Swedish startup Pit might have gained discover for some rage-bait social media posts, however it has additionally turn into one other Stockholm AI startup to observe.
Pit is led by the cofounders of European scooter big 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, also home to Lovable, is without doubt one of the locations the place a16z has been actively looking for the next European unicorn.
Pit goes after enterprise AI with merchandise meant to study from the shoppers how their companies run then create customized software program to automate processes, Pit CEO Adam Jafer instructed TechCrunch.
Jafer left Voi final summer time after a seven-year tenure throughout which the corporate scaled right into a workforce of almost 1,000 staff working into 13 international locations. From his engineering viewpoint, Jafer noticed how AI has matured sufficient for enterprise use. Initially, he noticed an opportunity to switch low-hanging SaaS instruments with in-house apps, however he quickly envisioned a possibility past Voi.
“The aha second for the larger alternative was when the fashions had been now not simply chatbots that generate textual content, however turned extra agentic and will do issues,” he instructed TechCrunch. Not like rivals providing AI agent-building or vibe-coding merchandise, Pit positions itself as an “AI product workforce as a service.”
Pit is coming into a crowded market and hopes to distinguish itself by counting on two pillars: Pit Studio, which lets enterprise staff information it by processes that may very well be dealt with by AI-generated software program; and Pit Cloud, which, the startup guarantees, supplies that software program in a approach that meets enterprise necessities on governance, certifications and auditability.
In mid-January, the startup began testing its plan with pilot prospects in telecom, healthcare, logistics and different sectors, focusing solely on automating inside processes. “Nothing buyer dealing with, no conversational AI, simply pure back-office, service and assist capabilities that we flip into automations so as to give again time to individuals to focus in your core enterprise,” Jafer stated.
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The startup is now getting ready to scale up commercially, however it received’t be hands-off. Following the pattern of AI corporations hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to embed themselves to drive enterprise adoption, Pit can also be hiring resolution engineers. The purpose, Jafer stated, is to fulfill the expectations of the massive prospects 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 stated.
Jafer stated Pit just isn’t pitching itself as a solution to scale back human labor and reduce jobs. “The theme is extra round transferring individuals upstream to do extra worthwhile issues for the enterprise, slightly 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 just a few months in the past when Jafer posted on LinkedIn declaring “Sure, our workforce at the moment 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 now not stands by that. “It could have began like that, however you want a very good combine as you scale,” he stated with a smile.
Hjelm anticipated the all-male workforce would possibly elevate 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 women on the workforce as effectively, fyi.” That clarification wasn’t instantly obvious from Pit’s LinkedIn profile, though TechCrunch has spoken with one girl working at Pit on the communications facet.
What the image does replicate, although, is a way of getting the band again collectively. Voi’s 4 cofounders have remained friends over the years, and three of them at the moment are 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 aside 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 seemingly be much less hands-on in the meanwhile. Since going worthwhile in 2024, Voi has been thought-about a potential 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 “just a few years in the past once they got here to Stockholm to know what they may do for European tech. We stayed in contact. When it got here to selecting 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 one of the energetic 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 stated. He additionally reported that shoppers admire Pit’s agnostic strategy. Since it could actually use completely different AI and cloud distributors relying on shoppers’ preferences, it may gain advantage from the current tailwinds for sovereign tech, particularly in important sectors.
“EU fashions working on EU compute is prime of thoughts for nearly each CIO we’re assembly,” Jafer stated.
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