Voi founders’ new AI startup Pit has become the latest rising star out of Stockholm
Voi founders’ new AI startup Pit has become the latest rising star out of Stockholm
Swedish startup Pit may have gained notice for some rage-bait social media posts, but it has also become another Stockholm AI startup to watch. Pit is led by the co-founders of European scooter giant Voi, including Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm. He is joined by former iZettle and Klarna engineers. And it is now backed by a16z, which is leading the startup’s $16 million seed round. 瑞典初创公司 Pit 或许因一些引发争议的社交媒体帖子而受到关注，但它也已成为斯德哥尔摩又一家值得瞩目的 AI 初创公司。Pit 由欧洲滑板车巨头 Voi 的联合创始人领导，其中包括 Voi 首席执行官 Fredrik Hjelm。与他一同加入的还有来自 iZettle 和 Klarna 的前工程师。目前，该公司已获得 a16z 的支持，后者领投了该初创公司 1600 万美元的种子轮融资。
Stockholm, also home to Lovable, is one of the places where a16z has been actively looking for the next European unicorn. Pit is going after enterprise AI with products intended to learn from the clients how their businesses run then create custom software to automate processes, Pit CEO Adam Jafer told TechCrunch. 斯德哥尔摩也是 Lovable 的所在地，这里是 a16z 积极寻找下一个欧洲独角兽企业的地点之一。Pit 首席执行官 Adam Jafer 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时表示，Pit 正进军企业级 AI 领域，其产品旨在学习客户的业务运营方式，进而创建定制软件以实现流程自动化。
Jafer left Voi last summer after a seven-year tenure during which the company scaled into a team of nearly 1,000 employees operating in 13 countries. From his engineering viewpoint, Jafer saw how AI has matured enough for enterprise use. Initially, he saw a chance to replace low-hanging SaaS tools with in-house apps, but he soon envisioned an opportunity beyond Voi. Jafer 于去年夏天离开 Voi，结束了七年的任期。在此期间，该公司发展成为一支拥有近 1000 名员工、业务遍及 13 个国家的团队。从工程师的角度来看，Jafer 看到了 AI 如何成熟到足以应用于企业。起初，他认为有机会用内部应用程序取代那些低门槛的 SaaS 工具，但他很快预见到了 Voi 之外的更大机遇。
“The aha moment for the bigger opportunity was when the models were no longer just chatbots that generate text, but became more agentic and could do things,” he told TechCrunch. Unlike competitors offering AI agent-building or vibe-coding products, Pit positions itself as an “AI product team as a service.” “当模型不再仅仅是生成文本的聊天机器人，而是变得更具代理能力（agentic）并能实际执行任务时，我意识到更大的机会来了，”他告诉 TechCrunch。与提供 AI 代理构建或“氛围编程”（vibe-coding）产品的竞争对手不同，Pit 将自己定位为“即服务 AI 产品团队”（AI product team as a service）。
Pit is entering a crowded market and hopes to differentiate itself by relying on two pillars: Pit Studio, which lets enterprise employees guide it through processes that could be handled by AI-generated software; and Pit Cloud, which, the startup promises, provides that software in a way that meets enterprise requirements on governance, certifications, and auditability. Pit 进入了一个拥挤的市场，并希望通过两大支柱实现差异化：Pit Studio，允许企业员工引导 AI 处理可由 AI 生成软件完成的流程；以及 Pit Cloud，该初创公司承诺，它能以满足企业在治理、认证和可审计性方面要求的方式提供这些软件。
In mid-January, the startup started testing its plan with pilot customers in telecom, healthcare, logistics, and other sectors, focusing solely on automating internal processes. “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 said. 1月中旬，该公司开始在电信、医疗、物流和其他行业的试点客户中测试其方案，重点仅在于内部流程自动化。Jafer 表示：“不涉及任何面向客户的内容，没有对话式 AI，纯粹是后台、服务和支持功能，我们将这些功能转化为自动化流程，从而让员工腾出时间专注于核心业务。”
