Most pet insurance is built around the worst-case scenario. A broken leg, an emergency surgery, an unexpected diagnosis. File a claim, get reimbursed, hope it doesn't happen again.
Lassie, a Swedish pet insurance startup, is bringing a fresh take on that concept. While still covering accidents and emergencies, what if pet insurance was built around prevention, guidance, and everyday care?
Their digital-first yet personalised approach has led to rapid growth, covering over 300,000 pets across four countries, and a landmark Series C of $75M after just five years in business.
We at Unleashed by Purina are proud to have hosted them as part of our 2026 accelerator cohort. So we sat down with Carl-Johan Nilsson, Country Manager Sweden at Lassie, to learn more about their journey from inception to surpassing €100M in ARR.
Born to compete
Before we continue, here's what you need to know about the pet industry in Sweden.
About one in three Swedish households have a cat or dog, with cats being the most popular pet, with a population of 1.5 million.
For pet insurance specifically, Sweden has the highest percentage of insured pets in the world.
90% of dogs in Sweden are insured, and the market penetration sits at around 40% overall.
There, pet insurance is as normalised as car and home insurance.
Nilsson said, “In Sweden, we have viewed pets as family members for longer than other markets. They are like children for many people, especially older people who may not have anyone; pets are changing their lives.”
But with an eager, aware and discerning market comes great competition.
Two incumbents dominate the market, owning 76% of the market share alone. The rest is divided between smaller startups and white-labelled offerings.
“In Sweden, most pet owners already have insurance, so our job isn't to educate people insurance matters; it's to tell them Lassie is the better choice. In our other markets, the challenge is different: we first have to educate the market on why insurance matters at all before we can make the case for Lassie,” said Nilsson.
So, in such a competitive market with large incumbents and multiple options, what made Lassie’s co-founders, Hedda Båverud Olsson, Johan Jönsson, and Sophie Wilkinson, want to join the pack?
“Hedda’s mother is a veterinarian. She saw firsthand how many problems can be prevented if you have the right knowledge and right tools,” Nilsson told us. “Not everyone has a veterinarian as a mother, but at least we could share her knowledge and ideas.”
Olsson then teamed up with Wilkinson, an insurance expert with over 15 years of experience in the pet world, and Jönsson, a brilliant tech mind, to craft the Lassie app from scratch.
In 2021, they designed and launched a pet insurance product that went beyond accident and emergency.
“We built our model around our app, where we have preventative care courses, health tracking and daily questions. The more of these you do, the more points you collect, which lowers your insurance premiums.”
The logic behind it is this: pet parents who engage with preventative care are less likely to file avoidable claims, which allows Lassie to pass those savings back through lower premiums.
Expanding beyond borders
The beauty of a digital-first approach (in theory) is that it’s relatively easily replicable in other territories. Plus, if you’re a startup born in pet insurance paradise that had to create a highly differentiated product from the get-go, you’d naturally be offering something new and unique to less mature markets.
Their first overseas target was Germany, where a standardised veterinary pricing system (Gebührenordnung für Tierärzte or GOT) is in place. However, regulatory changes to veterinary pricing in 2022 contributed to growing demand for pet insurance.
The second target was France, which has a much lower pet insurance penetration at around 7%, and most recently, Lassie entered the UK market with great results so far.
“Lassie has been successful in really taking the execution from one market and not only replicating it, but growing even faster in every new market we enter,” Nilsson reflected.
That said, as Lassie discovered, pet insurance isn’t as replicable across countries and cultures.
“Germany and France are similar in that it's all about educating a person why they need insurance in the first place,” said Nilsson. “It's both distrust, not just from customers, but also from veterinarians.”
This is why Lassie is a huge champion of a personalised global approach.
“I think our strength has always been that we have a global system. We have boots on the ground with a country manager in each market. It's all around finding product-market-fit again, because we can't take the product-market-fit for Germany and make it work for the UK. Those markets are completely different.”
So far, this approach has been successful, with over 300,000 pets and counting, with the largest (current) customer base in Germany.
Surpassing €100M in ARR
Because of Lassie’s rapid growth year on year, and possibly the Covid-era excitement around the pet world for investors, Lassie’s fundraising has been equally impressive.
The landmark raise was in 2026, when Lassie raised $75M (€68M/£58M), which is one of the biggest deals in Europe this year.
By this point, Lassie had achieved $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2025, and reached €100M in ARR in 2026.
Joining the Unleashed by Purina Class of 2026 startup accelerator was also part of the company’s wins.
When reflecting on the programme, Nilsson told me, “We see Unleashed as a way to build a relationship with Purina, the leader in pet food, since pet food is a core part of pet care health.”
During the programme, we piloted an integration with Purina Pro Plan and Lassie to bring higher quality nutrition to pet parents as part of the preventative health philosophy. This collaboration has now expanded into Germany, where Lassie now offers Purina Pro Plan nutritional guidance as part of its preventative care ethos.
I asked Nilsson the secret to this success. He credited it to Lassie’s world-class team and technological advancements, saying, “Our claims process now is fully built in-house, with around 90% of claims handled by (or with the help of) AI automation in some way. So 60% of our claims we pay out in less than a few minutes.”
And with such strong backing from investors and an ambitious growth path, it could be tempting to push at the expense of profitability to expand more rapidly. However, leadership is firmly on the side of remaining both profitable and sustainable.
“We could scale quicker by lowering price, but we want to be profitable on the loss ratio. So, I think it’s a constant battle to find the balance between growth and insurance discipline.”
What’s next for Lassie?
With a $75M fundraise in hand, we’re all excited to hear what’s next for Lassie.
Interestingly, this question has been one of the key challenges of such an ambitious company with multiple ideas and potential avenues.
Nilsson told me, “One challenge for growing any startup is focus. What do we focus on? Our backlog has several quarters of stuff we could do. So the question isn't what should we do? It’s when do we do what?”
With Lassie’s recent entry into the UK market, this is a major focus as they have built a dedicated team to learn the landscape and iterate the product to fit the Brits.
Improving automation funnels with AI tech and shortening the gap between claims and payment is also a medium-term goal.
But the big dream is to become much more than a pet insurance company.
“Part of Lassie's vision now is moving from being an insurance provider to a pet care company,” said Nilsson. “We want to be the one place you handle everything related to your pet. That can be anything from vaccinations and health tracking to grooming. I'm very excited for the future.”
As an Unleashed by Purina alum, we’re also excited for the future of Lassie and how they continue to disrupt the pet insurance space.
Written by Olivia de Santos, Pet Tech Writer at Unleashed by Purina.