Germany startup ecosystem
Germany is Europe's largest economy and home to a maturing startup ecosystem anchored by Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg. Berlin's international talent pool and creative culture attract early-stage founders, while Munich draws deep-tech and enterprise ventures thanks to proximity to major corporates and research institutions. Government-backed programs and a dense VC landscape provide capital across all stages. The directory currently lists 344 organisations across 39 cities.
Showing 61–80 of 344 Germany
Cities in Germany
Types in Germany
Germany results
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CloudFest 2027
CloudFest 2027 runs 15-18 March in Rust, billed as the world's number-one internet infrastructure festival. The 2026 edition drew 10,900 attendees for four days of talks on AI, security and infrastructure, alongside a hackathon, masterclasses and networking events for the hosting and cloud community.
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co-matter
co-matter is a Berlin-based research-driven creative studio that develops strategies, media, and publications at the intersection of technology and culture. It co-founded Techfestival Copenhagen in 2017 alongside Thomas Madsen-Mygdal and a team of designers and entrepreneurs, and produced the Copenhagen Letter — a manifesto for humane technology signed by over 5,000 tech leaders. The studio works with clients including Mozilla Foundation, WeTransfer, IKEA/SPACE10, and Samsung on cultural intelligence, community strategy, and editorial projects.
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COBL
COBL is opencampus.sh's coworking café concept, situated at Legienstraße 40 in central Kiel — a location distinct from the Wissenschaftspark campus and positioned to serve founders, students, and remote workers who prefer working in the heart of the city rather than on the science-park periphery. The venue blends the café and workspace formats: members can work over quality coffee specialties in an environment designed to encourage informal exchange and networking. Beyond day-to-day workspace, COBL offers separately rentable rooms for small team meetings, workshops, and events, making it a flexible option for early-stage founders who need meeting infrastructure without a full-time office commitment. As part of the opencampus.sh family — which also operates StarterKitchen and fablab.sh — COBL members gain a natural introduction to the wider Kiel founder community, the Gründungsstipendium SH advisory network, and the annual Waterkant Festival ecosystem. The venue is particularly accessible for founders affiliated with Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel and Muthesius Kunsthochschule, both within cycling distance of Legienstraße. The coworking café model keeps overhead low, meaning pricing is at the accessible end of the Kiel spectrum. Pricing tier: €.
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Cognigy
Cognigy is a Düsseldorf-based conversational AI company founded in 2016 that builds an enterprise platform for AI agents and voice and chat automation, letting large organisations handle customer service across phone, chat and messaging channels. Its low-code platform integrates with contact-centre systems and large language models. In 2025 Cognigy was acquired by the customer-experience software company NiCE.
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conmeet
conmeet offers AI workflow automation for SMB craft and construction businesses. It processes inbound messages from channels such as email and chat, drafts responses, supports scheduling, and streamlines quote preparation so teams can reduce office overhead and focus on delivery work.
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Contentful
Contentful is a headless content management system (CMS) that enables enterprises to manage and deliver digital content across websites, apps, and devices via API. Founded in Berlin, the company serves over 4,000 customers including Spotify, Chanel, and Urban Outfitters. Contentful was valued at $3 billion after its 2021 Series F and is one of Europe's most successful developer-tools companies, bridging content management with modern composable architecture.
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CureVac
CureVac is a biopharmaceutical company based in Tuebingen, Germany, founded in 2000 as a pioneer in mRNA technology. The company was one of the earliest to explore messenger RNA as a therapeutic platform, long before mRNA became a household term during the COVID-19 pandemic. While its first-generation COVID vaccine candidate underperformed in clinical trials, CureVac pivoted to next-generation mRNA technologies and partnered with GSK on a second-generation COVID vaccine and other infectious disease programs. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ and continues developing its proprietary mRNA optimization platform.
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Daniel Khachab
Daniel Khachab is Co-founder & CEO of the AI food-supply-chain platform Choco. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, Daniel leads the AI food-supply-chain platform Choco.
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Daniel Metzler
Daniel Metzler is Co-founder & CEO of the orbital-launch company Isar Aerospace. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, Daniel leads the orbital-launch company Isar Aerospace.
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Daniel Wiegand
Daniel Wiegand is Co-founder & CEO of the eVTOL air-mobility company Lilium. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, Daniel leads the eVTOL air-mobility company Lilium.
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Daniela Brönstrup
Vice President of the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency), Germany's regulator for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railways, with a focus on digital infrastructure and AI governance. She is an announced speaker at the 2026 AI, Data & Quantum Summit (AIDAQ) in Berlin.
