New AI startup Voi Pit has become the latest star in Stockholm

Swedish origin A hole They may have recognized some aggressive writing, but it’s also been another Stockholm AI startup to check out.

Pit is led by the co-founders of the European scooter giant, including Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm. They are joined by former iZettle and Klarna engineers. And now it’s backed by a16z, which is leading a $16 million seed round. Stockholm, and home of Lovableis one of the places where a16z has been quickly looking for the next European unicorn.

Pit is going after AI-powered businesses that want to learn from customers about how their businesses operate and create custom software to adapt, Pit CEO Adam Jafer told TechCrunch.

Jafer left Voi last summer after seven years where the company grew to a team of nearly 1,000 employees working in 13 countries. From his engineering perspective, Jafer saw how AI has matured enough to be used in businesses. At first, they saw an opportunity to replace low-cost SaaS tools with in-house software, but soon saw an opportunity to go beyond Voi.

“The best time to get a big opportunity was when models were no longer chatbots that generate content, but became mature and capable of doing things,” he told TechCrunch. Unlike competitors that offer artificial intelligence or vibe-coding, Pit positions itself as “a group of AI products as a service.”

Pit is entering a crowded market and hopes to differentiate itself by relying on two pillars: Pit Studio, which allows business operators to lead processes that can be driven by AI-powered software; and Pit Cloud, which, the startup promises, delivers the software in a way that meets business needs for governance, certification, and auditing.

In mid-January, the startup began testing its plans with customers in the telecom, healthcare, transportation, and other sectors, with a focus on internal automation. “There’s no customer focus, no AI to talk to, back office, operations, and support services that we turn into automation systems so you can give people time back to focus on your core business,” Jafer said.

The founders are now planning to expand the business, but it will not be manual. Following what AI companies are hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to integrate them into business operations, Pit is also hiring solutions engineers. The goal, Jafer said, is to meet the expectations of the major target customers. “They are looking to buy results. They want processes to go faster. They want to see the opening of productivity and opening time,” he said.

Jafer said Pit is not positioning itself as a way to cut down on people’s jobs and cut jobs. “The theme is more about moving people upstream to do the things that matter most to the business, rather than the next round.” Success metrics also extend to saving time and money. “Others are to improve operations, reduce human error and so on.”

However Pit’s needs for this became a matter of debate a few months ago Jafer wrote on LinkedIn announced “Yes, our team is short on engineers. At Pit, agents now do a lot of what junior engineers do.”

Although the post is still visible, it is no longer represented. “It must have started like this, but you have to mix it up when you grow up,” he said with a smile.

Hjelm expects the all-male team to raise eyebrows, too. In a post on Xwrote that Pit was “founded by tech bros, from Voi and Klarna,” but quickly added, “We have tech girls on the team, fyi.” This explanation was not immediately clear from Pit’s LinkedIn profile, although TechCrunch spoke to one woman who works at Pit on the communications side.

What this picture does show, however, is the idea of ​​recycling the group. Four of Voi’s co-founders are involved they remained friends for many yearsand three of them are now part of this new journey: Hjelm, Jafer, and Filip Lindvall, who is now a founding engineer at Pit. One of the original engineers, Andreas Hjelm, is none other than Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm’s brother.

Although Fredrik Hjelm was also mentioned as a co-founder of Pit, he is also still the CEO of Voi, so his position may not be very useful at this point. Since the start of profit in 2024, Voi was considered IPO candidateand closed 2025 with strong results. But his involvement as a well-connected businessman can open doors – and already, with the a16z.

In a tweetHjelm explained how a16z friends Alex Rampell and Gabriel Vasquez ended up leading the Pit circle. He met Ben Horowitz, Gabriel Vasquez, and Jen Kha “a few years ago when they came to Stockholm to understand what they could do in European technology. We stayed in touch. When it came to choosing Pit’s friends, we didn’t need money to go, but we wanted the strongest supporters we could find. So we chose them, and they chose us.”

Jafer also confirmed that Pit did not stay long with other companies to increase its circulation, which was also supported by the founders of Pit, as well as Lakestar, managers of American technology companies, and rich families from the Nordics. This transatlantic cap table confirms that there is a growing interest in AI from Stockholm, which has established itself as one of Europe’s leading startup hubs.

Pit can also benefit from its European DNA when it comes to sales. “We are targeting industrialists, and there are many in Europe,” Jafer said. He said customers appreciate Pit’s agnostic approach. Since it can use different AIs and cloud vendors based on customer preferences, it can benefit from current talwinds of sovereign techespecially in difficult areas.

“EU models running on EU computers are a priority for almost every CIO we meet,” Jafer said.