In recent years investors have been paying a lot of attention to Munich, which has emerged as a top hub for deeptech talent and startups. The Bavarian capital has also been given a leg up by a committed state government keen to make it the “California of Europe”. Startup lab UnternehmerTUM — which this year topped the Financial Times’ of leading European startup hubs — adds to its credentials.
Munich is home to major universities like the Technical University of Munich and local industrial giants like Siemens and BMW, which provide a ready customer base for young companies. Some of its most well-known companies include process-mining startup Celonis, HR tech Personio and AI battlefield software startup Helsing (which raised a whopping €450m in July).
But which companies in Munich are going to be next to grab the limelight? Investors from HV Capital, 10x Founders, Earlybird and UVC partners share their top picks that are not from their portfolios. (Spoiler: nearly all of them are AI solutions).
Anna Bosch, investor at b2venture
Augmented Industries
Augmented Industries offers an AI-powered training tool to upskill factory employees at scale. Its platform can create courses that mimic workflows on the factory floor and
convert existing documents into interactive learning sessions. This innovative approach can increase learning effectiveness in factories while significantly reducing training costs.
Atira
Atira (which doesn’t have a website at the moment) offers an AI-driven system that acts as a system of intelligence to streamline quoting processes and help manufacturing companies handle complex customer inquiries.. By automating repetitive tasks like analysing inquiries, standardising specifications and assessing feasibility, Atira enables faster, more scalable responses while allowing engineers to focus on high-value activities like R&D. With its deep product understanding and ability to autonomously manage sales cycles for specific product lines, Atira promises to simplify operations, enhance collaboration between sales and engineering and unlock opportunities in new markets.
Jan Reichelt, founding and general partner of 10x Founders
Datagon AI
Datagon AI is an AI platform that provides software for quality assurance to industrial customers. Its product, Qualitatio, uses production data to enhance product quality and can be integrated into any production process.
The company has raised funding from prominent angel investors, including Bastian Nominacher (cofounder of Celonis), Hanno Renner (cofounder of Personio) and Mehdi Ghissassi (former director and head of product at Google DeepMind).
Ecoplanet
Ecoplanet is a B2B energy management system which helps companies optimise their energy consumption. Its AI-powered platform identifies and recommends the most attractive energy procurement strategies to help companies save money and emissions. With rapid execution, Ecoplanet has built a client base spanning more than 800 locations, collectively managing more than 500 GWh of annual energy consumption.
Oliver Schoppe, principal at UVC Partners
Kalasar
Kalasar aims to fully automate customer success in B2B software, developing autonomous AI agents that guide users through their onboarding journey and provide live support tailored to the user’s specific needs.
Adoption and impact of B2B software in any company is tightly correlated with availability and quality of support during onboarding and thereafter: the core job of customer success teams.
Atmen
Atmen is building the industry standard of certifying carbon intensity of hydrogen, helping hydrogen producers to certify their green production, stay on top of regulation, optimise their operations and benefit from price premiums for certified green hydrogen.
Frederic Martin, associate at HV Capital
Trail
Trail has built an AI governance copilot that helps companies that build and deploy AI solutions to prepare and comply with regulation. As a result, Trail enables organisations to navigate upcoming regulation on AI, such as the EU AI Act, and its associated compliance requirements, something especially European organisations face.
Emidat
Emidat builds a climate-first intelligence system for the construction industry. The company starts with automating the costly generation and distribution of environmental product declarations (EPDs) for building material manufacturers in a faster and cost-efficient manner.
These EPDs are increasingly requested by construction companies to stay compliant with increasing regulation, such as the Construction Products Regulation (CPR).
Orbem
Orbem uses AI-powered MRI technology for scanning biological samples in the food, construction and medical industries. Its technology has been used to determine the sex of eggs; the culling of day-old male chicks has been banned in some EU countries and Orbem’s in-ovo sexing prevents this from happening.
Laurin Class, investment team at Earlybird VC
Cedar DB
Drawing from the team’s research conducted at TUM, Cedar DB aims to process both transactional and analytical requests in one combined data system. This will allow up-to-date data for real-time decisions at lower cost and complexity, freeing engineering teams of the struggles often associated with complex ETL pipelines.
SE3 Labs
SE3 Labs aims to bring spatial intelligence to applications and machines using digital twin technology. Its solution “Spatial GPT” can extract spatial information from 2D input data without the need to train capital-intensive and complex 3D foundation models. This opens interesting use cases from real estate and smart city planning to defence and robotics.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/munich-startups-to-watch/
