Ek silenced the doubters — and was right in the end

September 30, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 30th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Spotify stands stronger than ever as Daniel Ek steps down as CEO at the start of next year. After 20 years on the throne, the king of Swedish tech is stepping aside. And the outlines of what lies ahead are already visible.

It is a journey without parallel within Swedish tech. And one that stands strong within Swedish entrepreneurship overall.

Spotify has transformed an entire industry and dragged it — often very reluctantly — into the future. In doing so, it has created a stock market success in the United States with a rise of close to 400 percent since the listing in 2018.

When Ek now leaves behind a full year of profitability, the results speak for themselves. It is possible to make money from streaming.

So what are the next steps for both Daniel Ek and Spotify? Those who have followed the company for some time have already seen a preview of how things might unfold.

American title conventions in professional life are something of a mystery to those not accustomed to them. While in Sweden people often make do with being called “chef” — manager — the American titles are considerably longer and more complicated.

Alex Norström — one of the two who will take over as CEO of Spotify — is today “Chief Business Officer” and “Co-President.” His partner Gustav Söderström is “Chief Product & Technology Officer” and “Co-President” as well.

If you could decipher the titles, this leadership change has been in the making for some time. Being chief business officer or chief product and technology officer is not unusual. But being “co-president” means essentially one thing: you are next in line when the top executive steps down. Logically, this succession has been planned since Norström and Söderström were promoted in January 2023.

During those three years, much has happened at Spotify. The share price had been at its lowest point and the company was still losing money. Many wondered whether streaming was simply a boom-era phenomenon after all — inflated by high expectations and billions in venture capital.

It was not. Even if many artists and record labels have had views on how the music economy has developed since streaming became the standard, consumers have voted unanimously.

Today Spotify has over a quarter of a billion subscribers and more than twice as many listeners in total. It is an outstanding — and very rare — global success. And to cement the question of whether Spotify could become a “real” company — one that actually makes money — Ek is leaving with full-year profitability as his final feather in the cap. One can imagine it was particularly satisfying for him to be able to show that to all the naysayers he has encountered along the way.

Spotify as a company today is broader than just music. It is investing in podcasts, audiobooks, and new video formats. It is becoming more and more a media destination with a clear place in everyday life. Competitors like Apple — despite almost infinite financial resources — have not managed to dislodge them from that position.

The challenge for the company is therefore to maintain and develop the strong position it already has. Can they broaden the offering further to make the service so self-evident that it feels impossible to cancel? Can they justify higher prices in markets that are developing rapidly?

There is much to work on, but a revolution is unlikely to be on the agenda. The revolution has already been carried out — and it is the fruits of that revolution that Spotify is now harvesting.

For Ek himself, he can take a step back and devote himself to other things. In practice, Norström and Söderström have already managed most of the day-to-day operations anyway, but now they also get the titles that match the responsibilities. As chairman of the board, Ek retains his association with the company, but his immediate activities will no longer be as closely tied to it.

A little distance may be preferable. Through his investment company Prima Materia, Ek has invested in, among other things, the defence company Helsing. Individual artists such as Massive Attack have protested against this by removing their music from the service. Spotify can manage without a trip-hop band from the late 1990s. But it is an unnecessary distraction for everyone involved. Ek can now devote himself to private investment in new companies without it having to spill over onto the music service.

Daniel Ek is handing over an extraordinary piece of company building to the heirs apparent Norström and Söderström, who now both become “co-CEO.” They are taking over a company that is by far Swedish tech’s most brightly shining star. By market capitalisation, they are around ten times the size of the next Swedish tech company after them.

With such an achievement behind him — and 20 years of work — it is hard to imagine what more one could feel one needed to do to be satisfied. And when you reach that point, stepping down as CEO is the right call.

Daniel Ek is already written into the history books.

Nvidia’s creative scheme has a whiff of dot-com

September 23, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 23rd, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

The world’s highest valued listed company — Nvidia — has an unusual problem. Its biggest customers are buying too much. But the company’s solution is making alarm bells ring.

When Jensen Huang meets his shareholders, it is hard to imagine anything other than nothing but happy faces. With a stock market performance of over 1,200 percent in the last five years, Nvidia has gone from a maker of graphics cards to the centrepiece of the AI boom.

The details of where the revenues actually come from have therefore been a detail that has somewhat slipped into the shadows. A closer look reveals that 85 percent of Nvidia’s revenues come from just six customers. So what do you do with this rather pleasant problem?

Well, Nvidia is helping new customers get up and running. But the method being used is somewhat reminiscent of similar arrangements during the dot-com crash.

