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Sweden ranked second most innovative country in the world

New figures from the Global Innovation Index show that Sweden is the world's second most innovative country, behind only Switzerland.

Sweden ranked second most innovative country in the world
Battery company Northvolt in Västerås. Photo: Simon Rehnström/SvD/TT

“This provides hope for the future,” Peter Strömbäck, director-general of the Swedish Intellectual Property Office, said.

The index, carried out by the World IP Organisation, a UN organisation, puts Sweden ahead of countries like the US, Germany, Korea and China.

“This gives an image of how the country is performing,” Strömbäck said. “Sweden is doing well with regards to creating knowledge assets, that is to say immaterial assets, and making use of them with the help of intellectual property rights, among other things.”

Sweden invests heavily in research and aims to have high-quality universities, he explained, adding that a key reason for its success in innovation was the way it made use of the good ideas produced at these universities and turned them into concrete products or services.

“We’re good at a lot of things related to energy and the green transition,” he said.

One example of an area where Sweden is performing well is the IT sector, where Swedish innovations and companies are behind many developments in mobile phones. Another bright spot is its life science companies, which have produced important medical innovations on the back of which successful businesses have been built.

Strömbäck believes there will be even more of a focus on energy and the green transition in the future.

“If we didn’t have this power of innovation I would be worried. How would we be able to meet the climate challenges? But I’m happy now,” he said.

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TECH

Microsoft to invest over 33 billion kronor in Swedish AI

Microsoft has pledged to invest 33.7 billion kronor over two years in cloud and AI infrastructure in Sweden.

Microsoft to invest over 33 billion kronor in Swedish AI

The US company will train 250,000 people by 2027 to boost AI knowledge and competence and also increase capacity at its three data centres in the country, the statement said, adding that the investment was Microsoft’s biggest ever in Sweden.

“Microsoft’s largest investment in our history in Sweden” would enable the Scandinivian country “to build world leading AI data centre infrastructure”, the company’s president and vice chair Brad Smith told reporters at a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

“A big part of the reason we’re able to do this is because of Sweden’s forward-looking energy policy, the plentiful access to green energy, whether it’s carbon free energy, or renewable energy,” Smith said.

The US group has in recent months announced similar AI investments in other countries, including in France where it vowed to invest four billion euros and Japan where it announced a $2.9 billion AI push.

In Sweden, Microsoft will provide more than 20,000 graphic processing units (GPUs), needed for training AI models, and will boost capacity at its data centres in Sandviken, Gävle and Staffanstorp.

“AI is a catalyst for many things,” Kristersson said.

“It will also help accelerate development in other areas. This huge investment in Sweden has the potential to pave the way for other investments,” he said.

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