Welcome to StartupRAD.io, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews, and live events. Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from StartupRaid.io bringing you another episode in this month in German, Swiss and Austrian startups for March 2024. I would like to welcome my co-host and co-founder Chris from New York City. As always, how are you doing Chris? I'm very well. Sun is shining, but also there's construction in front of my
building. It started at 7 a.m. Even on the Sunday yesterday. today but we will get through it we'll get through it totally um as always we try to get you a news wrap up of germany austria and switzerland startup and technology news in 30 minutes or less um and our recording date is march 25th and our next news will be published on april 25th happy easter the publication date is holy thursday or as we call it in germany cool donors talk The Friday before Easter and the Monday after
Easter are public holidays, so shops will be closed. And many people will take off either the week before or after Easter. So don't expect the people to get back to you in form of emails or calls pretty soon. We do have pretty big news. We do believe we see a seismic shift in the regional startup scene. You are witnessing a seismic shift in the GSA startup scene with us here and today. The headlines of our startup news used to be dominated by fintech fundings.
Now we have more than 7 billion euros, yes, billion would be, investments in green tech startups like battery and renewable energy versus only, and I put this in air quotes, of 150 million in fintech funding in different forms. So this is surely a foretaste of what's to come. Actually, getting pretty excited thinking about it. Our highlight, the European energy landscape is witnessing significant development with key investments across sectors.
Northworld Gigafactory in northern Germany backed by 900 million in subsidies and 4.5, billion, yes with a B, aims to produce 1 million car batteries annually, driving electric vehicle adoption and job creation. NPAL secures 1.1 billion refinancing commitments, while Sunfire raises over 500 million bolstering Europe's green hydrogen economy. Nviria secures 200 million in capital from BlackRock signaling confidence in the solar sector.
Solaris Bank secures 96 million in funding but faces 6.5 million finds from BaFin reflecting FinTech regulatory challenges. And Magic, an AI startup from Austria game faction with open AIs and Tesla's former Andrei Kapovsky as investor, Big Panda establishes a 50 million VC fund for blockchain startups, of course. However, the startup community grapples with stress with nearly half considering quitting, underscoring the toll of rapid innovation.
As we said, our podcast will go live audio and video on March 28th. If you are a member of our YouTube channel you can get early access. We will be available on all the usual suspects including our internet radio station startup.radio and you can get our content straight into your inbox or cell phone with our Substack newsletter or our Telegram radio startup radio channel.
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And of course startupraven.com the best way to identify investors and cooperation partners for early stage startups sign up for early access here and heading over to chris for the top news. Yes, exactly. And I mean, in headline form, you were already talking about them. Probably the biggest and even the freshest story right off today is the one about Northvolt. They had their groundbreaking ceremony for a gigafactory of electrical batteries in Germany.
And that whole topic is so important in German politics that even the Chancellor Olaf Scholz himself attended the groundbreaking ceremony today. Germany was fighting over this factory of Nordvolt with the U.S., but in the end, Germany won out because the German government secured more subsidies for it. 900 million euros in subsidies will be invested. 700 million coming from the state of Schleswig-Holstein, which is the northernmost state in Germany, and 200 million guaranteed.
It is traditionally a region where there is not a lot of high-tech jobs, so everyone there is also very keen on it. But I think it's still nevertheless an interesting decision, especially given the fact that, for example, the Gigafactory close to Berlin with Tesla has issues and there's a huge discussion going on. So the Swedish company wants to produce up to 1 million car batteries a year there for electric vehicles.
They want to employ up to 3,000 people, let they say. And the company itself wants to invest an additional 4.5 billion euros. That's around 4.9 billion US dollars right now. Then other top stories right now. NPAL secures 1.1 billion euros. That's in refinancing commitments for German residential solar and heat pump securitizations. Sunfire raises €500 million in funding. They are based in Dresden and are an electrolyzer manufacturer.
They got €500 million in funding. And we got two different sources about this. And their goal is basically to boast European's green hydrogen economy. Enviria, in your hometown Frankfurt, is one of Germany's leading commercial and industrial solar companies as well. They secured a capital commitment of over $200 million from BlackRock, so a very famous investor there. We have also several sources about this if you are interested in some in-depth information in our show notes.