Let us look at a deal Nvidia made recently. Data centre company CoreWeave received an order from Nvidia worth 6.3 billion dollars — around 59 billion kronor. CoreWeave is to deliver computing capacity for AI services that Nvidia can then sell on.

That might not sound so strange at first glance. But Nvidia is in effect buying back capacity in the chips it just sold to CoreWeave. Moreover, it is guaranteeing to continue purchasing that capacity until 2032. This means that CoreWeave’s large chip purchases from Nvidia become essentially risk-free. They know they will be paid for the next seven years.

Let us take another similar example. A week or so ago, Nvidia signed another deal to pay around 14 billion kronor to rent capacity from cloud company Lambda. Nvidia wanted to use 18,000 chips from Lambda’s data centres. But all of those chips had recently been purchased from Nvidia in the first place.

There is an additional interesting detail about these two deals. Nvidia is a major shareholder in both CoreWeave and Lambda. Through both arrangements, Nvidia is driving up revenues in companies whose profits it benefits from as an owner.

On Monday came a third variant, this time with a more familiar customer: OpenAI. A full 100 billion dollars is what Nvidia intends to invest in the creator of ChatGPT. But here too the details are somewhat vague — what exactly are they investing? Is it chips or cash? Or some form of credit for data services? Nvidia is also already a part-owner of OpenAI from before. The difference here is primarily the enormous scale of the investment.

The arrangements create a kind of feedback loop. Nvidia is customer, supplier, and major owner — simultaneously.

The reason for the deals is likely the customer mix described above. With such a large share of revenues coming from very few customers, the dependence on them is extreme. If even one of them were to decide to scale back their AI ambitions, it would hit Nvidia directly. It would therefore be beneficial for them if the number of successful chip customers were substantially greater. And a simple way to ensure that a customer grows is to buy services from them yourself.

The deals are not illegal, but they do resemble a couple of controversial business arrangements from the dot-com era.

In 2002, AOL purchased capacity from telecoms company WorldCom. WorldCom in turn bought advertising from AOL for roughly the same amount of money. The result was that both companies looked better on the revenue side without anything of substance actually having happened.

The same year it emerged that Enron — later to become one of the world’s biggest bankruptcies and financial scandals — had done a similar deal with telecoms company Global Crossing. What was really a loan between the companies was restructured to appear as revenue on both sides.

After Nvidia’s almost incredible run of successes, the question has been raised of what could possibly stop the company. The dependence on a handful of individual giant customers is one such thing. That Nvidia has an interest in building up new competitors is therefore logical.

But being on all sides of a transaction — buyer, seller, and owner — is messy and can lead to conflicts of interest. Which role does Nvidia represent when these deals are being negotiated? That is difficult to determine.

Right now everything points to a near-infinite demand for Nvidia’s products and services. The stock has surged over 32 percent — in this year alone. Perhaps Nvidia’s attempts to build up new customers are simply a smart strategy. And not a pitfall of strange circular business arrangements with built-in conflicts of interest.

The world’s stock exchanges — deeply dependent on Nvidia — are at least hoping that is the case.

The timing could be quietly historic

September 16, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 16th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Swedish Sana is being acquired for 10 billion kronor by American Workday. The timing of the deal could prove historically good — is Sana founder Joel Hellermark seeing something no one else sees?

The question every board is currently asking its management team is: what is your AI strategy? And when the answer sounds a little too hollow, it is time to open the wallet. Generously. The fact that American software company Workday is now acquiring Swedish Sana for 1.1 billion dollars — around 10 billion kronor — is one example of that.

The deal gives both sides what they need. Sana gains access to Workday’s customers and the 75 million users it has there. Workday gets an alibi that says it is part of the AI game. But the central element of the deal is the timing. CEO Joel Hellermark has a reputation for having a deep understanding of the AI market. Could what he has seen have been behind the decision to sell?

Despite the incredible hype, it is worth reminding ourselves that AI implementations among larger companies have not yet delivered the big economic numbers. Some areas, such as programming assistance, have shown promising results. AI writing better code is the category most commonly cited by those who have tested it as genuinely useful.

Even so, AI coding tools are areas where AI can be useful but they are not where the biggest economic gains are to be found. Among the futurists, increased economic productivity has been promised. We are talking about efficiencies: employees performing tasks with superpowers, and perhaps fewer employees altogether. For that to happen, large-scale adoption by companies is required.

Sana is operating in precisely that market. The company now offers services to streamline how companies work with internal documents and systems. Keep the IT structure you have, but add AI on top of everything. It is an appealing pitch for many company leaders who may have been worried about the cost this AI revolution might entail.

