The Top Startups in Berlin 2024
Germany’s innovation isn’t limited to its capital. Some of the most successful startups of this year are located hundreds of miles from their headquarters. Alpha Alpha, an AI startup, is based in Heidelberg. Helsing is a company that sells AI technology to Europe’s military. It was founded in Munich. Both companies have offices in Berlin. It’s impossible to ignore the talent that is attracted by this city. It’s also a young city, with half of its residents under 45 years old, as Thomas Dohmke CEO of GitHub who grew-up in Berlin notes. He says, “I started my last company in 2009, and I can remember how much time and energy it took. Having a population of young, diverse, international and highly motivated professionals with that energy and appetite gives Berlin an advantage.” “Plus, Berlin has the best doner kebab.”
BlueLayer
By 2050, the carbon credit market is expected to be a $250 billion industry. Startup BlueLayer caters to this growth by creating tailor-made software tailored to the companies and non-profits poised to profit. Clients, such as Permian Global, run projects from reforestation and direct air capture. They use the startup’s technology to process data and communicate with investors and buyers, while also helping credit providers verify their credits with international registries. BlueLayer, launched in 2022 and backed by $10 million (EUR8.9m) of investment, counts three of the world’s top 10 credit issuers as 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 used to operate almost exclusively on Excel.” bluelayer.io
Cambrium
Cambrium, founded in 2020 by Mitchell Duffy and Charlie Cotton, is using AI to design proteins such as collagen. The startup produces collagen in tanks, rather than sourcing it from animal products. Cotton says that Cotton’s company is one of those companies trying to balance hardcore software engineering with the physical world. The company has already received investments of $11.6 million (EUR10.3million), including from Google’s AI Venture Fund Gradient Ventures. Cambrium is expected to release skincare products containing its first protein, NovaColl. Cambrium.bio
Jina AI[and AI]In 2020, three veterans of Chinese tech behemoth, Tencent, joined forces to build foundation models specifically for search. The open-source culture of Berlin and its software engineering talent attracted the three men behind Jina to Berlin. They now have 9,000 users, and 400 paying clients, who use the company to create a search system that is either public or internal. Jina’s models are designed to convert PDFs or Word documents into a language AI models can easily understand, enabling a Google-like search. Legal companies may not need to search for documents by case number. Han Xiao, CEO and cofounder of Jina AI, explains that instead they could ask: “Find a case where Microsoft lost to Google”. After raising $39m (EUR34.8m) from a number of early-stage VC funds, including Canaan Partners and Xiao, his cofounders Nan Wang, and Bing He, plan to expand into the US, increase revenue from the $500,000 (EUR447,000 per year) that the company generates, and boost the user numbers. Xiao says, “We want OpenAI to be our competition.” jina.ai
Han Xiao, cofounder of custom search-engine firm Jina AI.