There is, we found news about Solaris Bank, good and bad news to be honest. Solaris raised 96 million euros in funding, led by SoftBank International and other existing investors. Funding is for the expansion of the ADAC credit card program, or as the Germans obviously say, ADAC. ADAC in Germany is what AAA is in the US. It's Germany's and Europe's largest automobile association. They have more than 21 million members. They are best known for yellow cars providing roadside assistance.
And a fun fact also is that their membership magazine is actually the most printed magazine in German media. I think they have like more than 12 million people who get it sent to their homes. But it's probably not only like, say it again. Still physically printed. Still physically printed. So it is the biggest magazine. It's also probably the most unread magazine in Germany. I have no idea.
And BaFin, but also BaFin, fines German fintech Solaris 6.5 million euros for late filing systematic anti-money laundry reports. And we have more articles about that in our show notes as well. So looking at Austria, where the AI startup Magic gets a famous investor on board, namely Andrej Karpati, one of the founding members of OpenAI and head of AI for Tesla. He left there to focus on other projects, and one now seems to be the investment in the Vienna-based AI startup Magic.
Bitpanda set up its own VC fund. They announced that they have set their own first VC fund together with other investors totaling 50 million euros to invest around 250,000 to 2 million in startups in the digital assets, blockchain and crypto space. Bitpanda also liquidated a subsidiary, BP22 Fundleih GmbH, basically their pawn shop. Pawn, P-A-W-N.
Just making sure, right? Yeah. Founders are feeling stress, that's not a money issue, but we found this interesting survey where 49% of founders said that they are considering quitting their startup this year because they tell SIFT that they are overworked, exhausted, and just plain broken. You know what's not broken? Our numbers.
Ah housekeeping and time to brag yes we reached a massive milestone thanks to all the people out here um we have surpassed more than 1 million confirmed downloads in just q4 2023 thank you for all the people who made it possible um we just came we just got the numbers together because our hosting service changed their setup and enabled us to dig a little bit deeper into statistics And it turned out we had 1,071,970 downloads in October, November, and December last year.
That really feels amazing, Chris. I have to say it. If you're looking to cooperate with us, go down here in the show notes. There is a link to our action food storefront. Chris, handing over back to you with the ecosystem. system? Yeah, and these are stories that have an influence on the German startup market or on the startup market in general. We found a couple of stories even of global relevance that are interesting to us.
For example, one statistic around energy startups where it is said that that as mega rounds become rarer, energy startups are powering up. It's an in-depth article from TechCrunch, where they basically look at what you also said in the beginning, that the green tech sector is getting bigger and bigger. And startups in general are still buying fewer startups. Sounds a bit incestuous, the whole scene, But nevertheless, also global statistics about the investments in startups.
Moving on to Europe, narrowing our focus a bit, Unternehmertum tops the ranking of Europe's leading startup hubs. It's based in Munich and TUM is the Technical University of Munich. Learn more in our interview. Exactly. And famous also in Germany because it was set up by Susanne Klatten, which is probably, I don't know, sometimes I think she was even ranked as being the richest person in Germany. And she is the heiress of BMW.
Yes. um the bmw founders or she has stakes in there whatever like she's she's loaded let's say um, and we found a list of the top 100 next unicorns 14 of those so-called sunicorns on the list are from germany 22 from the uk 21 are from france austria only one in total 16 countries had entries on the list so it's just a european list but nevertheless switzerland Switzerland was not mentioned.
From Germany those startups are Amboss, Anydesk, Aux Money, Avi Medical, Camunda, Distribution, Localize, Moonfair, Oviva, PriceFX, Spryker, Uberall, Xentral. We had an interview with them recently. You can find that on our Medium website. Website, Urban Sports Club, and from Austria, it's Plan Radar. In Switzerland, as I said, there are no entries on that list of soon-to-be unicorns, but Switzerland is usually more biotech-oriented, and those startups were not included on the list anyway.
Narrowing the focus even more, what is happening in the German ecosystem for startups, there is good news on economic indicators, the E4 Business Climate Index, which is basically asking for the sentiment of overall industries and the economic sentiment of overall industries. And that business climate index rose in March 2024. So sentiment in German companies has improved noticeably in the past couple of weeks or months.
And in case you're curious about what kind of startups the investors are funding in Berlin, there's a new deal room analysis about this.