At the same time, the promise of these efficiencies has not always been delivered. A new survey from the US Census Bureau shows a distinct trend break in how large companies with more than 250 employees have implemented AI. The figure has been falling over the past two months — despite the incredible tailwind the AI trend has been enjoying.

Another study from MIT found that only 5 percent of all new generative AI initiatives were profitable. Ninety-five percent were losing money. That investment in new and immature technology does not pay off immediately is perhaps not surprising. But the figure could dampen enthusiasm among companies that have tested it. It is easy — perhaps wrongly — to write off a technology too early. But it nonetheless becomes a problem for those trying to sell it.

This brings us back to Joel Hellermark and the timing of the deal. Who says no to 10 billion kronor, one might reasonably ask? But someone who has been as deeply embedded in the AI world as Hellermark — and who has seen the momentum his industry has had — could definitely have done so. The former CTO of OpenAI, Mira Murati, had her newly founded company valued at 110 billion kronor straight away. Mark Zuckerberg at Meta is paying billions of kronor to individual employees.

So why is Hellermark selling his life’s work now? Perhaps because he sees something others do not yet see. That it will take longer to get the world AI-adapted than many believe. And that a potential rough reckoning for the entire industry could be a cold shower for everyone participating in it.

In a scenario like that — you get off. You take your billions and dock yourself alongside a giant, listed, and slightly dry company like Workday. The timing for Hellermark and Sana could prove quietly historic.

The artist’s AI career — a worrying sign

September 15, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 15th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

The AI trend is stronger than ever and is pulling the entire American stock market toward new heights. But more and more signals suggest that the top may be near.

“We didn’t see it coming.” The familiar explanation, heard all too often when something unexpected and unwelcome has happened.

In reality, it is rarely quite true. There are signs. Perhaps they were not so clear at the time, or perhaps it was difficult to see the connection between them. But they were there. This is worth keeping in mind when looking at the red-hot AI market.

Three individual events that have recently occurred may not look like much on their own. But could these be exactly the kind of signals you look back on afterward and think you should have seen coming, after all?

Let us start with the first event — an acquisition. Software company Atlassian bought The Browser Company for 5.7 billion kronor. The company made a web browser, Arc, which gained moderate popularity in certain circles of enthusiasts, but never really made a big splash. After that they developed the browser Dia — an “AI browser.” What that means is difficult to answer, since the product has not yet been released to anyone beyond testers.

What we do know is that The Browser Company has essentially no revenue at all. They also barely have any users of Arc, and in any case the company has stated that all energy will go into the new Dia going forward. 5.7 billion kronor for an AI browser that nobody uses sounds instinctively expensive.

Let us look at the next event. Chip company Nvidia — also the world’s highest valued listed company — has also made a peculiar deal. Since February of this year, Nvidia has been a part-owner of cloud company Lambda, which specialises in cloud services and software that facilitate AI models. This is familiar territory for Nvidia, and nothing strange in itself.

The strange part happened last week. Nvidia then signed a deal to pay 1.5 billion dollars — around 14 billion kronor — to rent capacity in 18,000 of Lambda’s chips. But where did those chips originally come from? From Nvidia, of course. They are renting back the very same chips they recently sold to Lambda.

The publication The Information, which broke the story, described it as a “circular financial arrangement.” That sounds like a generous description. Nvidia builds up Lambda’s finances through the billion-kronor deal, but benefits itself both by selling chips to them and by having been a part-owner of the company from the start. This becomes especially clear given that Lambda is reportedly heading toward a stock market listing. Nvidia is now simultaneously one of the company’s largest owners, suppliers, and customers.

Finally, a more pop-cultural observation. In the original gold rush, many people left everything behind for the chance to take part in the promised golden future. It therefore raises an eyebrow or two when American rapper Meek Mill has decided to become an AI entrepreneur. On X he writes that he is working on an “AI tool that will change the world.”

Changing careers is of course a choice open to anyone. But it is unusual for a rapper — one known partly for having been imprisoned for weapons offences — to change course in this particular way. He has a “genius tech guy” with him, so we shall see what the two of them manage to produce.

Let us remember where things stand. The S&P 500 index is at its highest point ever. Nasdaq 100 likewise. According to Goldman Sachs, the companies known as the Magnificent Seven — Apple, Amazon, Google (Alphabet), Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla — had annual profit growth of 28 percent in the most recent quarter. And the American market overall is still going very strongly.

But looking at the other 493 companies in the S&P 500, the equivalent figure is just 6 percent. The tech companies and the AI trend have been an enormous locomotive — but they do not represent the whole economy. A great deal hangs on a very small number of companies, all of whom are deeply rooted in this AI trend in various ways.

