Welcome to
startuprad.io,
your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
startup scene with news, interviews, and
live events.
Hello and welcome everybody. Before we start,
one important note here. For this January-February
2026 briefing, we reviewed more than
15 thousand raw URLs. We
have been looking at funding news, investor updates, and
ecosystem reports across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
We are now deliberately omitting the vast majority
of them. Startup Radio now focuses on signal over
noise. We're not here to repeat every small seed
round, every accelerated press release, or every
incremental product update. We focus on structural
capital movements, sector shifts, institutional
participation, and companies that move the DACH
ecosystem forward. This format is now
the only highlights. We drop part 2 of
what we used to do in our news, the deep dive. We are here for
you to see the bigger picture. We may share some
of the content of the deep dive on our social media
channels. Um, note we are now only
active on LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and
YouTube. All other channels are on pause for now.
For now, you can expect one structured news wrap-up
with 5 to 10 news items each month with Chris and
me. We take a July and August break, meet again
in the very late August, do a summer wrap-up which
usually goes live sometime early September, and then
September through December, we stay with monthly news.
Around December 22nd, we close the year with our annual
fintech review, and we are adding quarterly
strategic reviews to provide you a product, capital, and sector
analysis. That's what I will do. We also filter
aggressive, so do you— don't have to. Now let's
have a look at what January and February are really telling us. Chris is
joining us not today, not from New York, but
from Washington, DC due to the State of the Union, right,
Chris? Yes, I'm in the capital. Hello, hello, hello,
hello. Let's dive in with the macro
view. January and February 2026 across the DACH
startup ecosystem— Germany, Austria, and Switzerland— reveal a
much clearer pattern of capital concentration
in enterprise artificial intelligence, sustainability,
compliance software, defense, and dual-use
technology. Think drones, robotics, and industrial automation,
and milestone-driven biotech with multiple
$100 million+ growth stage financing in
Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, and visible participation
from institutional lenders such as the European Investment
Bank, KfW, German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, and
major German commercial banks, signalizing a
selective normalization of growth stage venture capital rather
than broad-based early-stage exuberance. Beyond
the headline rounds, the structural sign is
the re-emergence of scale-stage financing in
sectors aligned with regulation, geopolitics, and
industrial modernization, including
AI-powered enterprise automation,
ESG/CSRD compliance platforms, unmanned systems and
security technology, modular robotics integration
into manufacturing lines, and clinical-stage life
science programs, while consumer applications,
speculative AI frontier narratives, and non-strategic
SaaS categories remain largely absent from major
DACH funding
announcements. And yes,
and, um, we also see, if we look a bit ahead at what
today's episode is going to bring you. Um, geographically, it's going to
be interesting because we see, well, Berlin is continuing its lead
in enterprise AI and applied software
scale-ups. We see that Munich is
reinforcing their strengths in robotics, defense tech, deep tech
hardware innovation. Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of
Germany, have more and more visibility in compliance and industrial software as
a service. And Heidelberg, also in that region,
remains relevant in life sciences. It's a um, it's
a beacon for German cancer research as well.
So what we see here is that Germany and the
whole DACH region is really one with a
regional specialization, and those patterns really show us
that Germany is different from other
startup ecosystems in Europe that are much more
centralized. We see institutional,
co-investor visibility in January and February, particularly
through EIB-backed financing structures and
bank participation. That overall indicates a recalibration of
perceived risk in strategic industries, suggesting that
public capital alignment with venture-backed companies is
increasing in defense, security, industrial
modernization categories. All overall showing broader EU policy
priorities. So it's long discussions we see in politics as
a whole, um, especially since the bigger Ukraine
war started. Taken together, first two months of 2026, January and
February, now we see, uh, expansion and growth state venture capital
across the DACH region. So DACH, always Deutschland, Austria,
Switzerland, we always say it. Um, capital is available for
companies with revenue clarity and
regulatory tailwinds, defensible industrial positioning and
institutional credibility, but constrained for speculative,
consumer-facing, or non-strategic categories. What this all means,
um, we will see. So if we are looking
for a headline for the past 2 months, then it is
a disciplined expansion. Okay.
Not hype, not freeze, just discipline.
