This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on July 20th, 2026.
American tech companies are buying Swedish electricity, luring Swedish entrepreneurs and moving Swedish companies to the US. Politicians and the business community applaud. But as more and more ends up in American hands, Sweden may pay a high price.
Benjamin Dousa seems very pleased.
“OpenAI opening an office in Stockholm is proof of Sweden’s position as one of the world’s leading technology nations.”
In a press release, the Moderate minister for international development cooperation and foreign trade gets to welcome the large American AI company to Sweden’s capital.
He is not alone in receiving them with open arms.
Industry organizations, politicians and entrepreneurs seem touchingly agreed that the AI company’s newly opened branch is proof of Sweden as a major tech nation. In the cheering, everyone appears to overlook that OpenAI opened an office in Madrid as recently as the week before, and that they are hiring just as many people there as in Stockholm. Four.
At the same time as there is talk of how important Swedish and European independence from the US is, there are few things interpreted as positively as American interest in Sweden.
Because the interest is certainly there. The Americans are coming to build data centers with Swedish electricity. To invest in Swedish startups. And to open Swedish branches of large American corporations.
But there is another way to look at it, too.
A kind of colonization of Sweden is under way, driven by American tech companies.
And we applaud while it happens.
Gabriel Vasquez has been to Stockholm nine times in a year.
“There’s no time to be lazy!” proclaims the venture capitalist from the American heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, also known as A16Z.
There is business to be done here.
Sweden — and Stockholm in particular — has many new and promising entrepreneurs to offer. Vasquez, who was visiting for a conference in the spring, is just one example of the many Americans who have come to town to charm them.
In a short space of time A16Z has invested in a number of Swedish startups, among them Pit, Endra and Dentio. All are newly founded companies in the AI field that have made headlines because of their investors.
The Americans are visible among the very fastest-growing Swedish companies as well.
The venture capital firm Accel has invested in the vibe coding rocket Lovable, and the chip giant Nvidia took part in the funding of the AI legal platform Legora.
The development is received with open arms — from entrepreneurs and the establishment alike.
“When we had decided to build Pit, [A16Z] were the first ones we called. They moved extremely fast. We didn’t really need the money, but we wanted the strongest partner — and that’s what we got in A16Z,” said Fredrik Hjelm, co-founder of both the newly started Pit and the e-scooter company Voi.
A well-known founder like Hjelm probably had many options, Swedish ones among them. But this time the choice was American.
Pit was already prepared for this, having a parent company registered in the US — in Delaware, to be precise. Having one tends to be a requirement from American investors.
And there are particular reasons for that.
In the event of a sale or a listing of the company, the profits — and any taxes — will end up right there, in the slightly sleepy state just south of New Jersey.
It is a good way off before anything like that happens to the newly started Pit, though.
For Swedish Lovable, whose current valuation is rumored to be around 113 billion kronor, it lies somewhat closer. They too have their holding company registered in Delaware.
They have around 250 employees today and 70 open positions. The majority of these sit in Stockholm, something CEO Anton Osika has said he is proud of. These are jobs — with employees who pay tax — that exist here and now.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Osika is asked why the head office remains in Stockholm. He mentions that people rarely quit, and the access to skilled staff, as two major factors. Osika says Lovable can become the biggest magnet for talent in the city.
What he strangely does not mention is the pay level. Which is one of the principal reasons American venture capitalists are so enthusiastic about having Swedish employees in their portfolio companies.
Swedish employers often complain about how expensive it is to have staff in Sweden.
Compared with Silicon Valley, it is a bargain.
In California you have to state salary ranges in job advertisements, which creates good transparency about what different positions cost. Look at a role that both Lovable and Californian Anthropic are currently hiring for — “analytics engineer” — and the American position sits at between 275,000 and 370,000 dollars a year. On top of that come options and similar instruments that can be worth many times more. But if we look only at the base salary, that would correspond to a monthly wage of around 200,000 to 300,000 kronor.
That is eight times higher than the median salary in Sweden.
