VR glasses and the like — the answer comes quite easily. 97 percent of Meta’s revenues in 2024 came from advertising. Improving them is therefore the quickest way to start earning a return on the large investments being made.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the idea is to move away from ready-made ads created by the advertiser, and instead hand that assignment over to AI. In practice, companies would no longer provide or create specific ads. Instead they list what they want to achieve and how much money they are willing to spend.

With that information, Meta’s AI system would create new ads presented to potential customers. But since the ads are generated at each impression, they can become very specific. Do you live somewhere sunny? A convertible is suggested. Are you in Sweden in winter — something with a heated steering wheel.

This development is a couple of steps away from what happens today. Including real-time data in ads is something advertising agencies have been able to do for a long time. What is radical about what Meta is proposing is that it would potentially bypass advertising and media agencies entirely. Their job includes advising on messaging, method and effectiveness measurement. If Meta gets what it wants, it can take over that entire assignment itself.

That companies like Volvo or Volkswagen would hand their advertising messages over to an AI system is, however, unlikely in the short term. The risks for brands of that calibre are still too high.

So it is likely the smaller advertisers who will be most attracted by this. That can go a long way. A 2022 study showed that small and medium-sized advertisers accounted for 61 percent of all ads on Meta’s advertising platform. If they can avoid the costs of various advisers, they can allocate their entire marketing budget to Meta instead.

Meta’s initiative points towards a considerably less grand and exciting future for AI development, at least in the near term. The debate has to a large extent been about what happens if — or when — we reach what is called AGI, artificial general intelligence.

This major step happens when AI systems are smarter and more capable than humans, and has been painted both as a doomsday scenario and as a salvation for the world. It is also precisely that polarisation which has made so many people anxious about where AI development is heading. It quickly becomes an existential question for humanity.

Meta’s advertising bet is rather the opposite of that. But it can nonetheless make a large impact when it comes to efficiencies. Already today, Meta uses AI as an integrated part of many services without it being noticeable. This can involve recommendations of content or moderation of unsuitable material. But gradually the human oversight decreases and the algorithmic increases. The efficiencies will reasonably lead to the number of jobs decreasing — or at least to new ones not being created.

Billions upon billions are being poured into AI development right now. Great things have been promised — cures for serious diseases and solutions to the climate crisis. But here and now, it seems we are getting a small improvement to things we already have, and something we might have preferred to do without: marginally better advertising.

Mix builds green companies — others pay

July 5, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on July 5th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

With projects like Northvolt and Stegra, Harald Mix and his company Vargas have come under fire. The reason is a new kind of venture capital model — where the public’s contribution is high, but Vargas’s own is low.

With companies like EQT and Nordic Capital, venture capital has almost become a signature strength for Sweden.

In theory, the model is deceptively simple. Buy a company cheaply, improve all the numbers — then sell, or list it on the stock market, at a high price. In practice it is somewhat more complicated.

SvD’s investigation of Harald Mix shows how many companies, pension funds and communities around his investment in Northvolt have been affected.

But Mix himself has escaped the worst of the blow. The reason is a new kind of venture capital model that his investment company Vargas has created.

Vargas calls itself an “impact company builder” — a creator of companies. That is unusual in these circles. Normally this category of company deals with financing businesses that already exist but are facing major expansion or change. Vargas starts earlier than that.

The list of company names where they are involved is well known: Northvolt, Stegra, Aira, Syre and Polarium. They have much in common. All involve green industry in various ways — a sector that has had strong tailwinds in recent years.

That factor is central. Because while Vargas is involved in starting companies, they are not alone in financing them. On the contrary. A long list of pension funds, banks and export credit agencies participate in various forms of financing. The Swedish National Debt Office issued a so-called “green credit guarantee” to Stegra in December 2023. This covers 80 percent of a loan of around 13 billion kronor that Stegra has taken. For Northvolt, the AP funds joined together and created a new company just to be able to invest.

Proximity to abundant renewable and comparatively cheap electricity is a recurring theme. When Harald Mix appeared on Ekot’s Saturday interview in November 2023, he pressed hard on the fact that Stegra — then known as H2 Green Steel — would enjoy major competitive advantages over similar projects in Europe, largely because of lower electricity prices.

Scale is another similarity. When the textile recycler Syre was launched, the plan was to build twelve factories within eight years — several of them simultaneously. This resembles the same method that Northvolt used, and which has been heavily criticised. Before the factory Northvolt Ett in Skellefteå was working properly, massive projects had been launched in, among other places, Heide in northern Germany and in Quebec, Canada.

The purpose of scaling up quickly is straightforward. If it works, you increase the company’s value substantially. A company with twelve factories is worth more than one with a single one — even if all twelve factories have not been built, or even started. If it does not work, however, the crash is all the more spectacular, as in the case of Northvolt.

