This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on February 13th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
The headline speakers were Zlatan and Boris Johnson. What do they know about Swedish tech, one might wonder? When thousands of participants visited Techarena in Stockholm, it was more about marketing an exaggerated image of Sweden.
An inflatable unicorn spins a wheel at a major bank’s stand. Next to it, a property company is offering soft ice cream.
We are in Solna, at Techarena. Here all other industries are supposed to be able to meet the Swedish tech miracle. But something is missing.
Everyone is present at Strawberry Arena — except the main protagonists: the big tech companies.
The taxi queue winds up the hill outside the arena. Ministers and Swedish entrepreneurs glide in, take part in a brief panel discussion about how important Sweden’s and Europe’s tech future is, and then straight back out to the taxi again. On the arena floor, they are nowhere to be found — with a few isolated exceptions.
Most telling was the closing interview on Wednesday when the audience was asked to welcome Max Junestrand, CEO of the hyped Swedish AI company Legora, to the stage. Or rather — we welcomed him to the screen. He was, it turned out, in San Francisco acquiring more American customers.
So there we sat, in Solna, listening to a Swede in the US talk about how great it was to run a company from Stockholm.
The programme for Techarena is odd, to say the least. The headline name is Zlatan — inexplicably. Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, does not seem to know why he is here. He talks mostly about how Covid could have been handled differently.
Immediately after Johnson, on the same stage, we get a little closer to something relevant.
It is a panel discussion about how Nordic founders can compete in a global market. The three panellists are somewhat oddly chosen, given that none of them have expanded their companies further than Western Europe.
But then comes a comment from the panel that explains why we have all gathered here on the exhibition floor.
Fredrik Hjelm, CEO of Voi, proclaims that “marketing is back!” (We speak only English at this conference, naturally.) We are here to absorb the marketing. And what is being sold is Tech Sweden.
The message is very clear from the politicians and entrepreneurs on stage. Europe is strong in global competition. Sweden in particular. The only thing standing in the way of our world domination appears to be EU regulations that frustrate the participants.
The idea of dismantling government laws to unleash growth and innovation is a familiar one. It all sounds a little libertarian. The irony of this argument seems to be lost on the room — namely that it is the state that has paid for parts of this very gathering.
Names like Business Sweden, the state research institute Rise, Vinnova, and the Swedish Export Credit Agency stand in their stands right in the middle of the exhibition floor. It is their money that makes it possible for all of us to be here.
In panel discussions we are told about Americans moving to Sweden because our quality of life is so high — that here it is possible to combine a successful career with family life. But how many people are we actually talking about?
According to Statistics Sweden, a total of 1,761 Americans moved to Sweden during 2024 — or a little more than half as many as came from Poland or Syria. Far from all of them work in tech. We are not talking about any American tech invasion.
But yes, you can find a few of the big tech companies too.
Meta has a small stand where they want to show off their smart glasses. AI company Anthropic sent a salesperson who explained how he organises his wine cellar with AI. A Swedish policy director at TikTok sat dutifully on a panel about disinformation.
The vast majority of major tech companies — neither Swedish nor foreign — are not here, however. Spotify and Klarna have offices 20 minutes from the arena but were not visible. Nor companies like Apple or Tesla. This is clearly not a priority for them. Where companies are present at all, they have sent the sales staff, not the heavy hitters.
Perhaps that says something about Sweden as a tech nation.
