Impact report 2024
A year of transformative growth and collaboration at AI Sweden
This report shows the highlights from a year of significant progress for AI in Sweden. In 2024, we saw a surge in interest, welcoming 41 new partners. We're proud that the AI Sweden partnership now has exceeded 150 companies and organizations. The collective investments from our partners and funders are increasingly translating into real-world value, moving from smaller pilots to scaling in operations - a testament to the strength of collaboration.
During 2025, we anticipate that cutting-edge technological advances and increased AI adoption maturity will drive great change in the AI landscape, both in Sweden and globally. We're more committed than ever to catalyzing sustainable value from AI through engagement and knowledge sharing. Get in touch if you have ideas on how to continue building critical AI initiatives together! Your experience, skills, and ideas are what makes AI Sweden.
Martin Svensson
Managing Director, AI Sweden
Peder Blomgren
Chair, AI Sweden and Vice President, Head of Data Office R&D, AstraZeneca
140+ partners
We see a great growth in the partner network increasing with 41 during 2024. Going in to 2025 we've already reached 150+
MSEK 300
estimated total investment through AI Sweden 2024, including cash funding, partner contributions, and ecosystem engagement
43 000 h
Participants spent approximately 43 000 hours in events and seminars
31 000 h
A surge in listening hours placed the AI Sweden Podcast as one of the top tech podcasts in Sweden
16 000+ community users
My AI is the community dedicated to AI and in 2024 had over 16 000 users engaging with 250+ use cases and over 2500 other resources
86%
of partners increased their AI readiness
Based on the annual partner survey
37 AI models
were released open source with 716 000 downloads
90%
of AI Sweden partners collaborates with other partners in at least one project or initiative
Based on the annual partner survey
400+ executives
participated in tailored education sessions on driving value from AI adoption
Solving grand challenges together
9 out of 10 municipalities are working with AI
After several years of collaboration with Swedish municipalities, 2024 marked a notable shift from exploration to value creation and concrete applications. The mapping of AI initiatives in Swedish municipalities shows that 9 out of 10 municipalities are now working with AI, summing up to over 1000 AI initiatives nation-wide.
The work with municipalities is funded by Vinnova.
Big leaps in AI for the energy sector
AI Sweden has welcomed two new partners from the energy sector during the year, and are through several new projects bringing together stakeholders and AI experts to solve some of our most pressing challenges regarding energy consumption and fossil-free energy. By collaborating between shareholders, be it producers, consumers, or anything in between, it’s possible to build models to understand future energy needs as well as production. In a resilient electricity grid, AI will also be a key technology to plan, distribute, and balance the system at both local and national levels.
During the AI4Energy conference in November, arranged by AI Sweden, PowerCircle and Energiforsk, 220 participants from the Swedish sector met to explore the possibilities with AI.
A relatively simple thing is to streamline customer service with a chatbot that can better answer customers' questions. But it's within our core business that we find the truly value-creating applications. For us, it's about predictive maintenance of our district heating pipes, saving millions of kronor per month through better forecasts for district heating production, and understanding the charging behaviour of heavy transport to reduce imbalances in the grid.
Jenny Gustavsson
CIO at Öresundskraft
Investments in edge learning are paying off
The Edge Learning Consortium that laid the foundation for AI Sweden’s work with partners on edge learning has been concluded after four years. Edge learning is key and the starting point for our initiatives in privacy-preserving AI and sectors such as healthcare and automotive. The impact of the initiative has been vast as demonstrated by both concrete initiatives and new ways of working. Not least, it laid the foundation for a new consortium on AI and security and several new projects.
AI Sweden forms an AI & Security Consortium
When will an AI model reveal your sensitive data?
Two international AI experts strengthen AI Sweden's efforts in security and automotive
Addressing pressing social issues
AI for civil society
As part of a project with funding from Google.org, AI Sweden led a summer student program where students worked on real use cases. Through this talent program, UNICEF Sweden, the Swedish Sea Rescue Society, the Red Cross, Mind, and Reach for Change have gained valuable insights into how AI can enhance their missions. Together with the talents, Reach for Change was able to develop a useful AI solution that could be scaled to benefit social entrepreneurs in Sweden, Europe and Africa.
We are a relatively small organization and do not have the capacity to possess that expertise in-house. Bringing in three students with knowledge in AI and machine learning, areas that are completely new to us, and combining it with our experience in development, aid, and social entrepreneurship has created a fantastic synergy and led to significant progress.
Johanna Nilsson
Partnership Manager at Reach for Change
Promoting national collaboration on AI-driven text solutions in the public sector
In 2024, AI Sweden collaborated with three municipalities, three regions, and Intel to jointly develop Svea, a digital assistant prototype for the public sector. Employees in the participating organizations have together:
- Developed 500 evaluation data for RAG (Retrieval augmented generation)
- Annotated 4 000 general instruction data
- 700 users evaluated the prototype
A shared digital assistant will be an important tool for current and future challenges in health and social care [...]. Participation in the project is highly recommended for those municipalities that want to drive the development forward.