Lovable does not state what it pays in wages, but the union Sveriges ingenjörer writes that a graduate engineer with ten years of experience earns on average between 50,800 and 65,200 kronor a month. Even at the top of that range — with employer social contributions and everything else included — it is nowhere near the American costs. Not even if you add an AI bonus for working at one of Swedish tech’s hottest companies.
What is taking place, then, is a wage arbitrage. American investor money goes to Swedish salaries. Which in turn go back to create value for American holding companies. It spins off a little tax in Sweden along the way, but the largest values end up outside the country’s borders.
The raw material — Swedish tech talent — is refined by another country.
There are more raw materials of American interest in Sweden. Swedish electricity, for instance.
In Luleå sits one of Meta’s data centers, running entirely on hydropower from the Lule river. In 2018 it expanded and was to become one of the world’s largest at the time.
They are not alone. As recently as June this year came word that Google is building a data center in Horndal, just outside Avesta in Dalarna. 100 permanent jobs are promised when it is finished, in fields from electricians to catering.
Microsoft’s data centers outside Staffanstorp, Gävle and Sandviken have been there for some time. Other players such as Swedish Ecodatacenter supply services to many American customers.
Why all this interest?
The AI expansion around the world has not only created enormous demand for chips and components — there is also a shortage of electricity. It is not enough to build data centers; they also need to be connected to a grid with the capacity to take them. In June last year, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said we will see a large share of the planet’s energy spent on AI computation.
The question for Sweden therefore becomes not just how many jobs these data centers can generate, but also whether they fit in the electricity grids. And for that matter — what we as a country will not have room for, in favor of the power going to these American data centers.
The electricity that was allocated to the battery factory Northvolt looks set to go partly to a data center instead. The plant that American Lyten bought is not yet running, but the land beside it has already been sold to a data center. And according to the book “Northvoltfallet” by the journalist Gunnar Lindstedt, it is Google that is queuing to move in when it is ready.
The manufacture of green batteries for the vehicle industry was to become a new strategic base industry for Sweden. It remains to be seen whether there will be any batteries at all in the near term. But parts of the grid capacity are already allocated to the data center, so battery production on the scale Northvolt originally planned can never happen.
And if there are any batteries — then it will be Lyten, from the US, that draws the biggest winning ticket. With Swedish electricity and newly built infrastructure as raw material.
While the American investments rain down on the country, Swedish politicians and entrepreneurs cheer. It is seen as an achievement to attract money and attention from companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta. There is talk of momentum for “Silicon Valhalla” — the label meant to market the Swedish tech scene abroad.
But who actually gains most from these ventures?
While some entrepreneurs are very quick to criticize how few Swedish pension funds invest in domestic tech companies, they are just as quick to accept money from American funds for their own startups. And through that they move a large part of the value creation to the other side of the Atlantic. Is that something to be glad about and celebrate?
In other parts of Europe a resistance movement has begun to form.
The European tech initiative Rebuild aims at precisely this. They are trying to identify the European tech companies that exist, and to look at how they can grow without having to give everything up to the US. Over a year they are gathering data and building opinion around the idea that dependence on American tech companies comes with a risk. Can we trust them when we need them?
In mid-June, Anthropic’s latest AI model was suddenly cut off from the outside world because of political decisions. Without resilience, Europe could stand very alone if the winds start blowing differently from the big country in the west.
At Rebuild there is no cheering that the Americans are coming. They are planning for what an internet looks like and works like without them.
At a conference in Copenhagen, Rebuild’s initiator, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, is asked a question in a panel discussion. Why should we care whether things go well for tech companies in Europe or not?
He answers quickly:
“Because it’s our home.”
Perhaps it is no harder than that? To believe that Sweden — or Europe — could cut all ties to American tech companies in the near term would be naive. But it would be equally naive to welcome every initiative as though it were made for Sweden’s benefit. Would we feel the same about them if they came from China, for example?
The new Swedish raw materials in tech — entrepreneurs, tech workers and green electricity — are refined by American shell companies in Delaware.
Is that how we best take care of our common home?
Outside of Sweden’s borders, more and more are starting to answer no to that question.
