Insight
8 min read
Here is a fact that makes you stop and think. Sweden, with a population of just 10.5 million, has produced 41 unicorns. The Netherlands, with 17.5 million inhabitants, has 15. The United Kingdom, with 67 million people, has 51.
On a per-capita basis, a Swede is four times more likely to build a unicorn than a Briton, and 2.7 times more likely than a Dutch person.
Country | Unicorns | Population (million) | Unicorns per million |
|---|---|---|---|
Sweden | 41 | 10.5 | 3.9 |
Netherlands | 15 | 17.5 | 0.9 |
UK | 51 | 67.0 | 0.8 |
Germany | 31 | 84.0 | 0.4 |
France | 29 | 68.0 | 0.4 |
The secret lies not in the size of a capital city, but in something far more fundamental: how a country deals with success.
The answer to Sweden's success begins with a story you rarely hear anywhere else in the world. Niklas Adalberth, co-founder of Klarna, held a stake worth $2.5 billion in 2021. Rather than keeping it, he sold the majority to fund his Norrsken Foundation.
"When I started Klarna, I believed that money equalled happiness. It was actually very selfish from the start," Adalberth told Business Insider. "But when I was living this dream, I got a bad feeling. Hey, I genuinely can't taste the difference between this wine and the cheap wine I have at home."
After an eye-opening trip to Las Vegas, where he spent thousands of dollars on luxury but felt empty, he decided to overhaul his life. He sold his Klarna shares and put €140 million into Norrsken, not as an investment, but as a gift to the next generation of entrepreneurs.
"I have all this luck in my life, and more money makes no sense. And I really want to be able to look in the mirror and see that I have created something positive," he explained.
This is not unique to Stockholm. It is the norm that has taken hold across all of Sweden.
But Adalberth is not alone. Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, invested no less than €600 million in Helsing, a European AI defence company, in June 2025 through his Prima Materia fund. The investment made him chairman of the company, which develops AI-driven drones and combat systems.
"As Europe rapidly strengthens its defence capabilities in response to shifting geopolitical challenges, there is an urgent need for investment in advanced technologies that guarantee its strategic autonomy and security readiness," Ek said in a statement.
This is not merely business. It is a statement about European technological sovereignty. Ek is using his Spotify success to bolster Europe's defence AI, a clear example of how Swedish founders reinvest their proceeds into strategic sectors.
The latest addition to Stockholm's unicorn club is Lovable, founded by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin. Their story illustrates how Sweden is producing a new generation of AI founders.
Osika, 34, did not begin his career as an entrepreneur but as a physicist. He studied at the prestigious KTH Royal Institute of Technology and went on to work at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory in Switzerland. But after a few months, he had seen enough.
"CERN had an army of thousands of the world's best physicists, but I quickly started to think that the slow work on 'impossible projects' like searching for dark matter was a waste of human potential," Osika told Forbes. "The realisation was that you have far, far more impact in industry, by building companies."
After a detour through a trading firm in Stockholm and an AI startup, Osika founded Lovable in 2023. The company developed vibe coding, an AI tool that allows anyone to build software without knowing how to programme. In July 2025, Lovable was valued at $1.8 billion, making it Europe's fastest-growing software startup ever.
"People are natural builders, but the ability to write code, or having access to capital, has been the defining factor in being able to build software," says Osika. "People understand people, and Lovable is this tool for bringing ideas to life within minutes."
The company now generates roughly $1 million per day in subscription revenue. Not bad for a startup that is barely two years old.
Another compelling story is that of Robert Falck, founder of Einride. Falck spent his days working in a Russian truck factory and his nights building a startup for nightclub guest lists. He also collects old books and once correctly predicted that Chinese author Gao Xingjian would win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
"I worked at Volvo, where I produced diesel engines, gearboxes and trucks. That made the challenges of the industry clear, and that I have a moral obligation," Falck told TechCrunch. "The heavy freight industry accounts for 7 to 8 percent of global CO2 emissions, and the engines I helped produce contribute around 1 percent of global CO2 emissions. That was the scale of the impact of my previous position, and I realised I was part of the problem."
Falck founded Einride in 2016, his seventh company. The company builds autonomous electric lorries with no cab for a human driver. In 2021, Einride raised $110 million and was valued at more than $1 billion.