The startup is now preparing to scale up commercially, but it won’t be hands-off. Following the trend of AI companies hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to embed themselves to drive enterprise adoption, Pit is also hiring solution engineers. The goal, Jafer said, is to meet the expectations of the large customers it is targeting. “They’re looking to buy outcomes. They want processes to go faster. They want to see productivity unlock and time unlock,” he said. 该初创公司目前正准备扩大商业规模，但不会采取“甩手掌柜”模式。追随 AI 公司聘请前线部署工程师（FDE）深入企业以推动采用的趋势，Pit 也在招聘解决方案工程师。Jafer 表示，目标是满足其目标大客户的期望。“他们想要的是结果。他们希望流程运行得更快。他们希望看到生产力的释放和时间的节省，”他说。
Jafer said Pit is not pitching itself as a way to reduce human labor and 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.” Jafer 表示，Pit 并不标榜自己是减少人力和裁员的工具。“我们的主题更多是关于将人员转移到上游，去为企业做更有价值的事情，而不是从事重复性的后台工作。”成功的衡量标准也不仅仅是节省时间和金钱。“其中一部分仅仅是工作质量的提升，减少人为错误等等。”
Yet Pit’s own needs on this became a subject of controversy 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 is still visible, he no longer stands by that. “It may have started like that, but you need a good mix as you scale,” he said with a smile. 然而，Pit 在这方面的需求在几个月前引发了争议，当时 Jafer 在 LinkedIn 上发帖称：“是的，我们的团队目前没有初级工程师。在 Pit，AI 代理现在完成了大部分初级工程师过去做的工作。”虽然该帖子仍然可见，但他已不再坚持这一说法。他微笑着说：“刚开始可能是这样，但随着规模扩大，你需要一个合理的团队组合。”
Hjelm anticipated the all-male team might raise eyebrows, too. In a post on X, he wrote that Pit was “founded by tech bros, from Voi and Klarna,” but immediately added, “We have tech girls on the team as well, fyi.” That clarification wasn’t immediately apparent from Pit’s LinkedIn profile, although TechCrunch has spoken with one woman working at Pit on the communications side. Hjelm 也预料到全男性团队可能会引起质疑。他在 X 上发帖称，Pit 是由“来自 Voi 和 Klarna 的科技兄弟（tech bros）创立的”，但随即补充道：“顺便说一下，我们的团队中也有科技女性。”尽管 TechCrunch 已经与一位在 Pit 负责传播工作的女性进行了交流，但从 Pit 的 LinkedIn 个人资料中，这一澄清并不显眼。
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, now a founding engineer at Pit. One of the startup’s engineers, Andreas Hjelm, is none other than Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm’s brother. 然而，这张照片确实反映出一种“老友重聚”的感觉。Voi 的四位联合创始人多年来一直保持着友谊，其中三位现在参与了这段新旅程：Hjelm、Jafer 和现在担任 Pit 创始工程师的 Filip Lindvall。该初创公司的一名工程师 Andreas Hjelm 正是 Voi 首席执行官 Fredrik Hjelm 的兄弟。
While Fredrik Hjelm is named as a co-founder of Pit, too, he is still Voi’s CEO, so his role will likely be less hands-on for the time being. Since going profitable in 2024, Voi has been considered a potential IPO candidate, and closed 2025 with strong results. But his involvement as a well-connected entrepreneur could still open doors — and already has, with a16z. 虽然 Fredrik Hjelm 也被列为 Pit 的联合创始人，但他目前仍是 Voi 的首席执行官，因此他目前的角色可能不会过于深入。自 2024 年实现盈利以来，Voi 一直被视为潜在的 IPO 候选者，并在 2025 年取得了强劲的业绩。但他作为一名人脉广泛的企业家，其参与仍然可以打开大门——事实上，他已经通过 a16z 做到了这一点。
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.” 在一条推文中，Hjelm 解释了 a16z 合伙人 Alex Rampell 和 Gabriel Vasquez 是如何领投 Pit 本轮融资的。他“几年前在他们来到斯德哥尔摩了解如何支持欧洲科技行业时”结识了 Ben Horowitz、Gabriel Vasquez 和 Jen Kha。“我们一直保持联系。在为 Pit 选择合作伙伴时，我们并不缺启动资金，但我们想要找到最强大的支持者。所以我们选择了他们，他们也选择了我们。”
Jafer also corroborated that Pit didn’t spend much time with other firms to raise its round, which was also backed by Pit’s founders themselves, as well as Lakestar, executives from American tech companies, and wealthy families from the Nordics. Jafer 也证实，Pit 在融资过程中并没有花太多时间与其他公司接触。本轮融资还得到了 Pit 创始人本人、Lakestar、美国科技公司高管以及北欧富裕家族的支持。