Originally published in Svenska Dagbladet by Björn Jeffery, June 28, 2025
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.
