What is “AB”?
AB stands for Aktiebolag (Swedish), a public limited liability company used primarily in Lithuania, Sweden. The suffix signals that the business has limited liability and is eligible for public listing.
Full meaning & translation
The full form is Aktiebolag, a Swedish-language term. It translates literally as “joint-stock company.” You may also encounter it abbreviated or written as akcinė bendrovė, aktiebolag, aktiebolaget, ~aktiebolag.
Where it's used
AB appears in company names registered in the following 2 jurisdictions:
What it tells you about the company
Equivalent forms around the world
These are the closest structural equivalents to AB in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.
Normalizing “AB” in your data
When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — “Acme AB” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Acme AB", "country": "lt"}'{
"data": {
"canonical": "acme",
"legal_type": "ab",
"tokens": [
"acme"
]
},
"meta": {
"pipeline": [
"lowercase",
"legal_suffix"
],
"confidence": 0.99
}
}Compare AB with
Frequently asked questions
What does AB stand for?
AB stands for Aktiebolag (Swedish), which translates as "joint-stock company".
Is a AB public or private?
A AB is a public entity — it can issue shares that are listed and traded on a stock exchange.
What is the liability in a AB?
Owners of a AB have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.
Which countries use AB?
AB is used in Lithuania, Sweden.
Need to normalize AB at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.
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