Startups are receiving investments from largest to smallest in energy fintech oh now it gives me because the apple uh okay if you're just listening to this the problem is we are since we're also doing the video um and i gave a thumbs up because i was counting the one and so apple is adding the emojis the emojis okay so um startup receiving investments are in the fields of energy, fintech, food, health, real estate, marketing, travel.
And then there's a bit of a the numbers fall off the cliff a bit. The German Ministry of Economic Affairs cuts its support for business angels and Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck dissolves his startup advisory board and sparking criticism from opposition parties in Germany. That's all in the German ecosystem. Let's have a look at some of the startup hubs in Germany and some of the cities where startup activity is happening. Yes, of course. We always start with my home turf, Frankfurt Rhein-Main.
They win the bid to EU's new anti-money laundry authority. And Emma Matratzen, Emma Mattresses, has grown in 2023 to 962 million euros in revenue, plus 10%. Of course, you can learn more in our interview with them. Going a little bit south to Heidelberg, Biotech Affirmed, listed on Nasdaq, is on the hunt for a new CEO to navigate through crucial times with significant clinical tri-data on the horizon. They are in cancer treatment.
The recent departure of the CEO and a 1-10 stock split, the journey ahead is filled with anticipation. Stay tuned for updates. Talk about Cologne here, DeepL to open first US office as adoption of the market stores. NX Technology, a Cologne-based fintech that operates the automotive payment management platform Bezal.de, raises 22 million euros in CSP funding.
Stuttgart, Assemblio, provider of software platform to plan assembly and generate automatic assistance systems for production, raises 2.1 million in seed funding. Ostfilden, just 10 kilometers south of southeast of Stuttgart, protein distillery, a plant based food company, raised 15 million years in seed funding. and you have a trivia story to Ostfildern. Yes, I do. Since I lived in Stuttgart for more than 14 years, I'd say, 12 years, I was sometimes covering Ostfildern.
And the fun fact about Ostfildern is that in the history of space. Of people going to space, there has only been one single person who came from the country of Afghanistan Afghanistan and became a cosmonaut because he was on a Soviet Union mission and he was on one of the last missions of the Soviet Union in the late 80s and that person coming from Afghanistan now lives in this German, suburb town of Ostfildern. I met him, I covered him in his living room.
There's a huge poster of his mission and the special stamp that the postal service in Afghanistan issued in his name. And I mean, it was also really weird because he's living this like small town German life. And there was a sadness about him too. But I asked him whether he considers himself a hero. And he looked at me and he said, Christian, a real man can never talk of himself as being a hero.
Wise words going a little bit to the north in hamburg hamburg's novo cup startup raises 25 million euros and hayflow a tool which we also knew uh use raises 16 million in series a funding osnabrück new taste six years 21 million euros in funding for restaurant discovery and in the city of Essen, Green Light Carbon Technologies, Light with an Y, an Essen, Germany-based direct air capture startup raises 10.5 million in pre-Series A funding.
I wouldn't be able to tell what those guys are doing or what pre-Series A is. But handing over to Chris here. Yes, and I take a look at Austria. Austria. First up there is Fratello, which is a startup that teaches you how to play the guitar. They are undergoing a restructuring with Berthold Baurek-Karlicz stepping in as the new interim CEO. You can keep in mind the news from Magic and Bitpanda before that we were talking
about. Then also Zizou, a Vienna-based yacht scale up, is rescued through acquisition after bankruptcy. And Zola's capital commits up to 30 million euros in energy projects for the scale up NEEOM. Chris, have you ever wondered how big the yachting scene in Vienna is?
I mean, Austria is a landlocked country, and the little river of Wien, pretty tiny but there's also the danube there's also yeah yeah there's a new river but also no big yachting there i do believe no but uh very beautiful public pools in vienna to swim in the venue so that's a not very startup uh activity that is like really old school if you swim in a river in australia you feel as if you're right in the 1800s i think um moving on to switzerland where the education tech
Avalan acquires the AI tool set Teach-O-Matic. Biotech food startup Cultivated Biosciences bags 4.6 million euros to improve their dairy-free products. We have more information about how they did that in our show notes. Actia, Actia, Actia, I think, a Neuchatel Switzerland-based health tech company providing optical blood pressure monitoring devices raised $30 million in funding. Validation Cloud, based in Zug in Switzerland, is a Web3 technology company.
