German innovations are not narrow to the country’s capital. In fact, some of this year’s most prolific startups are based hundreds of miles away. The AI startup Alpha Alpha comes from Heidelberg. Helsing, a company that sells artificial intelligence to European armed forces, was founded in Munich. However, both companies have offices in Berlin. The city attracts too much talent to ignore. Universities such as TU Berlin, burn out The founders and capital of generative AI are such a magnet for international talent that many offices operate in English rather than German.
It’s also a very youthful city – half of its inhabitants are under 45, notes Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, who grew up in Berlin. “I founded my last startup in 2009 and I remember clearly how much energy, time and focus it took – having a large population of younger, diverse, international and highly motivated professionals whose energy and hunger give Berlin an edge,” he says. “Plus, Berlin has the best döner kebab.”
Blue layer
By 2050, the carbon credit market is expected to be: 250 billion dollars industry. Startup BlueLayer takes care of this development by developing tailor-made software for companies and non-governmental organizations that can benefit from it. Its clients – including conservationists such as Permian Global – implement projects ranging from reforestation to direct air capture, and exploit the startup’s software to process their data and communicate with buyers and investors, while helping lenders in verifying their loans in international registers. Launched in 2022, BlueLayer has raised $10 million (€8.9 million) in investment and counts three of the world’s 10 largest credit issuers among its clients. “It’s classic automation software,” says Vivian Bertseka, one of BlueLayer’s three co-founders along with Alexander Argyros and Gerardo Bonilla, “but for an industry that previously operated almost exclusively in Excel.” bluelayer.io
Cambrium
Cambrium, founded in 2020 by Mitchell Duffy and Charlie Cotton, uses artificial intelligence to design proteins such as collagen. Instead of obtaining them from animal products, the startup grows them in tanks. “We are among the companies that are trying to meet the demands of hardcore software engineering [and AI] with putting physical things in the real world,” Cotton says. So far, the company has received investments worth $11.6 million (10.3 million euros), including from Google’s AI venture fund Gradient Ventures. Skin care products using the first Cambrium protein, a collagen called NovaColl, are expected to hit shelves later this year. Cambrium.bio
Jin AI
End
Endel is a paid app that uses generative artificial intelligence to create one endless piece of music that constantly adapts to the user’s surroundings. The app uses the phone’s accelerometers to generate a rhythm that synchronizes with listeners’ steps. If they start running or jumping, the pace increases. Calling itself a “sound wellness” startup, Endel is part of the functional sound trend, where music has a purpose – to facilitate people exercise, fall asleep or focus. “We want to create a technology that harnesses the power of sound and helps achieve a specific cognitive state,” says CEO Oleg Stavitsky, one of Endel’s six co-founders. Founded in 2018, the company has since raised $22.1 million (€19.1 million), including from Amazon’s Alexa venture fund, and benefits from one million monthly vigorous users. In 2023, the company entered into an agreement with Universal Music Group to exploit their technology to create modern “soundscapes” using works by renowned artists. endel.io
Kill
This emperor
Ovom Care is a fertility startup that uses data and machine learning to take the guesswork out of reproductive medicine. Since founding the company in 2023, co-founders Felicia von Reden, Cristina Hickman and Lynae Brayboy have opened the company’s first infertility clinic in London – bypassing the cumbersome regulatory process in Germany – and say they have already treated hundreds of people. In addition to the physical clinic, patient app and clinic management system, Ovom also offers machine learning algorithms that analyze patients’ blood tests, data from wearable devices, gamete analysis and ultrasound images to adjust the type and duration of treatment. “We are now entering the era of precision medicine,” says CEO von Reden. “We tailor-made [fertility] using technology.” The idea attracted 4.8 million euros ($5.3 million) in seed funding led by Alpha Intelligence Capital. Over the next year, the company plans to attract medical tourists from all over Europe to its second clinic in Portugal, where treatment costs are expected to be cheaper. ovomcare.com
Dryad
When Carsten Brinkschulte’s daughter began protesting against climate change in 2018, the serial telecommunications entrepreneur began to wonder how he could exploit his experience to benefit the planet. As a result, a start-up called Dryad was established in 2020 to create an early fire detection network. “Think of us as the Vodafone of the forest,” says Brinkschulte, one of the company’s seven co-founders. Dryad’s solar-powered mesh networks allow sensors to send alerts when a fire is detected, even in remote areas where there is no signal. To date, the company has sold 20,000 fire detectors and related equipment to 50 countries around the world, from Canada to Thailand, and to customers ranging from local governments to utilities looking to protect their infrastructure from the inferno. Dryad has raised 22 million euros ($24.6 million) so far, including from German deep tech fund eCAPITAL. dryad.net
UltiHash
The development of energy-hungry artificial intelligence has prompted the International Energy Agency to warn that the electricity consumed by data centers could cause it double in just two years. As environmental groups discuss risks technology poses to the climate, startup Ultihash is developing a practical way to reduce the data center needs of companies running energy-intensive machine learning or training their own models. Founded in 2022, Ultihash has developed an algorithm that CEO and co-founder Tom Lüdersdorf says can reduce companies’ data storage needs by up to 60 percent, meaning they need less data center space and reduce their carbon footprint. The company raised $2.5 million (€2.2 million) despite still operating in stealth mode. Lüdersdorf plans to launch the product later this year, after beta testing in over 300 companies. ultihash.io
Blood
According to TheBlood co-founders Isabelle Guenou and Miriam Santer, menstrual blood is an underappreciated diagnostic tool because it contains data-rich endometrial tissue, living cells, immune cells and proteins that are not found in regular blood. The two founded the company in 2022 with the goal of using menstrual blood to fill the gender data gap in healthcare. The company has since analyzed more than 1,000 menstrual blood samples, selling test kits ranging from 35 euros ($39) to 120 euros ($133) to women looking for more data for fertility or endometriosis treatments. TheBlood also plans to license biomarker analysis or data sets to pharmaceutical companies. The company has raised a total of €1 million ($1.1 million) so far, including from healthcare company ROX Health. theblood.io
Qdrant
To create generative AI, algorithms must infer relationships between data – text, images or audio – that are not labeled or organized. This is where so-called vector databases come in handy, helping developers expand LLM’s long-term memory, making it easier for these models to search and analyze huge amounts of data while lowering computational costs. Launched in 2021 by co-founders André Zayarni and Fabrizio Schmidt, Qdrant serves AI software developers by offering a vector search engine and database for unstructured data with an easy-to-use API. Over the past three years, the company has achieved 7 million downloads and 10,000 users worldwide, raising $37 million (€33.2 million), including from US venture capital firm Spark Capital. qdrant.tech
This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of WIRED UK.