In order to highlight AI startups in Germany, drive AI adoption and create more partnership opportunities between startups and corporations appliedAI has launched the annual German AI Startup Landscape. Together with the help of our +40 partners from academia, government and industry – we have set out to create an ecosystem in which AI startups can flourish and help shape the future of AI for the benefit of society. By creating a centralized database of quality AI startups, corporations and SMEs will have easier access to AI partners they can trust. This year, the data collected shows that the AI startups are blossoming outside of the main startups hubs - Berlin and Munich. 

Together with NVIDIA, Google and nine venture capital firms (Digital+ Partners, Earlybird Capital, eCAPITAL, High-Tech Founder Funds, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Lakestar, UVC, La Famiglia and Asgard), over 400 startups were examined (see details on methodology below). All startups were founded after 2012 with a business model based on machine learning. The startups were founded in Germany or conduct their main business activities in Germany. 

We are now taking applications for the 2023 Startup Landscape, feel your startup should be featured? Apply here.

• Below you can view all 304 startups sorted via their primary category within the clusters of Industry, Technology Type, Enterprise Intelligence or Enterprise Function.
• You can also search for startups via their name or keywords found in their description.
• Hover over the logo and click the magnifying glass to read the full company description, or click the logo directly to head to the startups website and learn even more.
• Below the map you can find a table with all startups listed with even more details including secondary categories. Head to the bottom of the page to see insights into the data and key learnings from the German AI startup ecosystem.

Methodology

The AI startups included in the landscape are private companies founded after 2012, with headquarters or significant operation in Germany. They have machine learning (ML) at their core or exhibit a significant usage of ML. The selection process can be summarized as follows:

During the year startups apply to be featured on the Landscape via our online survey. This year we received 94 new applications.Startups are then evaluated based on data, talent, AI methods, scalability, overall quality and subsequently clustered (see clustering logic).The startups are initially rated (‘shortlisted’ , and ‘discarded’) by our AI Engineers and Strategists to create a shortlist.

Startups from previous year landscape are automatically transferred to the new year iteration unless they have closed their business, were acquired, pivot their business model away from AI or moved to a different geographical location. If a startup was on the previous year iteration but is now older than 10 years you can still see them on the Landscape as greyed out.

The shortlist is independently evaluated and rated by our contributors (jury) (NVIDIA, Google, Digital+ Partners, Earlybird Capital, eCAPITAL, High-Tech Founder Funds, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Lakestar, UVC, La Famiglia and Asgard). The feedback is synthesized and the final result is visualized.

Clustering logic

The clustering logic is based on Shivon Zilis’ landscape of machine intelligence. It is developed from the point-of-view of companies that want to use AI in their businesses:

• Enterprise Functions: Increasing productivity of existing tasks – Support your employees with ready-to-use, AI-enabled tools supporting their day-to-day work to increase productivity.
• Enterprise Intelligence: Exploiting new data sources – Tap into new insights that were previously too difficult or expensive to be gained through conventional methods.
• Technology Type: Building products with ML: Give developers the tools that they need to build and leverage machine learning software to gain a competitive advantage.
• Industries: Leveraging AI-first products: Use and cooperate with startups using machine learning to offer industry-related products and services.

Landscape Growth:

• 304 startups on the 2022 Landscape, with growth rate of 9%. Decrease in the growth rate can be explained by changing the methodology and building a comprehensive list in 2021.
• From 304 startups, 228 remained from the previous year and 76 startups were added to the list.
• Out of 50 companies that are not represented on the list anymore 32% were acquired, 20% are in liquidation, 4% has shifted the product from the AI, 2% went public and the rest 40% were founded more than 10 years ago.

Location:

• Overall the concentration of startups in Berlin and Munich decreased from 64% to 57%.
• There are 12 new cities on the 2022 Landscape which where not there in 2021. These are:
  • Ausgburg
  • Bad Reichenhall
  • Bad Schwartau
  • Heidelberg
  • Konstanz
  • Lahr
  • Leinfelden-Echterdingen
  • Luneburg
  • Osnabrück
  • Schönenberg-Kübelberg
  • Triberg im Schwarzwald
  • Wolfratshausen
• Bavaria has closed the gap and now has only 13% fever startups then Berlin, compared to 35% last year. 70% of Bavarian startups are in Munich.

Funding:

• The highest rate of funding per startup went to startups founded in 2014.
• The best funded startups are in Saxony, followed by Bavaria and Brandenburg. Berlin’s startup receive a modest amount of funding.
• Most amount of funding goes to B2B AI startups - 88%

Sector:

• The majority of the companies are focusing on addressing needs of a specific industry while only 14% are working on developing AI Tech Stack.
• The most attractive industries for AI startups seem to be Healthcare, Manufacturing and Transportation.
• If a startup decides to focus on a specific enterprise function the focus tends to go towards Customer Service and Marketing.
• Computer Linguistic and computer vision are the most popular enterprise intelligences to focus on for German AI Startups.
• In relation to AI Tech Stack the main development happens in AI applications and platforms

• Initiative for Applied Artificial Intelligence 
• Google Cloud
• NVIDIA
• Holtzbrinck Ventures
• Earlybird
• UVC Partners
• Digital Partners
• Lakestar
• High-Tech Gründerfonds
• Ecapital Entrepreneurial Partners 
• La Famiglia
• ASCARD

The appliedAI pitch lunches are a series of events that are giving voice to some of the most interesting companies featured on the Landscape. The objective of these events is to connect the startups with appliedAI’s partner network to spark discussion and potential collaborations. Every startup is given 8-12 minutes to present their companies and to answer questions of the audience. Head to the page to find the recordings from each of the pitch lunches which have been held so far.

In addition to the annual update of the German AI map, appliedAI's analysts have been working on mapping the European AI startup landscape. France, Sweden and the Netherlands have already joined appliedAI and the European map currently already includes over 800 startups.

How you can use the landscape

We believe that sharing this information is our obligation. Using this landscape as part of a presentation, talk, or project is allowed and encouraged as long as you always use the visual representation and reference us appropriately. Changes to our landscape have to be marked as your own changes. The content of this insight is published under CC-BY 4.0.