“After joining the acceleration round in 2022, I’m excited to join the board at Gilion and be in a position to provide more support and advice to the Executive team for the next phase of growth of this exciting business.”, says Annika Falkengren, newly appointed board member at Gilion. “The capability that Gilion has developed using AI to support credit analysis and assess future financial strength with a high degree of accuracy paves the way for a more modern approach to growth financing and will enable future generations of entrepreneurs to grow and succeed.” 

Earlier in September, Annika announced her intention to step down from her position at Swiss banking group Lombard Odier where she’s been serving as one of six Managing Partners since 2017. Prior to joining Lombard Odier, Annika had a long and successful career at SEB where she was appointed President and CEO in 2005.  In addition, throughout her career, Annika has held multiple Board positions including for Volkswagen, Munich Re and Securitas amongst others and has been repeatedly ranked by Fortune Magazine as one of the most powerful women in Global Business. 

“Annika is one of the most experienced and sharpest minds in banking. We’re both thrilled and humbled to have her join the Gilion board.”, says Oliver Hildebrandt, CEO and co-founder at Gilion. “I can’t think of anyone better to guide and assist in our journey to pioneer and establish a new asset class for tech companies – made possible by combining the most traditional form of lending with leading AI capabilities and growth forecasting.” 

In record time, Gilion has seen significant demand in the Nordic region and Germany for its frontier growth forecasting platform and is planning on further market expansions as the growth platform is rolled out to the world’s entrepreneurs. 

The team is backed by LocalGlobe, Creandum and no less than seven unicorn founders and a German banking veteran - Frank Strauß, formerly Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Postbank Group, Hjalmar Winbladh of Epidemic Sound and founding partner of EQT Ventures, Jacob De Geer of IZettle, Timo Soininen of Small Giant Games, Ilkka Paananen of Supercell, Sebastian Knutsson of King, Riccardo Zacconi of King, and Steve Anavi of Qonto.To learn more about ArK Kapital and our founder–friendly and non-dilutive loans, powered by the unrivaled growth forecasting platform, head over to www.gilion.com.

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‍About Gilion‍

Gilion changes the growth experiences for founders - through providing access to groundbreaking scaleup loans and the frontier of growth forecasting. Gilion’s product offering is now available in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Germany. ArK was founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur Oliver Hildebrandt, veteran banker Axel Bruzelius, Spotify's former VP of Analytics and former EQT Ventures founding partner Henrik Landgren.