From my home base in Berlin, I’ve been keeping an eye on what’s going on with deal flow in Germany. And in the last week or so, I’ve noticed a seemingly big uptick in German startup funding announcements.
Last week, there were 14 German startup deals announced, according to data compiled by Sifted. It’s been a strongish month so far, with 29 deals announced — compared to 42 during a slower February and 52 in January, by Sifted’s calculations (our Sifted Pro deals newsletter recently pointed to a rise in Germany’s deal activity). Some of those recent deal announcements include Berlin-based restaurant app NeoTaste, Paderborn-based enterprise sales data platform acto, Munich-based data product management tool Mindfuel last week and Berlin-based EV charging infrastructure startup Enapi earlier this week.
But considering European tech’s general struggles in the last year, and with Germany’s economy continuing to lag, I'm curious if this is a false start, or if dealmaking in the country is meaningfully heating up.
“I definitely think there's more activity than in the previous months,” says Anton Waitz, general partner at Berlin-based Project A, which recently invested in both Mindfuel and Enapi. He adds that the firm is seeing a lot of good activity in the pre-seed and seed stages, where it focuses.
In particular, Waitz singles out climate and defence tech as two big areas of interest among German entrepreneurs, describing energy as “extremely busy” in Germany. For one, Frankfurt-based solar startup Enviria received a $200m cheque from BlackRock last month. Project A has also been a vocal proponent of defence tech among VCs and investors are becoming increasingly interested in the sector — although LPs are still holding back, as Sifted has reported.
Meanwhile, emerging startup hubs like Munich have recently drawn more attention, particularly for deeptech startups.
It’s still very early in the year to make any grand predictions about Germany’s startup scene. Waitz does point out that Project A is seeing some notable Series A and B rounds happening — Berlin-based green energy renovation startup Fuchs & Eule just announced its Series A this week — which gives confidence to investors earlier in the cycle that there will be follow-on funding available for their better-performing companies down the line. “I wouldn't say everything is great again, that the party is on again, but I definitely see signals of recovery,” he says. “I'm confident; we're pretty happy with our deal flow in Germany.”
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