Is it a bubble? As we know, you cannot say until after it has burst. But it does look like things are simmering here and there, at least.

Became the world’s richest — there’s a problem

September 12, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 12th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Grand promises about the future just made Oracle founder Larry Ellison the world’s richest man. But the deal that sent the stock soaring is far from certain.

A strange thing happened with cloud company Oracle this week. The figures in the quarterly report were worse than analyst expectations. But the share price did not fall. Instead it surged over 30 percent and made major shareholder Larry Ellison the world’s richest man.

The reason was Oracle’s forecast for revenues from the ongoing AI boom. One example was the contract OpenAI signed with the cloud giant to purchase data services from Oracle for 300 billion dollars over five years. There is just one problem. It may sound straightforward, but it could prove difficult to resolve even for those with billionaire owners.

OpenAI does not have 300 billion dollars to spend. And Oracle does not have the capacity to sell 300 billion dollars’ worth of services either.

The forecast is ambitious, to say the least. Revenues from the company’s cloud services will come in just above 10 billion dollars for 2025. In five years, that figure is supposed to be 144 billion dollars. In total, Oracle announced that customer contracts — for which neither delivery nor payment has yet occurred — grew from 138 billion to 455 billion dollars. The OpenAI deal is included in that figure.

The measure Oracle uses is called “performance obligations” — a form of customer promise within accounting that indicates something will be purchased in the future. For the revenues to materialise, two things are required: the customer must be able to afford to buy, and the company in question must have enough to sell at that point in time.

In the case of Oracle and OpenAI, there is reason to question whether this will happen. The energy alone required to run these data centres is estimated at 4.5 gigawatts, equivalent to roughly four million households. As a comparison, that is slightly less than all the reactors at Sweden’s nuclear plants Forsmark and Oskarshamn combined.

Oracle will also need to invest in substantially more chips from companies like Nvidia. The strong demand — competing with the world’s other major cloud and data centre companies — could drive prices up considerably. And chip deliveries have so far been difficult to guarantee due to high demand.

OpenAI, for its part, faces a major financing challenge. The current plan, according to The Information, is that the company will lose 115 billion dollars — over a thousand billion kronor — between now and 2029. A positive cash flow is not expected until 2030.

Intense negotiations are currently under way with major shareholder Microsoft about how OpenAI’s corporate and ownership structure might look going forward. The aim is partly to prepare the company for a potential stock market listing, which would help with financing.

These are not small challenges on either side. The Oracle-OpenAI deal runs for five years, starting in 2027. Until then, all of this must be resolved.

It is normal for projects of this magnitude to take a long time to plan. We are talking about an investment of around 2,800 billion kronor, after all. That preparations are required is of course reasonable. But despite Oracle not having booked any of these revenues here and now, the share price surged over 30 percent. The market appears to believe the contracts will be honoured and will come to fruition — and is pricing Oracle on the basis of that information.

This is not a property deal or anything similar, however. The predictability and visibility around the AI market even 1.5 years from now — when the contract is set to begin — is murky at best. A number of questions are piling up. What hardware will be needed in AI data centres at that point? Will there be sufficient energy supply? Will Oracle manage to build all of this in time?

And perhaps the most important question of all: does OpenAI — the customer in question — even have the money to pay for the party?

The stock market is currently showing no restraint in its enthusiasm for what AI development can do for these major tech companies. Shares are being traded right now based on high hopes for the future.

But when evaluating a deal of this size, a reasonable starting point is to ask whether the seller is able to deliver the service and whether the buyer can afford to purchase it.

It is far from obvious that the answer is “yes” to both questions.

Forget everything you know — Klarna 2.0 starts now

September 10, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 10th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Klarna opens with a surge on the American stock exchange. Billions in market value are added immediately. But the listing is more of a new start than a finish line.

Sweaty palms, elation, nerves. Putting your life’s work on the stock exchange is a big day for an entrepreneur. That is where Klarna and its CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski find themselves now.

When the opening bell rang on Wednesday, a new era began for Klarna. With the listing in the United States, the Swedish company has left much of its history behind.

On the pink banner hanging outside the New York Stock Exchange, the words read “Pay your way.” The irony in that phrase will likely be lost on most people. “Pay your way” originally means to pay for yourself, and not let anyone else do it. Klarna’s history suggests almost the opposite. But the stock market listing is a new start — and everything that matters now lies ahead of the company.