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Dash0
Dash0 is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform for software engineering teams. Because it is built directly on the open OpenTelemetry standard, it ingests logs, metrics, and distributed traces from any stack, vendor, or environment without requiring proprietary agents, positioning this openness as a way to avoid vendor lock-in. The product covers application and infrastructure performance monitoring, log management with filtering and search, distributed tracing, and Kubernetes monitoring. It was founded by Mirko Novakovic, who previously founded the observability company Instana.
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Data Festival 2026
Munich-based conference on applied data science, machine learning, and AI in the enterprise, with talks from data leaders at BMW, Siemens, Allianz, and top European scale-ups. Strong focus on real-world ML use cases, data engineering, and MLOps. 2,000+ attendees. Tickets EUR 450-990.
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DATA festival Munich 2027
DATA festival Munich 2027 runs 17-18 March at Muffatwerk in Munich. A fixture of Munich's event calendar since 2017, the festival serves as a year-round community platform for data, analytics and AI professionals, focused on practical implementation over hype.
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David Nothacker
David Nothacker is Co-founder & CEO of the digital road-freight platform Sennder. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, David leads the digital road-freight platform Sennder.
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David Schneider
David Schneider is Co-founder of the fashion e-commerce giant Zalando. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, David leads the fashion e-commerce giant Zalando.
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Deep Tech Momentum
Organizer of Deep Tech Momentum, a Berlin-based marketplace event pairing deep-tech founders with specialist investors and corporate innovation teams. The curated format focuses on sectors like quantum computing, advanced materials, and AI, offering structured matchmaking sessions to accelerate fundraising for science-driven startups.
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Deep Tech Momentum 2026
Deep-tech marketplace event at Wilhelm Studios Berlin covering AI, Web3, photonics, and advanced manufacturing, culminating in Berlin's Deep Tech Award ceremony. Especially relevant for R&D-heavy startups seeking patient capital and strategic industrial backers.
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DeepDrive
DeepDrive is the Munich startup that convinced major automakers to rethink the electric motor itself. Its core innovation is a patented dual-rotor motor architecture. In a traditional motor, a single rotor spins inside a fixed stator. DeepDrive's design spins both the internal and external rotor simultaneously, delivering higher torque density and substantially better efficiency. The practical outcome is compelling: EVs can achieve roughly 20% more range with 50% less motor weight, while reducing bill-of-materials costs. By 2026, DeepDrive has moved beyond impressive prototypes to industrialization. The company has reportedly secured series nominations with eight of the top ten global automakers for platform launches in 2028–2029. That level of OEM validation is rare at this stage and signals confidence in both the performance and manufacturability of the design. The company is now focused on building automated production lines in northern Munich to scale output for fleet testing and pre-series runs. A particularly strategic application is the in-wheel motor. Because the dual-rotor unit is compact and lightweight, it can fit inside the wheel hub, freeing up interior volume and enabling fully flat skateboard platforms. That creates new possibilities for autonomous shuttles and urban delivery vehicles where maximizing passenger or cargo space is paramount. It also allows for advanced vehicle dynamics such as torque vectoring without complex drivetrain components, improving both safety and handling. DeepDrive is a classic spin-out from the UnternehmerTUM ecosystem at TU Munich, with early validation support from the XPRENEURS incubator. Its investor base blends strategic automotive capital with deep-tech venture funding: Leitmotif led the Series B, BMW i Ventures provides rare early-stage OEM participation, Continental's corporate VC is a strategic partner for braking and chassis integration, and UVC Partners and Bayern Kapital anchor local support. In 2026, DeepDrive is one of Europe’s most promising hardware deep-tech bets: a motor breakthrough with clear OEM pull, manufacturability momentum, and the potential to reshape EV platform design.
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DeepL
DeepL is a Cologne-based AI translation company founded in 2017 by CEO Jarosław Kutylowski. Renowned for its neural machine translation quality, DeepL quickly surpassed competitors in accuracy and nuance. The company’s cloud platform serves over 100,000 business and government customers worldwide, including enterprises like Zendesk and Deutsche Bahn. DeepL achieved unicorn status in 2023 with a €1 billion valuation and continued to grow explosively – by early 2025 it had raised $410 million (led by investors like Index Ventures and Atomico) and reached a $2 billion valuation. In late 2025, reports emerged that DeepL is considering an IPO amid surging revenue, which doubled year-on-year to $185 million in 2024. DeepL’s core product is an AI-driven translator supporting 30+ languages, used for real-time document and content translation. The firm also launched DeepL Write to improve monolingual writing and an AI Agent to automate business tasks. As of 2025, DeepL is recognized as one of Europe’s premier AI startups, combining cutting-edge NLP research with a fast-growing SaaS business. The company’s success – valued at $2 billion and poised for a public offering – underscores Europe’s strength in deep-tech innovation.
