German AI Startup Landscape (2021)
The fourth annual AI Startup Landscape

The ‘German AI Startup Landscape 2021’ edition shows the growing momentum of the German AI scene with 278 listed AI start-ups (up 12% on the previous year).

Oct 21, 2021

appliedAI publishes the annual “German AI Startup Landscape” to highlight AI startups in Germany, promote the use of AI, and create more opportunities for partnerships between startups and companies. Together with our more than 40 partners from academia, government, and industry, we want to create an ecosystem in which AI startups can thrive and help shape the future of AI for the benefit of society. Our central database of high-quality AI start-ups gives corporations and SMEs easier access to AI partners they can trust. The data collected this year shows that the AI scene in this country is maturing and that well-known start-ups are increasingly establishing themselves on the market.

Together with NVIDIA, Google, AWS and nine venture capital firms (Digital+ Partner, Earlybird Kapital, eCAPITAL, High-Tech Gründerfonds, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Lakestar, UVC, La Famiglia and Asgard), we examined more than 1,000 start-ups (see below for details on the methodology). All start-ups were founded after 2011 and have a business model based on machine learning. The start-ups were founded in Germany or conduct their main business activities in Germany.

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Download the high-resolution overview of the AI Startup Landscape 2021 here: 

Aai German startup landscape 2021 2023 06 27 105936 aztt pdf 2.339 MB

Methodology

The AI start-ups included in the landscape are private companies founded after 2009 that have their headquarters or central development activities in Germany. They focus on machine learning (ML) or make significant use of ML. The selection process can be summarised as follows:

  • The start-ups are compiled from various public (e.g. Crunchbase, LinkedIn) and private (VC network) sources to create a comprehensive long list.
  • The start-ups are evaluated based on data, talent, AI methods, scalability and overall quality, and then clustered (see logic for clustering).
  • The start-ups are first evaluated by our AI engineers and strategists (‘valid’, ‘rising’, “longlist” and ‘rejected’) to create a shortlist.
  • The shortlist is independently evaluated and assessed by our contributors (jury consisting of Digital+ Partners, Earlybird Capital, eCAPITAL, Google, High-Tech Gründerfonds, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Lakestar, NVIDIA, Speedinvest and Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners). The feedback is synthesised and the final result is visualised.

Clustering logic

The logic for clustering is based on Shivon Zilis' Landscape for Machine Intelligence. It is developed from the perspective of companies that want to use AI in their business:

  • Enterprise Functions: Increase the productivity of existing tasks – support your employees with ready-to-use, AI-enabled tools that make their daily work easier and thus increase productivity.
  • Enterprise Intelligence: Utilise new data sources – gain new insights that were previously too difficult or too expensive to obtain using conventional methods.
  • Technology Type: Build products with ML – give developers the tools they need to create and use machine learning software and gain a competitive advantage.
  • Industries: Utilise AI-first products – utilise and collaborate with start-ups that offer industry-specific products and services using machine learning.

Growth AI Startup Landscape 2021

The German AI Startup Landscape 2021 includes 278 startups, which is 12% more than last year. Of the 247 startups in the 2020 landscape, 195 remain on the list and 83 new startups have been added. Of the 52 companies that are no longer on the list, 12% have been acquired, 40% are in liquidation, 29% have relocated their product or company, and 12% had to be removed because they are now more than 10 years old.

Location

2021 German Landscape Graph Location 2 2023 06 27 172109 dhyd

Facts and figures

As in previous editions, Berlin and Munich continue to dominate the German AI start-up landscape. The two cities are home to almost 63% of German AI start-ups. Berlin has gained a further 3% of the landscape this year and dominates as the German city with the largest number of start-ups. While Berlin leads in terms of the number of start-ups, Munich continues to lead in terms of the average amount of funding that start-ups receive.

Funding

2021 German Landscape Graph Funding 3 2023 06 27 172136 hufx

Facts and figures

The financing analysis shows that it takes 5 to 7 years for a German start-up to receive more than EUR 50 million in financing. For more than EUR 10 million, it takes at least 2 years. Currently, around 60% of AI-focused start-ups in Germany have investment rounds of more than EUR 1 million.

Sector

2021 German Landscape Graph Enterprise Function 5 2023 06 27 172222 osux

Facts and figures

Among companies with an industry focus, we are seeing dominance and continuous growth of AI start-ups in the following key German industries this year: manufacturing, transport and mobility, and healthcare.

2021 German Landscape Graph Industry 4 2023 06 27 172238 qnjs

In the enterprise function sector, German start-ups are more active in areas such as marketing, customer service, and IT & security.

 

Contributors

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.