Overall, these are large, green and ambitious ideas, which are readily co-financed with a broad palette of public stakeholders. Loans can be secured with credit guarantees of various kinds, and customer agreements for products are used as the basis for new investments — even if the products in question do not necessarily exist yet.

In these kinds of contexts one usually talks about “risk/reward” — that is, what risk an investor is willing to take in relation to the return a bet can yield. The theory says they should balance each other reasonably well: high risk can yield high return, and vice versa.

When it comes to Vargas’s companies, one can clearly see what the “reward” could be, but the risk seems more modest. The reason is the structure Vargas works with. It gives a great deal in return for the money invested. You rarely get more shares than when you are involved in founding a company.

In the case of Northvolt, Harald Mix had invested around 175 million kronor via Vargas and his personal holding company Kallskär. That may sound like a lot of money. But it is only around 0.18 percent of the roughly 100 billion kronor that Northvolt secured in financing in various ways. For that, Vargas became the company’s third-largest shareholder.

Compare that with the eighth-largest shareholder on the list — the four joint AP funds. They owned only half as many shares as Vargas, but had invested a full 5.8 billion kronor — fully 33 times more.

That it becomes more expensive to invest at later stages in companies is standard. The premium you pay should be balanced by the fact that the risk to the overall project is lower. Vargas’s model of quickly scaling up, however, reduces that gap — and in the case of Northvolt, the risk was hardly lower.

Vargas lost a great deal of money in Northvolt’s bankruptcy. The AP funds, and ultimately Sweden’s pensioners, lost enormously more.

It is beginning to resemble a new type of venture capital model — one where Vargas can win big, but its potential loss stays relatively small.

But as the bankruptcy of Northvolt shows, that equation does not hold for all participants. And when the co-financiers are our shared pension money, Vargas’s model tastes particularly bitter.

Swedish tech’s revenge — outperforming the US

June 28, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on June 28th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

While trade tariffs and uncertainty have shaken the world’s stock markets, one star is shining unexpectedly brightly. Swedish tech companies have outperformed the US in 2025 — with one particularly strong locomotive.

How are Swedish tech companies actually faring? Despite endless PR campaigns about their excellence compared to other countries, the question is surprisingly difficult to answer. But there are actually facts on the matter, at least when it comes to Swedish tech companies on the stock market.

In June 2024, SvD launched its own index for this category. At the time, the Swedish tech stock market looked to be in crisis. Looking at the picture since the start of this year, things look completely different. Swedish tech is heading for a comeback. And at the very front of the pack we find a company that is outperforming Nvidia, Microsoft and Google alike.

“I don’t think anything we see today changes the long-term picture for Spotify. The business is stable, our business model holds, and the direction we’re heading in remains clear. People still want to listen to music.”

Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, sounded triumphant when he reported strong results in April this year. The music service showed its largest subscriber growth in five years. And similar notes have been heard from the major Swedish tech company for a long time.

The result on the stock market now speaks for itself. Since the start of 2025, Spotify’s share price has risen by around 69 percent (data from 2 January to 25 June this year). The corresponding figure for Nvidia — admittedly from a considerably higher starting point — is 12 percent.

With Spotify as locomotive, the entire Swedish tech stock market has delivered very strong results. Someone who — hypothetically — invested in our tech index would have seen a return of just over 16 percent since the start of the year. That can be compared to the American S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, which have delivered only modest 4.5 and 6.3 percent respectively.

Looking at American tech companies, the comparison looks even better. The SKYY index, which primarily consists of various cloud companies, has actually fallen by 1.2 percent. The Swedish tech market has thus outperformed by over 17 percentage points this year.

One explanation for why this has happened is that Swedish tech companies are more insulated from the biggest trends. When AI exploded in the world, the Swedish tech stock market did not benefit significantly. But when scepticism has grown somewhat, they have not been hit either. They have been trotting along steadily while many American companies galloped — and were forced to slam the brakes.

Further down the list there are Swedish tech companies that illustrate this. The gaming company Betsson has risen by over 36 percent, and industry peer Kambi by around 32 percent. The financial services company Fortnox has also risen by around 23 percent, driven in that case by a takeover bid to delist the company from the stock exchange.

Not everything has the same lustre, however. Bottom of the table goes to the cybersecurity company Yubico, which has lost over 45 percent so far this year. The company, which came to market via a SPAC in autumn 2023, has had a tough year but has still risen considerably since its listing. The gaming company Embracer looks weak in the statistics, but that is mainly because it has separately listed Asmodee, which makes board games among other things. E-commerce company Boozt has also had a hard time, losing more than a third of its market value since the turn of the year.