The start of a stock market journey is not particularly indicative of how things will go forward. In May 2012 it was Mark Zuckerberg’s turn, when his Facebook — now Meta — listed on Nasdaq. There it began with serious technical problems and the trading start was delayed while exchange staff frantically tried to fix them. The chaotic opening was followed by three months of tough trading where the share price almost halved.

If you look at Meta’s historical share price, you see none of that. What must have been an incredibly tough period for Zuckerberg is now a microscopic bump on a curve that shoots upward. Today — around thirteen years later — Meta’s share price is up over 1,900 percent. None of this was readable on that first day on the exchange.

To find the opposite, we need look no further back than this past summer. Design tool Figma had priced its shares at 33 dollars for its IPO in late July. The first trade on the exchange was at 85 dollars. A success! There and then, at least. Just over six weeks later, Figma had lost over 56 percent of its value.

We should therefore view Klarna’s listing with interest, but with caution. An initial increase of 30 percent in the first trade on the American exchange implies a market cap of around 177 billion kronor. But that does not actually say very much. Nor does wherever the share closes in a week’s time. Both the crises and the successes during the company’s first twenty years now form little more than a prologue to what is to come.

The transformation is logical. It is the United States that is the most important market, and that is where growth lies going forward. The many Swedish shareholders in Klarna — mainly among the staff — will likely make their presence felt more in other business contexts than in the parent company itself. A potential wave of investment into smaller startups is one conceivable outcome. That would be good for Stockholm and Sweden. But that is probably where Swedes will mainly feel the effects of this listing.

The success that Sweden has produced in Klarna becomes, in all essential respects, American. The company gains a new shareholder base that will begin to shift when many lockup periods expire in six months’ time. If we look a year ahead, it may be an entirely different type of owner that dominates. But they are unlikely to be primarily Swedish. The company has had international owners and customers for a very long time. The focus moving to the other side of the Atlantic is a natural continuation of something that started long ago. Sweden and the Swedish stock exchange missed that train.

Klarna was founded on 10 April 2005. In many respects, however, it is 10 September 2025 that the world will remember as “Day 1.” Klarna is now traded on the stock exchange and is beginning a new journey with its starting point at the New York Stock Exchange.

It is a new start, whether or not the company feels it needs one. The twenty years that preceded the listing become history. But that is true of every normal company that lists on the stock exchange. The story of the company will be written from here onward.

Siemiatkowski’s zero says it all

September 2, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on September 2nd, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Boosted by a buoyant market, it is time for Klarna to list in New York. After a turbulent period for the world, a window has opened that Sebastian Siemiatkowski intends to use.

When you’re about to set sail, you do well to check the weather report first.

When Klarna formally submitted its IPO application in March this year, the outlook looked stormy. Then the barometer swung toward a full gale when Trump announced his “liberation day” and the world was thrown into tariff chaos. One can sense that CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski was disappointed, but he took the wise decision to postpone Klarna’s stock market listing.

The world may not be much clearer on tariffs now. But the market is at least more stable. And with competitor Affirm’s strong performance — up over 40 percent on the stock market since the start of the year — there is a clear demand that Klarna can ride. Siemiatkowski is back and ready to list the company in New York.

An extraordinarily long list of investment banks has agreed on a price range that could value the company at over 132 billion kronor. The company is issuing new shares and can raise around 12 billion kronor in new capital. In addition, several major shareholders are selling part of their holdings, with Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen — who owns clothing chains Vero Moda and Jack & Jones, among others — being the largest, intending to sell up to 7.4 million Klarna shares worth almost 2.6 billion kronor.

Among the sellers are major venture capital firms Sequoia, Silver Lake, BlackRock and Abu Dhabi’s investment fund Mubadala. Parts of the management team are also selling shares worth around 200 million kronor.

But the number that speaks loudest is the one next to Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s name in the prospectus: a zero. He is selling no shares at all. As one of Klarna’s largest shareholders, the signal value is enormous.

The venue for the listing was known but says something about Stockholm, Europe, and Klarna as a company. It is the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE, that applies. If Klarna achieves the highest valuation in the range it would give them a market cap just below Telia. Had they listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, they would have immediately become one of Sweden’s largest listed companies.

The idea of listing in Stockholm is not unreasonable. Klarna itself lists Sweden as its most mature market in its prospectus, and it is both where the company started and where its headquarters are today. That in spite of all this they choose to skip the Stockholm exchange says primarily one thing: everything points westward for Klarna.

In recent years, the push into the United States has been the main focus, and that is where growth lies going forward. Klarna choosing New York is logical, but it is a major loss for Nasdaq Stockholm. If the largest and most successful Swedish companies choose to bypass it, that is not a vote of confidence.

