German AI Startup Landscape (2018)
The first annual AI Startup Landscape

Why we have built a start-up landscape

Start-ups are the engine of innovation. They reflect a country's innovative strength and ultimately determine the next generation of market leaders. While the United States, China, Israel and other countries actively promote and advance their ecosystems in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), German start-ups focusing on AI are hardly known.

This lack of recognition not only prevents the emergence of internationally active companies in this field, which provide the jobs of the future, but also damages the innovative strength of established companies. Our mission is to catapult Germany into the AI age. That is why one of our tasks is to provide guidance to companies and a visible platform for promising start-ups. This benefits both parties.

In the field of AI, countless use cases require partnerships between young, innovative and established companies. There are several reasons why collaboration between start-ups and mature companies is the best option – not only for both parties, but for the economy as a whole. Firstly, the technology is developing at an astonishing rate. That's why you have to dedicate yourself to a specific technology in order to stay at the cutting edge. While almost all companies need a wide range of AI solutions, start-ups focus on a specific niche. They offer the necessary solutions with the latest technology. Secondly, AI systems are more powerful with more data and applications.

In non-competitive use cases, technology from start-ups that supply many companies therefore tends to perform better than an isolated solution for a specific application in one company. Thirdly, AI is a fundamentally challenging task. It is also implemented against a backdrop of rapidly developing new roles, adapting processes, collecting data, hiring new talent and working in agile environments. Partnering with start-ups helps companies offload some of these challenges. This allows them to focus on value creation.

Below, we will publish new insights into the German AI start-up landscape to help you get started with this technology and, at the same time, support our start-ups in gaining a foothold.

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Download the high-resolution overview of the AI Startup Landscape 2022 here: 

Location

Facts and figures

A few geographical hubs dominate the scene, with Berlin (51, or 38.6%), Munich (31, or 23.5%) and Hamburg (9, or 6.8%) accounting for a total of 68.9% of all German AI start-ups and controlling 88% of the total financing volume in Germany.

Funding

Facts and figures

The top 10 German AI start-ups in terms of financing control EUR 698.4 million (86.9%) of the total financing volume, with Kreditech alone accounting for EUR 429.6 million (53%). In addition, only 51 (38.6%) were financed in general. The number of start-ups founded per year has risen significantly, especially in the last three years (2015 to 2017).

Industries

Facts and figures

The majority of start-ups (59.1%) operate across multiple sectors (clusters ‘Enterprise Functions’, ‘Enterprise Intelligence’ and ‘AI Technology Stack’). In terms of the sector-specific landscape, healthcare & pharmaceuticals (7.6%), transport & mobility (6.1%) and retail (6.1%) dominate in terms of numbers.

Rights & permission to use

We consider it our duty to pass on this information. Feel free to use this landscape as part of a presentation, lecture or project. This is permitted and encouraged, as long as you always use the visual representation and refer to us accordingly. If you change anything in our landscape, you must mark this as your own modification. The content of this landscape is published under the CC-BY 4.0 licence.