Voi founders’ new AI startup Pit has become the latest rising star out of Stockholm

Swedish startup Pit could have gained discover for some rage-bait social media posts, but it surely has additionally change into one other Stockholm AI startup to look at.

Pit is led by the cofounders of European scooter big Voi together with Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm. He’s joined by former iZettle and Klarna engineers. And it’s now backed by a16z, which is main the startup’s $16 million seed spherical. Stockholm, additionally residence to Lovable, is without doubt one of the locations the place a16z has been actively on the lookout for the following European unicorn.

Pit goes after enterprise AI with merchandise supposed to study from the shoppers how their companies run then create customized software program to automate processes, Pit CEO Adam Jafer instructed Trendster.

Jafer left Voi final summer season after a seven-year tenure throughout which the corporate scaled right into a group of almost 1,000 staff working into 13 international locations. From his engineering viewpoint, Jafer noticed how AI has matured sufficient for enterprise use. Initially, he noticed an opportunity to interchange low-hanging SaaS instruments with in-house apps, however he quickly envisioned a chance past Voi.

“The aha second for the larger alternative was when the fashions have been not simply chatbots that generate textual content, however grew to become extra agentic and will do issues,” he instructed Trendster. In contrast to opponents providing AI agent-building or vibe-coding merchandise, Pit positions itself as an “AI product group as a service.”

Pit is getting into a crowded market and hopes to distinguish itself by counting on two pillars: Pit Studio, which lets enterprise staff information it by way of processes that could possibly be dealt with by AI-generated software program; and Pit Cloud, which, the startup guarantees, offers that software program in a approach that meets enterprise necessities on governance, certifications and auditability.

In mid-January, the startup began testing its plan with pilot prospects in telecom, healthcare, logistics and different sectors, focusing solely on automating inner processes. “Nothing buyer dealing with, no conversational AI, simply pure back-office, service and assist features that we flip into automations as a way to give again time to folks to focus in your core enterprise,” Jafer stated.

The startup is now getting ready to scale up commercially, but it surely received’t be hands-off. Following the pattern of AI firms hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to embed themselves to drive enterprise adoption, Pit can also be hiring answer engineers. The aim, Jafer stated, is to satisfy the expectations of the big prospects it’s focusing on. “They’re seeking to purchase outcomes. They need processes to go sooner. They need to see productiveness unlock and time unlock,” he stated.

Jafer stated Pit shouldn’t be pitching itself as a solution to scale back human labor and minimize jobs. “The theme is extra round shifting folks upstream to do extra precious issues for the enterprise, relatively than repetitive back-office work.” Success metrics additionally transcend saving money and time. “A few of it’s simply high quality of labor enchancment, decreasing human errors and so forth.”

But Pit’s personal wants on this grew to become a topic of controversy a couple of months in the past when Jafer posted on LinkedIn declaring “Sure, our group at present has no junior engineers. At Pit, brokers now do most of what junior engineers used to do.”

Whereas the put up remains to be seen, he not stands by that. “It could have began like that, however you want a very good combine as you scale,” he stated with a smile.

Hjelm anticipated the all-male group may elevate eyebrows, too. In a put up on X, he wrote that Pit was “based by tech bros, from Voi and Klarna,” however instantly added, “We have now tech ladies on the group as effectively, fyi.” That clarification wasn’t instantly obvious from Pit’s LinkedIn profile, though Trendster has spoken with one lady working at Pit on the communications facet.

What the image does replicate, although, is a way of getting the band again collectively. Voi’s 4 cofounders have remained associates through the years, and three of them are actually a part of this new journey: Hjelm, Jafer and Filip Lindvall, now a founding engineer at Pit. One of many startup’s engineers, Andreas Hjelm, is none apart from Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm’s brother. 

Whereas Fredrik Hjelm is known as as a co-founder of Pit, too, he’s nonetheless Voi’s CEO, so his position will doubtless be much less hands-on in the interim. Since going worthwhile in 2024, Voi has been thought-about a possible IPO candidate, and closed 2025 with robust outcomes. However his involvement as a well-connected entrepreneur may nonetheless open doorways — and already has, with a16z.

In a tweet, Hjelm defined how a16z companions Alex Rampell and Gabriel Vasquez ended up main Pit’s spherical. He grew to become acquainted with Ben Horowitz, Gabriel Vasquez and Jen Kha “a couple of years in the past once they got here to Stockholm to grasp what they might do for European tech. We stayed in contact. When it got here to choosing companions for Pit, we didn’t want the cash to get going, however we needed the strongest backers we may discover. So we picked them, they usually picked us.”

Jafer additionally corroborated that Pit didn’t spend a lot time with different corporations to boost its spherical, which was additionally backed by Pit’s founders themselves, in addition to Lakestar, executives from American tech firms, and rich households from the Nordics. This transatlantic cap desk confirms that there’s rising curiosity for AI out of Stockholm, which has consolidated itself as some of the lively startup hubs in Europe. 

Pit may additionally profit from its European DNA in terms of gross sales. “We’re going after industrials, and there’s loads of that in Europe,” Jafer stated. He additionally reported that shoppers admire Pit’s agnostic strategy. Since it might probably use totally different AI and cloud distributors relying on shoppers’ preferences, it may gain advantage from the present tailwinds for sovereign tech, particularly in important sectors.

“EU fashions operating on EU compute is high of thoughts for nearly each CIO we’re assembly,” Jafer stated.