The American stock market has moreover been stronger than Europe for an extended period. Financier Christer Gardell has been on the same track, moving holdings from Europe to the United States to reduce the valuation gap that has emerged across the Atlantic. With that knowledge, which corporate leader can justify taking the risk of listing in Europe — at least if the United States is a realistic option?

In both the timing of the IPO and the choice of exchange, Siemiatkowski has demonstrated an understanding of something many entrepreneurs and company leaders have had to learn the hard way: no one is bigger than the macro.

If there is chaos on the world’s stock markets, it makes no difference how good Klarna is as a company. No one will want to hear about it — at least not there and then. And you can write columns of analysis about why European stock exchanges should be able to command the same kinds of valuations for companies as in the United States, but the fact remains that they do not. Macro factors are larger and weigh more heavily than any individual company.

The same applies when it is positive — and the wind is at your back. Indices made up of fintech companies show a strong comeback in recent years. That benefits Klarna now.

Klarna’s roadshow is now getting under way, selling the company and its shares to investors on the market. Within a week or two, the stock with the ticker KLAR will be available to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. It is an impressive piece of company building that Siemiatkowski and his team have achieved together.

A few months ago, that story was in danger of disappearing amid tariff chaos and market anxiety. Let us hope they manage to get out this time — before the world starts shaking again.

Is the victory train about to go off the rails?

August 28, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 28th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Chip company Nvidia has stopped being seen as a company and has instead become a global phenomenon. It continues to press strongly ahead — but are investors beginning to sense the top is near?

As the ninth company in world history, Nvidia crossed the trillion-dollar threshold — a thousand billion dollars — in market capitalisation. That was in May 2023, but it feels like an eternity ago.

Just two years later, in July 2025, they broke through the four trillion barrier. The company is now the world’s highest valued by a margin over second place, Microsoft, of around 700 billion dollars — more than the entire card company Visa or the retailer Walmart is worth. These are incomprehensible numbers.

When the giant reported its quarterly figures late on Wednesday evening, many already knew the answer: things are going well for Nvidia. The risk lies more in whether investors believe that perhaps this is already enough.

No investor worth the name would admit to being satisfied with less money — that’s the opposite of the point of the profession. But there are other mechanisms that affect why you sometimes sell part of a holding that is still performing well. It might be that a single position has grown too large in the overall portfolio. Or simply that it’s time to take some profits home.

In situations like that, selling is not a review of Nvidia as a company but rather a form of risk balancing. And with such a high market capitalisation and a bubbling anxiety that the red-hot AI sector might be cooling, those kinds of factors can weigh as heavily as the company’s own figures. If you don’t take the profits now, can you be certain you’ll get them at all?

The figures in the quarterly report were strong, as expected. Revenue of 46.74 billion dollars was just above analyst estimates and corresponded to a 56 percent increase year on year. Profitability was also better than expected.

The challenges came when Nvidia looked forward, and the stock fell in after-hours trading. Three areas stood out particularly.

The tensions between the United States and China over chip exports create great uncertainty for the company. In the second quarter, zero H20 chips were sold as a result — despite that being a chip specifically developed for export to China. Nvidia has indicated it believes this issue will be resolved in the near term, but there are currently no guarantees.

The company also announced a share buyback of 60 billion dollars — around 572 billion kronor — on top of what had already been decided. Short-term, buybacks can be positive for a stock, but what does it say about the company and its future? Is there really no more productive use of 60 billion dollars than repurchasing its own shares? That signal can be read as something worrying and lacking in vision.

The guidance for the coming quarter was not impressive either. The sales figure is of course high for a company of this size, but it is growth that the market cares most about. Even if AI interest among the major tech companies does not diminish, it is possible that they will buy chips differently or optimise in other ways. That in turn would create pressure on Nvidia. A certain scepticism could be sensed in the modest guidance figures.

With a sky-high market cap, it does not take much for investors to start fidgeting. If you bought into Nvidia as recently as one year ago, you have already seen a value increase of 40 percent. Go back five years and that figure is over 1,200 percent. As a stock, it has been a rocket that has acted as the locomotive for the entire market.

But is the locomotive possibly starting to slow somewhat now? If that is the case, many will be looking at their handsome returns and considering locking them in. That would mean hitting the sell button — despite the world’s highest valued listed company still growing at more than 50 percent annually.

What more can CEO Jensen Huang do? His enormous success is beginning to look somewhat like a burden. It is a thankless position for the tech company that has become a global success on a scale we have rarely seen before.

A shy giant hiding behind a letterbox

August 27, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on August 27th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Scammers are using Meta’s platforms to defraud small investors. But when SvD asks questions, there is no one willing to answer.