Um, this episode is supported by our partners. If
you want direct access to founders, investors, and innovation
leaders across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland,
visit startuprade.io/become-a-partner. The top signal of Sapiens: 100
million series C round, making it a unicorn in
Mannheim. We may add that Mannheim has been
very important for German, uh, for the German industry in
the past. Not only is it the place very close
by where Carl Benz invented the car, but it was also
the place where the first electric elevator was working
here in Germany. And I spent once there
some time visiting all their entrepreneurship centers,
each one focused on a different, on a
different, um, industry, different vertical, and they are very interesting. And I do
believe they have 9 of them right now. So
let's go to Mannheim, or as
they locally say, Mannheim. Based on Sapiens, secured
a $100 million US dollar Series C funding round
led by Decarbonization Partners, a joint venture
between BlackRock and Temasek, the sovereign wealth fund
of Singapore, reaching unicorn valuation and
positioning sustainability compliance ESG reporting, supply chain
due diligence, and
CSRD-aligned regulatory software as a core enterprise infrastructure
within Germany and across Europe. And CSRD
is Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, of course, from the
European Union. This financing signals that
EU regulatory pressure, including CSRD
requirements and supply chain transparency
mandates, is transforming compliance obligations into
recurring SaaS revenue models, with global institutional
investors backing German compliance technology
as durable enterprise infrastructure rather
than thematic climate exposure. Yeah, so we definitely
see that climate— climate compliance— because you
just said climate compliance used to be a topic that was a bit
like overheard and overlooked, but now I
guess following rules is one of the core strengths of the Germans, I
guess. So now we see it
here. Exactly, that's a competitive mode. Yeah, and a
company like BlackRock definitely legitimizes the
whole category. Uh, signal number 2, Parloa. It's a Berlin-based
company that raised $350 million in a Series D, now standing
at a $3 billion valuation, to scale
enterprise AI agents embedded in contact center
workflows, cost customer relationship management systems and customer support automation
platforms, all these things,
positioning Applied AI as something that they claim
is procurement-ready enterprise infrastructure, helping to
improve ROI and
revenue expansion dynamics. Overall, we see that the company
apparently is pretty promising, and because this whole
round demonstrates that Applied AI integrated
into enterprise software, um, is fundable
at big rounds. And, um, yeah,
showing that deployment depth and operational efficiency, what if you
can prove them, and if you can prove that there are actually gains,
can also mean huge success for your startup. And we
also see that Berlin
is a Yeah, is a, is a
main hub in Europe for AI
tech like this. This isn't really a speculative AI
narrative anymore. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, yeah, this is already like operational.
It does exist. And yeah, yeah. Let me
take over the next big funding. Quantum
Systems, $150 million institutional financing in the Munich
area. Defense and dual-use technology company Quantum
Systems secured over $150 €1
billion, uh, European financing package backed by the European
Investment Bank, Commerzbank, KfW, and Deutsche
Bank, highlighting increasing alignment between venture-backed deep tech
companies and public institutional capital in
unmanned aerial systems and security infrastructure. I think
everybody knows why. Um, the financing reflects geopolitical
realignment and EU security funding priorities,
signaling that defense-adjacent startups and DACH
are transitioning from politically sensitive
ventures to strategically supported industrial
players, with institutional lenders reducing perceived
risk and enabling stage expansion. Yeah, we see
it over and over, defense tech becoming something more normal,
something that makes money, something that becomes more and more important
in especially the dual-use cases.
Yeah, uh, yes. In startup culture as well as in
general industry everywhere. RobCo, Munich-based, a
Munich-based company in robotics, raised $100 million
in the Series C funding. They are, they
also want to expand AI tech, in this
case modular AI-driven industrial automation
systems for manufacturing environments. So they say, well,
we can combine robotic hardware with
software orchestration, all of it tailored to what is a strength
of German industry or German companies, basically the industrial base
and like Mittelstand there, so the medium-sized companies
for whom Germany is famous for. Um, we also see
that this round for RobCo, as I said, based in Munich, is
kind of reinforcing Bavaria's position as a robotics and
advanced manufacturing hub, showing that physical
automation integrated into production lines is a venture category
in Germany that stays important. And especially
when you can align this with industrial
modernization, long-term enterprise contracts. I mean, it all goes to
the strengths of German
engineering. The software meets the factory
floor. I see. I think it's called Exiva.
Uh, €51 million funding biotech
in Berlin. Heidelberg-based biotech company Exiva raised €51 million
in a Series B funding— €51 million, by the way.
Um, and I've also seen this that you just talked about, and I had €85
million in the back of my mind. Yes, €85
million, $100 million. So, um, that's, that's
not a one-on-one relation anymore. Um, let's go back
to the news. Heidelberg-based biotech company Exiva
raised €51 million in Series B financing
co-led by GM,
GIMV, and EQ2. T Life Science—
sorry— to advance Deraphan,
a treatment targeting agitation in Alzheimer's
disease, reinforcing Germany's continued relevance in
clinical-stage biotech and neuroscience research
within the startup ecosystem. The findings also
signal that European biotech capital remains available
for programs with credible clinical milestones
experienced syndicates, and defined regulatory pathways,
underscoring that life science financing in Germany is
milestone-driven rather than hype-driven. Before
we move into implications for founders and investors, a short message
from our partners. If you would like to be
here, visit startuprate.io/become-a-partner. January and February show
selective growth stage confidence in the
DACH startup ecosystem. Yes, we see that in
enterprise AI, compliance infrastructure, as we said, defense tech,
robotics, and biotech. And that means, yeah, I would
say for startups, built with regulation,
procurement complexity, and geopolitical priorities
create a durable tailwind. Yeah, and for
investors, not just for the startups, we see that like
sector conviction is beating a broad exposure in
this phase. And for the innovation leaders, the
sectors define broad-level discussions in 2026. For all of
this, we've reviewed over 15,000
raw news links. Yeah, and these are the structural signals we can
condense for you. These were the highlights January, February 2026.
Thanks for listening. Thanks guys. Have a
good day. Bye-bye. Folks. Find more
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