"There is no logical reason to start a company. You are either crazy, or if you do it for money, you won't get there, because there are far easier ways to make money," says Falck. "But for me, I regard CO2 emissions as the greatest challenge of our generation."
There is another Stockholm story worth telling. Peter Carlsson and Paolo Cerruti met in 2011 at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California. Both had just joined the company to lead the supply chain. Six years later, they founded Northvolt with the mission of building Europe's first gigafactory for batteries.
Carlsson had previously worked at NXP Semiconductors, where he was responsible for procurement and outsourcing. At Tesla he became Vice President of Supply Chain. But he saw an opportunity to make Europe independent from Asian battery manufacturers.
"We wanted to build Europe's first gigafactory and prove that you can manufacture sustainable batteries using renewable energy," Carlsson said in interviews. Northvolt ultimately raised more than $2.75 billion and was valued at $12 billion, making it one of Europe's largest unicorns.
The company is now building factories in Sweden, Germany and Poland, and holds contracts with BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo.
What these stories have in common is something you rarely see in other countries. Swedish founders do not view their success as a destination, but as a starting point. They use their proceeds to fund and mentor the next generation.
Adalberth's Norrsken House in Stockholm now houses 450 employees from impact startups. Ek is not only investing in defence AI, but also in dozens of other European startups through his Prima Materia fund. Carlsson advises young cleantech founders. Falck speaks regularly at conferences on sustainability.
"What I am trying to do with the foundation is see whether we can make impact entrepreneurs the next role models," says Adalberth. "Maybe we can get top talent to tackle real problems instead of creating yet another addictive computer game or yet another online casino."
The result? Sweden now has a self-reinforcing national ecosystem where every new unicorn finances and mentors the next generation, regardless of where in the country they are based.
Germany is playing the game differently from everyone else. Through its "AI made in Germany" programme, the country is investing €3 billion, later expanded to €5 billion, in a national AI strategy that prioritises quality over speed.
"With an AI offensive, we want to generate 10% of our economic output on the basis of AI by 2030 and make AI an important instrument in key areas," the German government announced in July 2025.
What is clever about the German approach? They are positioning "AI made in Germany" as a quality hallmark, much like "Swiss made" or "German engineering". They are not competing on speed or scale, but on reliability and precision.
The result is that 42% of Berlin developers are working on AI, 30% more than in the US. Germany is creating a national AI identity rather than merely a capital-city hub.
Let us be honest about the rest of Europe. Despite all the fine talk about innovation, the reality is that European startups are 40% less likely to receive funding after five years than their American counterparts.
"Despite the world-class talent, global ambition and unique strengths of the European startup ecosystem, it is still absurdly difficult to build here," the founders of Stripe and Wise complained in an open letter to the EU.
The figures support their frustration:
Europe: $45 billion in venture capital in 2023
US: $120 billion
China: $48 billion
The Netherlands faces a critical choice. According to CBS, the country has hundreds of AI-producing companies, with a strong concentration in Amsterdam. But it still lacks the systematic reinvestment culture found in Sweden.
ASML is already showing the way with its €1.3 billion investment in the French AI company Mistral AI. It signals that Dutch tech giants are willing to deploy large sums in Europe's future. The question now is whether more Dutch successes will follow that example.
The Netherlands can combine the best of both worlds:
The Swedish pay-it-forward mindset, where successful founders systematically reinvest in the next generation
The German branding approach: "AI made in Netherlands" as a quality hallmark for responsible, reliable AI
Imagine Dutch tech successes adopting the Swedish model, investing not in quick wins or wrappers, but in foundational technology that makes a genuine difference.
"In the startup world, momentum is everything. Anything that slows you down does not just slow you down, it kills you by preventing you from reaching escape velocity," warns Andreas Klinger of Prototype Capital.
The Netherlands has all the ingredients for its own Swedish moment: the talent, the companies, and the international connections. What it lacks is a national culture of reinvestment and a clear narrative about where the Netherlands stands in AI.
The question is not whether the Netherlands can compete with Sweden. The question is whether it has the resolve to copy Sweden's real secret: an entire country working together, where successful entrepreneurs see their next mission as enabling other people's success.
Because ultimately, it is not about the size of your capital city. It is about the strength of your national story and the willingness of your winners to help the next generation win.
Sweden has understood that. When will the Netherlands?
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