Berlin’s hottest startups in 2024

The German innovation is is not limited to the capital of the country. In fact, some of this year’s most prolific startups are based hundreds of kilometers away. AI startup Alpha Alpha hails from Heidelberg. Helsing, which sells AI to European militaries, was founded in Munich. However, both companies have offices in Berlin. The city attracts too much talent to be ignored. Universities such as TU Berlin produce generative AI founders, and the capital is such a magnet for international talent that many offices operate in English rather than German.

It’s also a very young city – half its population is under 45, something noted by Thomas Domke, 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 required – having a large population of younger, diverse and international and highly motivated professionals who have that energy and hunger gives Berlin an edge,” he says. “Also, Berlin has the best düner kebab.”

BlueLayer

By 2050 the carbon credit market is expected to be a $250 billion industry. Startup BlueLayer caters to this growth by developing custom software for companies and NGOs ready to take advantage. Its clients — including environmentalists like Permian Global — manage projects ranging from reforestation to direct air capture, and use the startup’s software to process their data and communicate with buyers and investors, while helping credit providers verify its credits in international registries. Launched in 2022, BlueLayer has raised $10 million (€8.9 million) in investment and counts three of the top 10 global credit issuers among its clients. “It’s classic automation software,” says Vivian Berzeca, one of BlueLayer’s three co-founders along with Alexander Argyros and Gerardo Bonilla, “but for an industry that worked almost exclusively with Excel.” bluelayer.io

Cambrian

Cambrium, founded in 2020 by Mitchell Duffy and Charlie Cotton, uses AI to engineer proteins like collagen. Instead of sourcing them from animal products, the startup grows them in tanks. “We’re one of the companies trying to embrace hardcore software engineering [and AI] by putting physical things in the real world,” says Cotton. The company has received $11.6 million (€10.3 million) in investment so far, including from Google’s venture intelligence fund Gradient Ventures. Skin care products using Cambrium’s first collagen protein, called NovaColl, are expected to hit shelves later this year. Cambrium.bio

Gina AI

In 2020 three veterans from Chinese tech giant Tencent joined forces to create base models specifically for search. Drawn to Berlin by the city’s open source culture and software engineering talent, the trio behind Jina now has 9,000 users and 400 paying customers who turn to the company when they want to build a public or internal search system for their data. Jina’s models promise to convert PDF files, Word documents or images into a language that AI models can understand well enough to enable intuitive Google-style searching. A law firm may no longer need to search for documents using a case number. Instead, Jina AI CEO and co-founder Han Xiao explains that they could simply ask, “Find the case where Microsoft loses to Google.” After raising $39 million (€34.8 million) from a series of early-stage venture funds, including Canaan Partners, Xiao and his co-founders Nan Wang and Bing He plan to expand into the US, increase the company’s $500,000 in revenue (€447,000) per year and increase the number of users. “We want to compete with OpenAI,” says Xiao. jina.ai

Endel

Endel is a paid app that uses generative AI to create an infinite piece of music that constantly adapts to its surroundings. The app uses the phone’s accelerometers to generate a beat that syncs with the listeners’ footsteps. If they start running or skipping, the pace catches up. Calling itself a “wellness with sound” startup, Endel is part of the functional sound trend, where music has a purpose—to help people exercise, sleep, or focus. “We want to create a technology that uses sound volume and helps you achieve a certain cognitive state,” says CEO Oleg Stavitsky, one of Endel’s six co-founders. Launched in 2018, the company has since raised $22.1 million (€19.1 million) in funding, including from Amazon’s Alexa venture fund, and has 1 million monthly active users. In 2023 the company struck a deal with Universal Music Group to use its technology to create new “soundscapes” using the work of established artists. endel.io

Kill

To understand Slay’s success, credit must go to Pengu, the company’s virtual pet app, which has become the startup’s most popular product with more than 5 million users. Founded by Fabian Camberi, Janis Ringwald and Stefan Kuernhorst, Slay created Pengu as part game, part social platform where friends or couples can co-raise a digital penguin. The company, which has raised a total of $7.6 million (€6.8 million), including from Accel, is currently scaling Pengu’s ability to personalize interactions, connecting a series of LLMs to a 3D engine to create this visual experience. Pengu can respond to a child who tells them they’re being bullied by giving them a drawing or sending personalized notifications to cheer them up. kill. cool

Ovom Care

Ovom Care is a fertility startup that uses data and machine learning to take the guesswork out of reproductive medicine. From launch in 2023. co-founders Felicia von Redden, Christina Hickman and Linnaeus Brayboy opened the company’s first fertility clinic in London – bypassing the heavy regulatory process in Germany – and already claim to be treating hundreds of people. Along with the physical clinic, patient app and clinic management system, Ovom also offers machine learning algorithms that analyze patient blood tests, wearable device data, gamete analysis and ultrasound images to tailor treatment type and timing . “We are now entering the era of precision medicine,” says CEO von Reden. “We sew [fertility] with the help of technology.” This idea attracted 4.8 million euros ($5.3 million) in seed funding led by Alpha Intelligence Capital. Within 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 started protesting climate change in 2018, the serial telecommunications entrepreneur started thinking about how he could use his experience for the good of the planet. The result was a startup called Dryad, launched in 2020, intended to be a forest fire early 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 they detect a fire, even in remote areas where there is no signal. So far, the company has sold 20,000 wildfire sensors and related hardware in 50 countries around the world, from Canada to Thailand, and to customers ranging from local governments to utility companies looking to protect their infrastructure from the inferno. Dryad has raised €22 million ($24.6 million) so far, including from German deep-tech fund eCAPITAL. dryad.net

UltiHash

The rise of power-hungry AI has prompted the International Energy Agency to warn that electricity consumed by data centers could double in just two years. As environmental groups debate the risk the technology poses to the climate, startup Ultihash is developing a practical way to reduce the data center needs of companies doing energy-intensive machine learning or training their own models. Founded in 2022, Ultihash developed an algorithm that CEO and co-founder Tom Luedersdorf claims can reduce companies’ data storage needs by up to 60 percent, meaning they need less space in data center and reduce their carbon footprint. The company has raised $2.5 million (€2.2 million), though it’s still in stealth mode. Lüdersdorf plans to launch the product later this year, after beta testing with more than 300 companies. ultihash.io