Swedish startup Pit may have attracted attention through some provocative social media posts, but it’s quickly emerging as another Stockholm-based AI company worth following. The venture is led by the co-founders of European scooter giant Voi, including CEO Fredrik Hjelm, alongside former engineers from iZettle and Klarna. Now, the startup has secured $16 million in seed funding, with a16z leading the round. Stockholm, which is also home to Lovable, has become a hotspot where a16z is scouting for Europe’s next unicorn. Jafer departed Voi last summer after seven years, during which the company grew to nearly 1,000 employees operating across 13 countries. From his engineering perspective, Jafer recognized that AI had matured sufficiently for enterprise applications. Initially, he saw an opportunity to replace simple SaaS tools with custom in-house apps, but soon envisioned a broader mission beyond Voi. Unlike competitors that offer AI agent-building or vibe-coding platforms, Pit positions itself as an “AI product team as a service.”

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Pit is entering a crowded market and aims to stand out through two core offerings: Pit Studio, which allows enterprise employees to guide the creation of AI-generated software for internal processes; and Pit Cloud, which delivers that software while meeting enterprise standards for governance, certifications, and auditability. In mid-January, the startup began testing its approach with pilot customers in telecom, healthcare, logistics, and other sectors, focusing exclusively on automating internal operations. “Nothing customer facing, no conversational AI, just pure back-office, service and support functions that we turn into automations so that you can give back time to people to focus on your core business,” Jafer explained. The company is now preparing to scale commercially, but it won’t be a hands-off operation. Following the trend of AI firms hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to embed themselves within client organizations, Pit is also recruiting solution engineers. Jafer said the goal is to meet the expectations of the large customers they’re targeting. “They’re looking to buy outcomes. They want processes to go faster. They want to see productivity unlock and time unlock,” he noted. Jafer emphasized that Pit isn’t pitching itself as a way to reduce human labor or cut jobs. “The theme is more around moving people upstream to do more valuable things for the business, rather than repetitive back-office work.” Success metrics also go beyond saving time and money. “Some of it is just quality of work improvement, reducing human errors and so on.”

Yet Pit’s own hiring practices became a point of contention a few months ago when Jafer posted on LinkedIn, declaring: “Yes, our team currently has no junior engineers. At Pit, agents now do most of what junior engineers used to do.” While the post remains visible, he no longer stands by that statement. “It may have started like that, but you need a good mix as you scale,” he said with a smile. Hjelm anticipated that the all-male team might also raise eyebrows. In a post on X, he wrote that Pit was “founded by tech bros, from Voi and Klarna,” but quickly added, “We have tech girls on the team as well, fyi. What the picture does reflect, though, is a sense of getting the band back together.” Voi’s four co-founders have remained friends over the years, and three of them are now part of this new journey: Hjelm, Jafer, and Filip Lindvall, who serves as a founding engineer at Pit. One of the startup’s engineers, Andreas Hjelm, is none other than Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm’s brother. While Fredrik Hjelm is listed as a co-founder of Pit, he remains Voi’s CEO, so his involvement will likely be less hands-on for now. Since becoming profitable in 2024, Voi has been considered a potential IPO candidate, and it closed 2025 with strong results. Still, Hjelm’s connections as a well-known entrepreneur could open doors—and already have, with a16z. In a tweet, Hjelm explained how a16z partners Alex Rampell and Gabriel Vasquez ended up leading Pit’s round. He became acquainted with Ben Horowitz, Gabriel Vasquez, and Jen Kha “a few years ago when they came to Stockholm to understand what they could do for European tech. We stayed in touch. When it came to picking partners for Pit, we didn’t need the money to get going, but we wanted the strongest backers we could find. So we picked them, and they picked us.”

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Jafer also confirmed that Pit didn’t spend much time courting other firms to raise its round, which also included investments from Pit’s own founders, as well as Lakestar, executives from American tech companies, and wealthy Nordic families. This transatlantic cap table reflects growing interest in AI coming out of Stockholm, which has solidified its position as one of Europe’s most active startup hubs. Pit could also benefit from its European roots when it comes to sales. “We’re going after industrials, and there’s plenty of that in Europe,” Jafer said. He also noted that clients appreciate Pit’s agnostic approach. Since the startup can use different AI and cloud vendors depending on client preferences, it could capitalize on current tailwinds for sovereign technology, especially in critical sectors. “EU models running on EU compute is top of mind for almost every CIO we’re meeting,” Jafer added.