a16z scours Europe for next unicorn with ample capital

Gabriel Vasquez, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, recently shared that he flew from New York City to Stockholm nine times in a single year. His trips weren’t just to visit portfolio company Lovable, but also to identify promising Swedish startups before they expand into the U.S. market.

The revelation came to light after a16z led a $2.3 million pre-seed round for Dentio, a Swedish startup using AI to handle administrative work at dental practices. Though a relatively small investment for a firm that just announced new funds totaling $15 billion, it underscores that U.S. venture capitalists are actively seeking deal flow beyond American borders, even without local offices.

Stockholm is a natural focus for a16z, which previously saw major returns from backing Skype, co-founded by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström. Since then, the Swedish capital has produced a steady stream of fast-growing startups, and the venture giant has tracked where many of them originate.

“We invest significant time in deeply understanding specific markets and recognizing where innovation is emerging. In Sweden, that means closely monitoring ecosystems like SSE Labs — the startup incubator at the Stockholm School of Economics — and the companies it produces,” Vasquez told TechCrunch.

Like fintech giant Klarna, legal AI startup Legora, and e-scooter company Voi, Dentio is an SSE Labs alum — an incubator that has launched several successful Swedish companies. Founders Elias Afrasiabi, Anton Li, and Lukas Sjögren, former high school classmates, reconnected as students at both the Stockholm School of Economics and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. They joined the incubator with additional support from KTH’s Innovation Launch program, tackling a problem familiar to them: Li’s mother, a dentist, described how administrative work takes time away from patient care.

The trio realized they could use large language models to assist dental professionals — an idea they validated with her and her colleagues. That led to Dentio’s first product, a recording tool that generates clinical notes using AI. However, as AI scribes become increasingly commoditized, Afrasiabi acknowledged that Dentio must prove its ongoing value to dentists so they don’t switch providers when alternatives emerge.

Potential competitors include fellow Swedish startup Tandem Health, which raised a $50 million Series A last year to support clinicians with AI across various medical specialties. Dentio, by contrast, focuses exclusively on dentistry, but believes it can reach the scale VCs expect through international expansion.

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“We’re now a team of seven, and we believe it’s possible to build a unified approach to handling administration across Europe — and possibly the entire world,” Afrasiabi said. Although Europe’s healthcare systems are fragmented, they share enough similarities that Dentio expects what works in Sweden could work elsewhere in the EU.

Dentio prominently displays its “Made in Sweden” branding and emphasizes that “all relevant data is processed in Sweden and Finland in compliance with Swedish and EU law.” This signals data protection to privacy-conscious European customers, while also reminding investors of Sweden’s track record for producing breakout companies.

“We attended zero meetups. I reached out to zero investors,” Afrasiabi said. While the team focused on building, word spread organically. “I think it was mostly through referrals and people talking to each other that the news reached the U.S.,” he added.

This wasn’t accidental: a16z has a global perspective to spot these companies as early as local funds, Vasquez noted. “In Sweden, for instance, we partnered with top founders abroad like Fredrik Hjelm of Voi and Johannes Schildt of Kry, turning them into scouts and mapping the best local talent.”

For Vasquez, who oversees AI application investments at a16z, this strategy extends beyond Sweden. He sees it as “a pattern of great global companies being born abroad and scaling quickly,” citing examples like Black Forest Labs in Germany and Manus, the Singapore-based AI startup recently acquired by Meta.

Born and raised in El Salvador, Vasquez has also spent time in São Paulo. “I’m really excited about what’s brewing in Brazil and across Latin America in AI,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “I believe AI is the great equalizer,” he added. “Most people now have access to PhD-level intelligence on a phone, and ultimately, Silicon Valley is a state of mind.”