This article is a companion to our recently released ranking of German start-ups and expansion companies to watch for 2022. Take a full look at it here.
Continental Europe’s heavyweight player, German technology has long set the highest standards for neighboring ecosystems. Steady growth, sizeable outflows and sectoral diversity have made Germany an attractive destination for investor money, both domestic and, more recently, foreign.
The country already has 30 venture capital-backed unicorns, companies valued at more than $1 billion, including Personio, Celonis, Gorillas and Flink. And there is a remarkable fleet of fast-growing new players.
but 2022 has gone to a surprisingly slow start, with round sizes decreasing from early to late stages as investors say Some turbulence expected with rising interest rates and geopolitical concerns.
However, things could improve in the second quarter. Grover Y collided both pocketed some healthy checks in the last week, raising a $330 million Series C spread and a $111 Series B spread respectively, while Staffbase broke the $1 billion ceiling earlier last month. .
Among these exciting developments, we have ranked the startups we think will make moves in 2022, including some new faces, some rising stars and some heavy hitters.
? Check out the full ranking of German startups and scaleups to see
Startups debuting
MAY
Between the wave of digital health and the hype of express delivery, on-demand drug delivery service MAYD has amassed €45 million in funding and grown its team by 184% in just over six months. Founder Lukas Pieczonka previously launched McMakler, one of the best-funded startups on our list.
Helsing
With the endorsement of Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek, Helsing is an artificial intelligence and security company. focused on supporting modern democracies. With a strong founding team (CEO Torsten Reil previously founded the spin-off of Oxford NaturalMotion, later selling it for $527 million), it raised €103 million in its first year and ranked among the fastest growing companies in Germany.
1Komma5°
Hamburg-based 1Komma5° has capitalized on the heat wave of carbon-neutral homes, landing a €200m Series A from Eurazeo, Porsche Ventures, ECAPITAL, btov Partners and others. Co-Founder and CEO Philipp Schröder was a former country manager for Tesla in Germany and Austria, and is on the supervisory board of CAPinside.com.
Composable Finance
Berlin-based Composable Finance entered the crypto space with a $32 million Series A, the country’s largest crypto round to date, to further develop crypto technical stacks. Fourteen investors joined, including Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain Capital.
? Check out the full ranking of German startups and scaleups to see
rising stars
living money
In its second appearance in our German ranking, superwealth app Vivid Money is a competitive player in European fintech, having raised around €160 million since its last feature. Vivid is also included in our European financial technology ready.
playing field
Happily funded by its $150 million acquisition of Microsoft, Wunderlist’s founding team launched Pitch, a collaborative presentation software backed by Index Ventures, Lakestar, and Tiger Global, among others. Co-founder Charlotte Prévot was also featured in our list of women-led outlets.
Billie
B2B invoicing platform Billie has been growing steadily since its launch in 2016, attracting funding from Global Founders, Creandum, Tencent, Picus Capital, and Speedinvest, as well as Klarna. Its C series last October was the largest in the B2B buy now pay later space.
? Check out the full ranking of German startups and scaleups to see
Other familiar names in the ranking include Hy2Gen, Moonfare, Isar Aerospace, CoachHub, Getsafe and Taxdoo. The ranking does not include pre-seed and seed-stage companies, which we track for our professional reports. For in-depth research on the most exciting startups across European countries and sectors, visit our catalog of reports here.
Federico Scolari is an internal data reporter at Sifted.