They raised $5.8 million in inaugural funding. Arga Medtech in Lausanne, so it's French, so maybe it's Arja, Arja Medtech, they are providing cardiac ablation systems to treat cardiac arrhythmias, they raised 54 million euros in Series B funding, so that's some serious money, and the Dutch revenue-based financing startup Levenu, Levenu, oh god these are all horrible I can really make like a lot of, enemies here they acquired the Zurich Fintech midfunder.
Moving on to general news, tech news, company news, anything that got our interest in the last couple of weeks. First off, new funds in case you're looking for money. It's only a small selection, but we like talking about it because it also gives you hope that the money is out there. Verdane is an Oslo, Norway-based growth fund investment firm.
They closed Verdane at R3 at 1.1 billion euros. Vardano will continue to invest them medically in European companies that help digitize and decarbonize the economy. We have the Berlin-based World Fund, which will provide €300 million to climate tech founders over the next few years, making its fund the largest climate-dedicated pool the continent has seen yet.
Alpine Space Ventures secured a whopping €10 million from NATO's Innovation Fund, adding adding to their impressive 60 million euros from EIF last year. And Berlin's Web3 first-time fund secures over 10 million euros in a second closing, a strong signal for the new content-driven VC generation. Fintech. As we said, we are in a point of a seismic shift. Fintech news has been pretty small. Admittedly, we also had to deselect a lot of stuff here in order to stay in 30 minutes. payment cards.
Trade Republic issues cease and desist declaration on unjust advertising after being sued by consumer advocate group, die Verbraucherzentrale. WeFox CEO Julian Teicher steps down from his position. Credit platforms Mava, known for their annoying TV commercials, is looking for a buyer. Chris, some general news? Yes, not really about Germany here, but still concerning. Every time OpenAI cuts a check for training data and unlaunched competitive startup dies.
We have an article that explains what that means. Zendesk is to acquire Berlin's ultimate for AI customer support. Mahana Therapeutics acquires Berlin's Caracare, expanding digital treatment for chronic conditions. Defense Tech is all the rage, but investors have their guard up. An article looking into that industry. Berlin-based Power Data acquired by Conuti, a portfolio company of Nordholding, and former employees accuse NPAL of missing payments.
One even takes legal action. Some of the issues there are further explained in our show notes as well. Creative destruction.
Yeah not really insolvency but still bad news and related to the insolvency of sonomotors prosecutors investigate sonomotor solar cell pioneers over suspicions of deceiving of deceiving, for state grants so meaning they made false declarations to get those grants um finapo had to file for insolvency no investor could be found and so the company will be liquidated express Presssteuer, all employees now forced to leave, founder resurfaces for the first time since filing for insolvency.
Trasio started out as an Amazon shop aggregator but now also surprisingly has to file for insolvency. Winner, an automotive startup from Halle, raised 92 million euros in total but has to shut down. and Berlin-based online advertising company Plista surprised all by shutting down. Employees have been called into an all-hands meeting and told the company will shut down immediately, according to the article we link down here in the show notes.
Let's talk about more positive stuff and let's end on a high note of successful fundraising and exits. As always, keep in mind this is only a small selection. The news here and their total value show how resilient the startup scene in Europe or in German language countries is. We included some selected fundraisings above 5 million euros or US dollars. Especially this month, there were so many announcements that we could not include all funds raised.
So a couple of highlights, very lightning round. Two bullies. Munich, Germany-based oncology company closed an upsized 128 million euro, nearly 140 million dollar series B2 financing. DRIAD Networks in Berlin, an ultra-early wildfire detection technology company, announced their initial closing of 5.6 million euros in convertible financing with a total round size of up to 10 million. DATO secures 5 million euros in a seed financing round.
They want to further develop its platform into a solution for ESG compliance and sustainability management. And Razor Group, a Berlin-based technology-driven e-commerce company, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series D funding. And they are also an e-commerce company. That is all I got for now. We will be back on April 25th with the next news episode, and the next regular episode will go live next week. We say Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate that.
Happy Eid. There's only a few days left for the people participating in Ramadan or following Ramadan. And we have some news for you to stay ahead of the curve. We are always looking for feedback. back there's a google form if you want to and apart from that i can just say thank you very much for listening as always and um goodbye from new york city goodbye guys enjoy your holidays enjoy your breaks bye bye tschüss that's a wrap bye bye. Music.
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