Next door to Ikea and the Ministry of Defence sits what is probably Sweden’s most successful shell company. You likely know them better as Facebook, or Meta as the company is now called.

When they moved into the offices on Malmtorgsgatan in Stockholm in 2018, then-Sweden CEO Sam Rihani told journalists that the meeting rooms had been named after translated Swedish proverbs. Today it seems that few people are having meetings in the room called “Suspect owls in the moss.”

Despite revenue of around 4.1 billion kronor in the Swedish entity Facebook Sweden AB — and numerous scams defrauding Swedes of their money — there is essentially no one reachable at Swedish Meta. And therefore no one willing to take responsibility for what is happening on the company’s platforms in Sweden.

At major tech companies, Sweden is typically folded into a Nordic business area, itself falling under the acronym EMEA — which bundles Europe, the Middle East and all of Africa into a single division. The exception is usually Ireland, where Silicon Valley companies maintain large presences — direct flights between San Francisco and Dublin are one result. It is not Ireland’s innovative capacity the companies are after, but its tax advantages. And as an EU member, it becomes a natural European home.

When SvD tries to reach Meta and its press department, there was accordingly no expectation that CEO Mark Zuckerberg would pick up the phone. But it would be fitting for a billion-kronor company to offer some kind of comment on why scams consistently arise on its platforms. No such comment is forthcoming, other than that the company has spent a lot of money cleaning up various WhatsApp groups.

The cleanup does not appear to have been sufficient. Moa Langemark, consumer protection economist at Finansinspektionen (the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority), told SvD: “There is every reason to direct criticism at Meta, which owns WhatsApp and Facebook. It is obvious that they are not doing enough to keep their platforms clean from this type of criminal activity.”

The criticism is, however, difficult to direct when there is no one in Sweden who intends to receive it.

The situation is, to put it mildly, peculiar. Meta owns the platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Millions of Swedes use them every day. They are the foundation of many companies’ marketing and external communications. Large amounts of money flow through the system. Meta as a whole generated around 464 billion kronor in revenue in 2024. And yet there is no one willing or able to answer questions about the advertisements from scammers that have contributed to that revenue.

Meta’s income is 97 percent advertising purchases. Despite all the investments in AI, the metaverse and VR headsets, it is the advertising business that carries the weight. The scams using well-known Swedish figures like Jacob Wallenberg and Günther Mårder to defraud small investors are therefore contributing to the core business. And more pointedly — the scams need Meta to function. It is through Meta’s platforms that they buy the ads that reach Swedish audiences.

If a company were to buy advertising space on bus shelters claiming that financier Christer Gardell was tipping a particular stock, it would be reasonable to expect the owner of the advertising space to check whether this was true. But when the advertising is digital, this responsibility apparently disappears entirely. The very idea is so absurd that one wonders whether any human being reviewed these advertisements before they were published — or whether it was perhaps an automated AI system.

Whatever the case, the review of advertisements has failed. Many Swedes have been affected.

A frustrated Jacob Wallenberg. Irritation at the Riksbank. And a crisis meeting at Finansinspektionen. The stock market fraud on Facebook and WhatsApp has forced action at the highest levels of Swedish finance.

It is not only financial professionals whose identities are being hijacked to deceive small investors into losing large sums of money. Now Sweden’s most powerful business figures are being drawn into the web of AI-generated clips and fake advertisements.

In recent days, two of the Stockholm Stock Exchange’s most powerful individuals — Investor chairman Jacob Wallenberg and Industrivärden chairman Fredrik Lundberg, as well as Riksbank governor Erik Thedéen — have appeared in video clips on Facebook, owned by Meta with Mark Zuckerberg as CEO.

In the clips, fraudsters make it appear as though the three financial leaders are offering stock tips to viewers. But it is all fabricated.

Jacob Wallenberg has reacted with frustration at the fake clips, according to sources at SvD. He does not wish to comment personally at this stage, but Investor confirms that it has contacted Meta.

“We have the same experience as other parties — it is not entirely easy to get in touch with Meta. But we have noted that the clips have now been removed,” says Jacob Lund, head of communications at Investor.

Whether the company will pursue the matter further, for instance with a police report, remains unclear.

“We note and understand the criticism that Finansinspektionen and the Economic Crime Authority have previously raised — that Meta’s actions to date to remove fraud from its platforms have not been sufficient,” says Jacob Lund.

Lundbergs has also attempted to contact Meta, SvD has learned. There too, getting through to the tech giant has proved difficult.

At Finansinspektionen, the situation is being monitored on a daily basis. On Thursday the authority called a crisis meeting. Around sixty people from affected securities firms attended the hastily convened gathering, including representatives from SEB, Nordea, Swedbank, Avanza and Nordnet.