PHOTOGRAPH: THOMAS MEYER
Endel
Endel is a paid-for app that uses generative AI to create one endless piece of music, which constantly adapts to its user’s surroundings. The app uses the phone’s accelerometer to create a beat which syncs up with its listeners. The tempo will catch up if they begin to jog or skip. Endel, which calls itself a “sound-wellness” startup, is part of a trend where music serves a specific purpose, such as helping people fall asleep, focus, or exercise. Oleg Stavitsky is one of Endel’s six cofounders and CEO. “We want to develop a technology which harnesses sound power to help you achieve a cognitive state,” he says. Since its launch in 2018, Endel has raised $22.1 (EUR19.1 ) million in funding. This includes money from Amazon’s Alexa Venture Fund. The company claims to have one million active monthly users. The company has a 2023 deal with Universal Music Group that will allow them to use their technology in order to create “soundscapes” based on the work of established artists. endel.io
Slay
To understand Slay’s success, credit has to be given to Pengu, the company’s virtual pet app that has become the startup’s most popular product with more than five million users. Slay was founded by Fabian Kamberi and Jannis Ringwald. They created Pengu as a social platform that allows couples or friends to raise a penguin together. The company has raised $7.6 (EUR6.8 ) million in total including Accel. It is now scaling Pengu’s personalization capabilities by hooking up a series LLMs with a 3D Engine to create this visual experience. Pengu could respond to a child who tells them that they’re being bullied with a gift or personalized notifications. slay.cool
Ovom Care
Ovom Care is a fertility startup using data and machine learning to take the guesswork out of reproductive medicine. Felicia von Reden Cristina Hickman and Lynae Braryboy, the co-founders of the fertility startup, launched in 2023. They have already opened their first clinic in London, bypassing the lengthy regulatory process required in Germany, treating hundreds. Ovom’s clinic management system and patient app, as well as the physical clinic and the machine-learning algorithms, are available in addition to the clinic. These algorithms analyze blood tests, wearable data, gamete analyses, and ultrasound images of patients, and tailor treatment. “We are now entering the era precision medicine,” said CEO von Reden. “We are tailoring
with technology”. Alpha Intelligence Capital, a seed funder, has invested EUR4.8 million ($5.3million) to support this idea. The company hopes to attract medical tourists to its second clinic, which is located in Portugal. Treatment costs will be lower. ovomcare.com
Felicia von Reden, founder and CEO of Ovom Care.[fertility]PHOTOGRAPH: THOMAS MEYER
Dryad
When Carsten Brinkschulte’s daughter started protesting against climate change in 2018, the serial telecoms entrepreneur started to think about how he could leverage his experience for the good of the planet. Dryad was launched in 2020 as a network for early detection of wildfires. Brinkschulte is one of the seven co-founders of Dryad. He says, “Think of our system as the Vodafone of forests.” Dryad’s solar-powered network mesh allows sensors to send out alerts if they detect fire in remote areas without signal. The company has already sold 20,000 wildfire sensor and related hardware in 50 countries, from Canada and Thailand, to clients that range from local governments and utility companies who want to protect infrastructure against an inferno. Dryad raised EUR22million ($24.6million) to date, including funding from the German deep tech fund eCAPITAL. dryad.net
UltiHash
The rise of energy-hungry AI prompted the International Energy Agency to warn that the electricity consumed by data centers could double in just two years. Ultihash, a startup that has developed a way to reduce the need for data centers by companies who perform energy-intensive machine training or train their own models, is addressing the concerns of environmental groups about the impact the technology could have on the climate. Ultihash, founded in 2022, has developed an algorithm, which CEO and cofounder Tom Ludersdorf claims will reduce data center needs and carbon footprints by as much as 60%. Despite being in stealth, the company has already raised $2.5m (EUR2.2m) Ludersdorf intends to launch the product in late 2014, following beta testing by more than 300 companies. ultihash.io
TheBlood
According to TheBlood’s co-founders, Isabelle Guenou and Miriam Santer, menstrual blood is an under-appreciated asset for diagnostics, containing data-rich endometrial tissue, live cells, immune cells and proteins, which are not found in ordinary blood. In 2022, the pair founded the company with the goal of using menstrual samples to help fill the gender data gap in healthcare. The firm has since analyzed over 1,000 menstrual samples and sold testing kits between EUR35 ($39), EUR120 ($133), to women looking to gather more information to help inform their fertility or endometriosis treatments. TheBlood plans to offer biomarker analyses or data sets for licensing to pharmaceutical companies. The company has so far raised EUR1million ($1.1million), including from healthcare venture firm ROX health. theblood.io
Qdrant
To create generative AI, algorithms have to infer relationships between data–text, images or audio–that isn’t labeled or organized. Vector databases can help developers to extend the memory of LLMs, by making it easier to search and analyse large amounts of data while keeping costs low. Qdrant, launched in 2021, is aimed at AI software developers. It offers a vector database and search engine for unstructured data, along with an API that’s easy to use. The company reached 7 million users and 10,000 downloads in three years. It raised $37 million from US venture capitalist Spark Capital. qdrant.tech
This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 edition of WIRED UK.
