Originally published in Svenska Dagbladet by Björn Jeffery, June 5, 2025
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson says that Sweden has momentum on AI. Good — but it is not thanks to what is happening within his government.
Sweden is to produce a national AI strategy for the years 2025–2030. This could be read on the Ministry of Finance website, which recently published its digitalisation strategy. The AI strategy is not planned to be ready until “early 2026” — that is, more than a year into the five-year period it is meant to cover.
Neither the pace nor the execution inspires confidence. It is a bit like going orienteering and hoping to find a map once you are already out in the forest.
Background material for this delayed strategy is not lacking. The government itself appointed the former county governor Anna Kinberg Batra to investigate AI on their behalf. In addition, Carl-Henric Svanberg was asked to lead a new AI commission with a similar purpose.
Svanberg’s final report was pushed back in time — precisely because it was considered urgent. The report was handed over to the government, which then asked for it to be rewritten as a formal public inquiry. It therefore now sits in consultation with the same kinds of bodies that were already consulted in the earlier report.
Let us also not forget that AI Sweden, a Swedish “partner network” part-funded by Vinnova, shared its AI strategy for Sweden last year. And that as far back as 2018, a “national direction for artificial intelligence” was published by the Ministry of Finance. In it one could read that “if the opportunities of AI are to be realised, Sweden needs to develop its long-term knowledge and skills supply in the AI field.” Where that has gone in the past seven years is unclear.
Despite an abundance of investigations and documents, very little is happening on AI from the government. Mathias Sundin, one of the participants in the AI commission, said the following to Dagens Media:
“The opportunities that exist now will be seized in some other part of the world. In the 1990s we were number one in the world with the internet, and from that came companies like Mojang, Spotify, Klarna and Skype. That kind of thing happens early in a transition.”
It is hard to disagree. While Sweden sends remits and investigations back and forth, the rest of the world is running past us. That might perhaps have been acceptable — Sweden is a small country that cannot be the best at everything. But when Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson praises several private AI initiatives and also speaks of momentum on the AI question, it is still reasonable to ask what this momentum and interest has actually produced from the government’s side.
That list of examples is unfortunately short. But one need not look further than across the North Sea to see how it could work.
As early as 2021, the United Kingdom invested 10.5 billion kronor to establish ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency), an agency for advanced research. ARIA drew inspiration from the American DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a predecessor that contributed to developing technologies including GPS and mRNA. Through its own projects and by funding others, ARIA and DARPA can ensure that important development happens in their respective home countries.
ARIA is not a dedicated AI unit, but its mandate suits the field perfectly. Find and develop advanced technology that benefits everyone — and that in the short term benefits the United Kingdom most of all.
Looking further afield, Saudi Arabia just invested 96 billion kronor in building Humain — a state-owned AI company with the aim of establishing the country as a leader in the field. Saudi Arabia is a large and wealthy country, one might say. Perhaps not a fair comparison for Sweden? So let us look at something at the other end of the scale as well: Singapore. Over the coming five years, even that small Southeast Asian country will invest around ten billion kronor in AI.
And so we come to Sweden. In the spring budget one could see in black and white how the AI question has been prioritised. It amounted to 30 million kronor for the Swedish Tax Agency and 30 million kronor for the Social Insurance Agency. Beyond that, we got a “regulatory sandbox” to avoid immediately having to shut down development in areas where legislation is not sufficiently clear.
Yes, you hear it. The momentum that Ulf Kristersson speaks of is conspicuously absent in Sweden. At least from official quarters. While the countries around us are investing billions, we are spending millions investigating the investigations that have already been done. And if we are lucky, we will get a strategy for the country more than a year after it was supposed to come into force. We can do better.