Jenny Fermby
Verksamhetsutvecklare, Tjörns kommun
Going forward, the next phase of the project includes 50+ organizations with the aim to train 10,000+ users, develop training data, and test the prototype in their daily work. Proving that a collaborative approach on developing AI tools in the public sector works at scale and has a positive impact on the daily work of the employees.
The project is part of a larger initiative to promote national cooperation on AI and create conditions for shared solutions in the public sector. It is funded by Vinnova and the participating organizations.
Connecting the ecosystem
Initiatives for bold leaders
Several initiatives during 2024 by AI Sweden and partners led the way for decision makers in AI. In March, AI Sweden launched an AI Strategy for Sweden to guide politicians, business leaders, decision-makers, civil servants, or changemakers with ambition and responsibility to lead and develop Sweden towards a positive future through one of the most transformative times in history. Throughout the year, several other initiatives also boosted decision makers across the country.
Cross-industry networking
AI Sweden hosts a range of networks designed to advance AI adoption and innovation. Among these, the Executive AI Network gathers leaders from various sectors to explore AI opportunities and challenges, share learnings, and foster cross-industry collaborations. In 2024, PwC and our partners, AWS, the Swedish National Space Agency, and Stena each co-hosted the network.
Another example, launched in November, is a learning series called AI Fusion. Designed to drive cross-sector value by addressing key AI challenges together. The first theme, "Implementing GenAI in large organizations," brought together partners like Akademiska Hus, Almi AB, Scania CV, and Södra to explore digital assistant implementation, cost models, and compliance, facilitating cross-sector learning.
Over 100 executives gather to discuss the strategic importance of AI
The AI for Executive program marks the first initiative to unite the executive education units of Sweden's three largest universities, Stockholm University, Uppsala University, and Gothenburg University, to deliver a national executive program together with AI Sweden. The initiative underscores the strategic importance and urgency of engaging leaders in the development and adoption of AI.
15 partners collaborating on operationalizing AI
In this extensive project, suppliers and users meet to jointly develop tools and guidelines to accelerate the implementation of organizational structures and technologies to work data-driven beyond the prototype and testing stages of AI projects.
Several supplier parties contribute by establishing a sandbox to test different solutions. Other parties contribute with use cases and best practices from their operations.
The project is funded by Vinnova.
Our plans involve deploying thousands of models to forecast and optimize our aftermarket logistics. A key challenge we anticipate is ensuring robust technical support for governance as models transition from development to implementation and ongoing operation. Clarifying roles and responsibilities throughout this process is crucial.
Mattias Jonhede
Manager Advanced Analytics Engineering at Volvo Group
Hosting brilliant minds
During 2024, AI Sweden gathered the ecosystem in 90 events and hosted regular meetups for our ten network groups. Three big highlights were our presence in Almedalen, partner matchmaking day, and welcoming this year’s Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics, Prof. Geoffrey Hinton.
Almedalen recap: Bold leadership and cross-sector collaboration keys to widespread AI adoption
Tri-City Partner Meetup Showcases AI Sweden's Collaborative Spirit
Nobel prize laureate Geoffrey Hinton took the stage at AI Sweden event
International outlook
AI Sweden leads Nordic collaboration on AI
Stakeholders from the Nordics are now laying the foundation for a Nordic AI Center focused on the responsible development and use of AI. The initiative is co-financed by Nordic Innovation, an agency under the Nordic Council of Ministers.
New phase for AI in healthcare
Unity Health Toronto, industry-leading in applied AI, and AI Sweden took steps to bring significant insights to the Swedish healthcare system. Muhammad Mamdani, Vice President of Data Science and Advanced Analytics at Unity Health, and his team shared their expertise with Swedish regions during a series of webinars. AI Sweden and partners also welcomed a Canadian delegation to further the knowledge exchange, leading to a shared project with the three university hospitals in Gothenburg, Skåne and Stockholm that will focus on building a collaboration platform for data scientists as well as a solution to predict when patients may miss their scheduled appointments.
Language models for all of Europe
AI Sweden and Fraunhofer IAIS got the go ahead to develop language models for all of Europe, with access to one of Europe's most powerful supercomputers. The large-scale model will be trained on 45 different languages and address a significant need for transparent models built specifically for European languages. The EuroLingua-GPT project marks the third major EU collaboration on language models that AI Sweden is currently participating in.
The AI-startup landscape grew
Sweden's AI startup scene is thriving, with 211 startups mapped by AI Sweden and Ignite Sweden. This vibrant ecosystem is a key part of the broader European AI Startup Landscape, a collaborative effort with appliedAI, Hub France IA, and The Netherlands AI Coalition (NL AIC), encompassing over 1,000 companies across Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. This initiative enhances AI startup visibility and fosters AI innovation.
Additionally we hosted a CEO-club, facilitating a platform for 50 founders and leaders within the European startup landscape to connect, exchange valuable learnings and how to expand across borders.
Scientific publications
In many areas, including federated learning and NLU, AI Sweden's work is at the absolute forefront. Some of the work that is done together with our partners results in scientific articles.
