Swedish startup Pit might have gained discover for some rage-bait social media posts, nevertheless it has additionally turn into one other Stockholm AI startup to look at.
Pit is led by the co-founders of European scooter large Voi, together with Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm. He’s joined by former iZettle and Klarna engineers. And it’s now backed by a16z, which is main the startup’s $16 million seed spherical. Stockholm, additionally residence to Lovable, is likely one of the locations the place a16z has been actively searching for the following European unicorn.
Pit goes after enterprise AI with merchandise supposed to be taught from the purchasers how their companies run then create customized software program to automate processes, Pit CEO Adam Jafer informed TechCrunch.
Jafer left Voi final summer time after a seven-year tenure throughout which the corporate scaled right into a crew of almost 1,000 workers working in 13 nations. From his engineering viewpoint, Jafer noticed how AI has matured sufficient for enterprise use. Initially, he noticed an opportunity to interchange low-hanging SaaS instruments with in-house apps, however he quickly envisioned a chance past Voi.
“The aha second for the larger alternative was when the fashions have been not simply chatbots that generate textual content, however turned extra agentic and will do issues,” he informed TechCrunch. In contrast to rivals providing AI agent-building or vibe-coding merchandise, Pit positions itself as an “AI product crew as a service.”
Pit is getting into a crowded market and hopes to distinguish itself by counting on two pillars: Pit Studio, which lets enterprise workers information it by processes that might be dealt with by AI-generated software program; and Pit Cloud, which, the startup guarantees, offers that software program in a method that meets enterprise necessities on governance, certifications, and auditability.
In mid-January, the startup began testing its plan with pilot clients in telecom, healthcare, logistics, and different sectors, focusing solely on automating inner processes. “Nothing buyer dealing with, no conversational AI, simply pure back-office, service, and assist features that we flip into automations so that you could give again time to folks to focus in your core enterprise,” Jafer mentioned.
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The startup is now making ready to scale up commercially, nevertheless it gained’t be hands-off. Following the development of AI corporations hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to embed themselves to drive enterprise adoption, Pit can also be hiring answer engineers. The aim, Jafer mentioned, is to satisfy the expectations of the big clients it’s concentrating on. “They’re seeking to purchase outcomes. They need processes to go sooner. They need to see productiveness unlock and time unlock,” he mentioned.
Jafer mentioned Pit just isn’t pitching itself as a method to cut back human labor and minimize jobs. “The theme is extra round shifting folks upstream to do extra priceless issues for the enterprise, fairly than repetitive back-office work.” Success metrics additionally transcend saving money and time. “A few of it’s simply high quality of labor enchancment, lowering human errors and so forth.”
But Pit’s personal wants on this turned a topic of controversy a couple of months in the past when Jafer posted on LinkedIn declaring “Sure, our crew at present has no junior engineers. At Pit, brokers now do most of what junior engineers used to do.”
Whereas the put up remains to be seen, he not stands by that. “It could have began like that, however you want a great combine as you scale,” he mentioned with a smile.
Hjelm anticipated the all-male crew may increase eyebrows, too. In a post on X, he wrote that Pit was “based by tech bros, from Voi and Klarna,” however instantly added, “We’ve got tech ladies on the crew as effectively, fyi.” That clarification wasn’t instantly obvious from Pit’s LinkedIn profile, though TechCrunch has spoken with one lady working at Pit on the communications facet.
What the image does mirror, although, is a way of getting the band again collectively. Voi’s 4 co-founders have remained friends over the years, and three of them are actually a part of this new journey: Hjelm, Jafer, and Filip Lindvall, now a founding engineer at Pit. One of many startup’s engineers, Andreas Hjelm, is none apart from Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm’s brother.
Whereas Fredrik Hjelm is called as a co-founder of Pit, too, he’s nonetheless Voi’s CEO, so his position will possible be much less hands-on in the interim. Since going worthwhile in 2024, Voi has been thought-about a possible IPO candidate, and closed 2025 with strong results. However his involvement as a well-connected entrepreneur may nonetheless open doorways — and already has, with a16z.
In a tweet, Hjelm defined how a16z companions Alex Rampell and Gabriel Vasquez ended up main Pit’s spherical. He turned acquainted with Ben Horowitz, Gabriel Vasquez, and Jen Kha “a couple of years in the past after they got here to Stockholm to grasp what they might do for European tech. We stayed in contact. When it got here to choosing companions for Pit, we didn’t want the cash to get going, however we needed the strongest backers we may discover. So we picked them, they usually picked us.”
Jafer additionally corroborated that Pit didn’t spend a lot time with different companies to boost its spherical, which was additionally backed by Pit’s founders themselves, in addition to Lakestar, executives from American tech corporations, and rich households from the Nordics. This transatlantic cap desk confirms that there’s rising curiosity for AI out of Stockholm, which has consolidated itself as probably the most lively startup hubs in Europe.
Pit may additionally profit from its European DNA in terms of gross sales. “We’re going after industrials, and there’s loads of that in Europe,” Jafer mentioned. He additionally reported that purchasers respect Pit’s agnostic strategy. Since it may possibly use completely different AI and cloud distributors relying on purchasers’ preferences, it may gain advantage from the present tailwinds for sovereign tech, particularly in vital sectors.
“EU fashions operating on EU compute is prime of thoughts for nearly each CIO we’re assembly,” Jafer mentioned.
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