Riksbank press officer Tomas Lundberg told SvD: “We warned already in the spring that the Riksbank and the governor were appearing in fake videos offering investment opportunities to individuals.” The authority has recently been made aware that the fake clips are still appearing.

“The Riksbank does not offer investment opportunities or other banking services to private individuals,” he added. According to Tomas Lundberg, Meta acted after the Riksbank raised the issue of the fake clips. “But the fact that this type of false information continues to spread shows that it is still a problem — one that Finansinspektionen and the Economic Crime Authority are also raising.”

SvD repeatedly tried to reach Meta’s press department without result. Jan Elvelid, responsible for policy questions at Meta Nordic, has previously referred to earlier statements in which the company says it has invested large sums in cleaning up fraud in WhatsApp groups, and that this work is ongoing.

The stock scams have become increasingly brazen, and many small investors have lost large sums of money.

Four years ago, prosecutor Jonas Myrdal at the Economic Crime Authority ordered a search of premises as part of an investigation in which three people in southern Sweden were arrested on suspicion of serious market manipulation. That case also involved so-called “pump and dump” — where a share price is manipulated using false information and then large sales are made once a certain price level has been reached.

“Back then there was something homemade about the whole thing, sometimes quite amateurish,” says Jonas Myrdal.

“It is of course terrible for those who have been affected. The blame is in no way on them, but it is somewhat alarming that many investors are probably not sufficiently critical and are too easily attracted by promises of quick money,” he says.

Jonas Myrdal, like many others, questions Meta’s engagement in removing scammers from its platforms.

“Something is clearly wrong when scam advertisements can keep appearing again and again. Meta reasonably needs better control over who advertises and opens accounts with them,” says Jonas Myrdal.

Myrdal also directs attention towards the online brokers Avanza and Nordnet. Both have posted warning texts on their websites since the fraud gained media attention, advising customers how to avoid being deceived.

“Both Avanza and Nordnet are keen to highlight how easy it is to trade shares with them, not least foreign ones. That should come with a certain responsibility — for example regarding identifying sharply increased trading volumes and the reason for them,” says Jonas Myrdal.

He adds, however, that what has now happened was difficult to foresee, and that fraud linked to foreign stocks is essentially a new phenomenon in Sweden. “I also think the new fraud illustrates that the widespread public interest in the stock market in Sweden — rightly held up as a model in Europe — also has a dark side. For instance, there is a risk that individuals are tempted into making quick money through risky transactions.”

Johan Tidestad, representing brokerage firms, rejects Myrdal’s criticism. “I believe that the responsibility for overseeing trading in specific stocks lies primarily with the exchanges, not with us as brokers,” he says.

Casino Capitalism + 4 cultural gems

August 25, 2025
by Björn Jeffery
Newsletters

Friends,

For a few years now, I have taken a special interest in how new technology phenomena affects regular financial markets. For Svenska Dagbladet, I have written about everything from the short squeeze in Gamestop to prediction markets and bitcoin treasury companies.

Underpinning it all is a sense that something fundamental is changing. Why do so many choose to invest their money into these new things? What happened to saving money in a low-cost index fund?

I don’t know for sure, but I do have a theory that I would like to explore further.

A starting point is an article called “Casino Capitalism” that I’ve written. You can find it in English here and Swedish here.

I think there could be a book to be written on this subject too. Massive amounts of money are being allocated to assets that more resemble a lottery ticket than a financial security. The interesting question is both why this is happening – and what it might lead to.

If you think there might be something worth publishing here and would like to help me make this happen – please get in touch!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of some recommendations:

Album: PinkPantheress – Fancy That
Full of samples and interpolations of British 2-step and dance music from 20 years ago – but revisited and made fresh again. Underworld, The Streets and Basement Jaxx are all here in the background.

Book: How we break – Vincent Deary
This British psychologist writes what is essentially a form of manual for life. The tone of the writing is like a soft embrace while whispering that you should take care of yourself.

Song: I don’t want you – Hailey Whitters feat. Charles Wesley
A classic country song from earlier this summer. This duet’s lyrics are a simple, yet beautiful take on misguided love.

Article: Growing up Murdoch – McKay Coppins, for The Atlantic
Must-read about the Succession-style drama taking place in the Murdoch family. Incredible sourcing and storytelling.

Bonus: And finally… here’s John Cena (yes, him) schooling you on what makes a great flat white.

Thank you for reading this far. I know you have a lot of options to choose from.

Originally published on Substack on August 25th, 2025.