As with most things on the stock market, different tendencies emerge depending on how you calculate. Swedish tech companies have on the whole had a very strong 2025 so far. But if we look back to the index’s starting point — January 2022 — the picture is completely different.

A hundred-kronor note invested in the Swedish tech market then would have become 74 kronor today. The enormous gains seen primarily at the largest American tech companies have been essentially absent. But from the bottom in November 2023, there has been a steady recovery. And the tariff chaos that has characterised international markets is barely visible for Swedish tech companies.

How is Swedish tech on the stock market in 2025? So far, well. Despite only 12 of the 30 included companies having risen since the turn of the year, the gains are so large that the overall picture looks positive. But it is primarily Daniel Ek who has performed well. Our index is equally weighted to give a more balanced picture of how the whole sector is doing. Had we instead weighted by market value, Spotify would have accounted for fully 74.6 percent of the Swedish tech market.

People still want to listen to music, said Ek in his quarterly report. Apparently people still want to own Spotify shares as well.

Creators are outraged — YouTube looks away

June 22, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on June 22nd, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Want to succeed on YouTube? It can pay to shock and be controversial. But a recent example shows how easily people can end up caught in the platform’s grey zones.

Every minute of every day, around 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. The Google-owned video service has become the Western world’s second-largest search engine. Who is actually watching all this material?

That question is difficult to answer. The differences between superstars who attract millions of views and home filmmakers with single-digit viewer counts are enormous.

What is easy to answer, however, is who is not watching all the video being uploaded — and that is YouTube itself. So who keeps track of what gets uploaded to the platform? Nobody. And that can have major consequences.

YouTube itself likes to talk about its automated systems that scan material for unsuitable content. And large numbers of videos are removed with the support of these systems — around 9.4 million video clips disappeared this way in the last quarter of 2024. But if the machine-learning systems are like a net, it is not a particularly fine-meshed one. A great deal of material that breaks YouTube’s rules gets published anyway.

There are many examples of this. In the documentary podcast Badfluence from SvD and Podme, 16 examples containing potential violations are sent to YouTube. The creators behind the videos are major figures on Swedish YouTube — Pontus “Anjo” Björlund, Alexander Rask and Christofer “Chrippa” Berg. YouTube is given just over a week to analyse the 16 videos. Shortly afterwards, one of them disappears, and another appears to have been edited. The accompanying comment from YouTube points to the company’s guidelines for what is and is not permitted on the platform. But the review only took place after SvD and Podme had shared the links.

YouTube’s policy resembles most closely a kind of public insurance policy. A document one can point to in order to justify removing and changing material when necessary. Because a policy is easy to write but difficult to uphold.

What emerges are two parallel worlds on YouTube — a set of rules that dictates what you are allowed to do, and millions of videos that have neither been filtered out nor reported by any viewer. In many cases, the two have very little to do with each other.

It goes without saying that the challenge for YouTube of keeping track of all this material is enormous. 500 hours of video per minute amounts to around 720,000 hours of new material to review — every day. How could that even be done? That it requires some form of automation is obvious. And that there will be shortcomings in these systems is equally so.

At the same time, the problem they are trying to manage is entirely of their own making. There are reasons why many other platforms do not allow people to freely upload whatever material they like to their services. Doing so quickly becomes a question of responsibility. Your platform, your responsibility, right?

That would be one way to see it, at least. In practice, YouTube has grown up in what is almost a lawless territory where regulation of tech companies has essentially not existed — particularly not in the service’s home country, the US. Within the EU, new legislative packages have been introduced, and in October 2024 YouTube received a formal inquiry about how content is recommended on the platform. A closely related area, but not identical. It is also worth noting that YouTube has existed for 20 years — and society has not progressed further than cautiously beginning to ask questions. There is something to be desired there.

YouTube’s incentives to change the situation are few. While they do not want material that is directly illegal on their service, the difficulties arise in the grey zones. In the Badfluence podcast one hears about a ruthless world where creators slander each other. The accusations that fly concern everything from various crimes to infidelity. Secretly recorded phone calls, text message conversations and censored nude images are shared. Inappropriate? Yes. Popular? Also yes. The algorithms that determine what viewers are shown favour what is controversial. And the more people who watch a particular clip, the more people may have it recommended to them.

Here we find the underlying problem. The more video views, the more money both YouTube and the creator earn. Being controversial therefore pays. The platform and the creators both feed and depend on each other. In such a scenario it is easy to understand why the grey zones have received lower priority.

Unfortunately, it is precisely in these grey zones that people get hurt. Private information is shared, people are violated, lies are spread. YouTube does not encourage creators to do this. But they do not do particularly much to stop them either.