Challenges and setbacks in Germany’s startup scene in 2023 have not deterred Germany-based startups from continuing to push forward in their respective industries to keep the country’s startup economy flourishing.
As of early 2024, Germany hosts over 30 unicorns and 20,000 startups that employ more than 620,000 individuals. Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich are renowned not only for being some of the EU’s financial hotspots but also as hosts to some of the most prominent German startups.
The German government is also credited for showing wholehearted support to the country’s startup ecosystem development via networks of grants and support programs for early-stage ventures.
As the second quarter of 2024 is starting soon, let’s take a look at some notable funding rounds in Germany in the first quarter.
Enpal
Founder(s): Mario Kohle, Viktor Wingert, Jochen Ziervogel
Founded in: 2017
Funding: €1B
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
Greentech unicorn Enpal has successfully bagged high-profile refinancing commitments of more than €1B in late March 2024 from Barclays Europe, Bank of America and Credit Agricole CIB worth two ABS warehousing facilities and €118 million debt commitments from CPP Investments.
With this late March refinancing commitment, the unicorn currently bags over €3.6B since raising over €400M in June 2023.
Considering Germany’s status as one of the most consumptive European countries in terms of energy consumption, Enpal emerged as a robust solution to supply sustainable renewable energy solutions for German households.
Solar systems, energy storage systems, EV-charging stations, energy management platforms and heat pumps make up the bulk of the unicorn’s products that offer system performance optimisation and the ability for long-term financial savings thanks to efficient energy consumption.
Sunfire
Founder(s): Carl Berninghausen, Nils Aldag and Christian von Olshausen
Founded in: 2010
Funding: €515M
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
German-based electrolyser manufacturing company, Sunfire, secured more than €500M in funding in March.
In a Series E equity financing round,the company raised €215 million. New investors such as LGT Private Banking, GIC, Ahren Innovation Capital, and Carbon Equity participated in this round. The transaction is pending customary regulatory approvals and is anticipated to conclude in the second quarter of 2024.
Additionally, a term loan of up to €100M was secured from the European Investment Bank (EIB) with approximately €200M from previously approved but unused grant funding.
The company plans to use the funds to expedite the growth and industrialisation of its green hydrogen technologies.
ENVIRIA
Founder(s): Melchior Schulze Brock
Founded in: 2017
Funding: €185M
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here
Frankfurt-based ENVIRIA concluded in February 2024 an equity investment of over €185M from BlackRock via its Global Renewable Power IV (GRP IV) fund. With this investment, ENVIRIA will expand its existing 500 C&I solar projects across Germany.
ENVIRIA focuses on decentralised energy distribution via rooftop solar and aligning services to help German companies gain access to renewable energy.
Since only 10 per cent of company roofs are equipped with solar panels, ENVIRIA tries to close that gap by issuing solar-panel-fitted company roofs for the maximum energy transition process.
Several investors including Galileo Green Energy, Redalpine, Alter Equity and BNP Paribas Développement are attributed to ENVIRIA’s success in building a portfolio of 500 C&I solar projects across Germany.
Pliant
Founder(s): Fabian Terner, Malte Rau
Founded in: 2020
Funding: €100M
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
First established in 2020, Pliant is a credit card payment service startup. The company offers fully digital card management with accounting software integrations.
The Berlin-based startup secured a €100M debt facility via Varengold Bank in January. The fund will be used to expand its market coverage across 25 European Economic Area member states covering 11 different currencies.
Pliant sets itself apart from similar services with its ability to issue physical and virtual credit cards, automate payment processing, and track financial spending in just one app.
Mondu
Founder(s): Malte Huffmann, Philipp Povel, Gil Danziger
Founded in: 2021
Funding: €30M
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here
B2B payment software solution Mondu was first established in 2021 to help users get efficient and flexible ways to pay with a buy now, pay later payment scheme.
Mondu’s success has attracted the attention of several investors, such as German bank Vereinigte Volksbank Raiffeisenbank (VVRB), which secured €30M in debt financing in January.
Mondu has now successfully raised €83M in total funding to provide the best payment services for B2B marketplaces and merchants to sustain their business growth.
Qdrant
Founder(s): Andre Zayarni, Andrey Vasnetsov
Founded in: 2021
Funding: €25.7M
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
Berlin-based Qdrant is one of the industry-leading startups seeking to develop next-generation AI solutions using an open-source vector search engine and database. With its API service product, Qdrant users can search for nearby high-dimensional vectors automatically.
In January 2024, Qdrant raised €25.7M in a Series A funding round by Spark Capital. Since its founding in 2021, Qdrant has raised €34M to develop the database with high-profile clients such as Elon Musk’s Grok.
Qdrant’s latest breakthrough technology is the binary quantisation (BQ) super-effective compression technology that promotes low-latency, high-throughput indexing. With this, memory consumption can be reduced by 32 times, and retrieval speeds can be accelerated by 40 times.
Monite
Founder(s): Ivan Maryasin, Andrey Korchak
Founded in: 2020
Funding: $6M (€5.5M)
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
With its success in raising $6M (€5.5M) in a seed top-up round co-led by Valar Ventures and Third Prime in February, fintech Monite is set to continue scaling up its management and product types in the process to reach new markets.
First established in 2020, Monite focuses on one thing – helping various B2B platforms such as banks and payment providers embed the often time-consuming financial workflows. To help these platforms, Monite uses APIs and SDKs that can speed up the financial workflow process from a maximum of two years to just four or five weeks.
So far, Monite has helped 28 clients across the EU, US and other regions as it focuses on expanding its financial services.
deeploi
Founder(s): Julian Lübke, Philipp Hoffmann
Founded in: 2023
Funding: $6.5 (€6M)
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
With a focus on empowering SMEs with smarter and more reliable IT management tools, Berlin-based deeploi raised $6.5 (€6M) in January 2024 through a seed funding round.
Prominent VC Atomico led the round with participation from investor Cherry Ventures, a sign of deeploi’s impressive growth since its €3 million pre-seed round in 2023.
Founders Julian Lübke and Philipp Hoffman founded deeploi as SMEs are under threat of cyber-attacks and data breaches that could result in incalculable financial losses for all SMEs.
To do so, deeploi creates an IT admin platform for non-IT experts within SMEs who are responsible for managing the IT infrastructure of their respective businesses.
Yendou
Founder(s): Zina Sarif, Patrick Rogg
Founded in: 2021
Funding: $1.3M (€1.2M)
Hiring: Yes, check job opportunities here.
Berlin-based startup Yendou bagged $1.3M (€1.2M) in pre-seed funding in February to enhance the capabilities of its clinical automation platform for pharma and biotech companies.
Yendou emerged as a solution to accelerate the process of creating new drugs, which typically requires a development time of 10 to 15 years and a financial outlay of €1.8B. Calling itself a “Salesforce” for R&D teams in life sciences, Yendou created a knowledge automation platform to help healthcare researchers conduct clinical trials faster.
Yendou’s health technology breakthrough has attracted the attention of a number of well-known investors such as b2venture, Heartfelt, Infinita Fund and individual investors such as Lindus Health startup founder Meri Beckwith.
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