From recycling batteries to fusion energy, these German start-ups are capitalising on emerging tech to make their mark.
As a country, Germany is a powerhouse when it comes to its tech ecosystem and has attracted major investments from Nokia, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services in the last year alone.
In March, we zoomed in on Berlin, already home to Revolut rival N26, fashion-tech company Zalando and food delivery company Delivery Hero. There, we found impressive start-ups making a name for themselves in areas such as renewable energy and data management.
Now, we turn to another major German city, Munich to check out the start-ups it has to offer. The capital of Bavaria in Germany is possibly best known as the home of Oktoberfest but it is also where telecom giant Siemens has its global headquarters.
Infineon Technologies, Germany’s largest semiconductor manufacturer is headquartered in Neubiberg, not far from the city.
AIAnd HR tech success story Personio, which had reached an $8.5bn valuation following a $200m fundraise in 2022, is also headquartered in Munich.
With this in mind, we took a closer look at five of the city’s promising start-ups to highlight some of Munich’s most exciting innovations.
Avelios Medical
Founded in 2020, Avelios Medical provides hospital information systems that aims to cover the full scope of operations, from treatment documentation and administrative processes to a patient portal.
The company was founded by Christian Albrecht, Nicolas Jakob and Dr Sebastian Krammer after they witnessed outdated systems slow down care during Covid-19. Earlier this year, the company scored €30m in a Series A funding round.
Ocell
Climate data start-up Ocell is creating digital twins of forest using aerial imagery, LiDAR, terrestrial forestry data and artificial intelligence (AI) in order to create data-driven carbon credits.
The green-tech company was founded in 2019 by David Dohmen, Christian Decher and Felix Horvat, all engineers from Technical University in Munich. At the start of this year, Ocell secured €10m to scale its AI tech and expand across Europe.
Proxima Fusion
Deep-tech start-up Proxima Fusion is the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, having been created in 2023 with the goal of putting fusion energy on the grid.
The company is designing and building stellarator fusion power plants. Stellarators are machines that use magnetic fields to confine plasma. In April 2024, Proxima Fusion raised €20m in seed funding and later scored €2.5m from the European Innovation Council and €6.5m from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research .
Tozero
Founded by Sarah Fleischer and Dr Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, Tozero aims to close the loop of lithium-ion batteries and reduce toxic waste by returning the raw materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel back into the market.
Founded in 2022, the battery recycling start-up raised €11m at the end of last year, which it plans to use to establish its first industrial plant to process up to 30,000 tonnes of battery waste annually by 2026.
VoiceLine
AI start-up VoiceLine was founded in 2020 by Nicolas Höflinger, Sebastian Pinkas and Nicolas Kübler to make salespeople’s jobs easier with automation.
The company’s platform automatically transcribes and analyses conversations. The information recorded is then used to generate automated follow-up actions. Last August, the VoiceLine secured €2.4m, bringing its total funding raised to €4.2m
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