Latest / Deep Tech Germany – AI, Robotics & Frontier Innovation by Startuprad.io™ / May 2026 Deep Tech: Helsing's $18B, Prior Labs AI Lab & Isar's Orbit Shot

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May 2026 Deep Tech: Helsing's $18B, Prior Labs AI Lab & Isar's Orbit Shot · Deep Tech Germany – AI, Robotics & Frontier Innovation by Startuprad.io™

• 0:00
  Foreign.
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  Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
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  startup scene with news, interviews and
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  live events.
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  Hello and welcome. This Is startup raid IO. I'm Chris
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  Farnbach. Joining you from New York City. With me is
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  Joe from Frankfurt. I'm mine. Hey
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  Joe, good to be here. Good to have you. Chris. One
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  more time. One more time. Yes. We'll talk about this a bit
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  later. Before we start though, just a bit of
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  housekeeping. Our news cut today runs from April
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  22nd to May 18th, 2026. Production date
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  is today May 18th and our episode is going to go live
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  on May 28th. This is also now we have at my last
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  episode as co host of the news. We will say
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  more about that at the end but first there's a
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  lot to cover. Yes indeed, Chris. And the
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  thesis of the month right Itself, I would say.
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  Yeah. So yeah, I mean we've talked about it in the
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  past couple of months already, but what we really see is
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  that the Dach ecosystem, so once again Dach meaning
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  Deutschland, Austria, Switzerland or GSA in
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  English is the abbreviat that the Dach ecosystem is no longer
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  just catching up. It is producing itself
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  frontier outcomes. It is making great progress. We see
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  companies like Helsing which has just raised
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  $1.2 billion at an $18 billion valuation,
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  making it actually Germany's most valuable startup. And I
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  think that's really interesting to again seeing how much the
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  military industry is actually influencing startup culture by
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  now. Then we have S.A.P. s
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  committing over 1 billion euros to acquire an 18 month old
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  AI lab. And as we record this, ISA Aerospace
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  once again going to military
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  Aerial Industries has launch
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  window open right now for its second orbital
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  attempt. Yeah, last time we also covered this in
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  news but the launch attempt didn't work out.
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  The let's go to the macro numbers. Germany has deployed
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  $3.67 billion across
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  166 rounds through May, up almost
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  12% year on year. German acquisitions in
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  2026 have hit
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  142, up from a little bit over 100
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  through April. The defense budget is at
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  83 billion euros, projected to reach
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  162 almost double by 2029.
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  Capital is moving and it's moving very fast, especially
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  considering German government. Yeah, and
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  I mean since it's always fun to be wrong with predictions, let's
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  just put like three on record. Number one, Helsing
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  we just talked about it is going to reach 25 billion
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  within 12 months as A P's prior lab.
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  Number two, that deal is going to trigger at
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  least two more half billion euro corporate AI
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  acquisitions without 18 months in the region. And number three,
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  at least two more DACH companies will choose Frankfurt over
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  London for their IPO by the end of 2027.
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  I think it's all doable. Why not? Yeah, let's get to it.
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  Let's get to it. Okay, we've already teased it a bit.
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  Let's talk a bit more about Helsing, which is now
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  Germany's most valuable startup.
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  The lead signal is Helsing. It's a
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  Munich based company founded in 2021, now
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  raising $1.2 billion meaning they have an $18 billion
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  valuation this time around. The round is led by
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  Dragonier Investment Group and co led by Lightspeed, which
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  is an existing investor of the company. It was oversubscribed
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  multiple times. Housing remains roughly 80%
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  European owned. So yeah, as I said before, there's
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  a lot of like changing in the markets or it's. This
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  company definitely is part of larger trends here that we can see.
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  I vividly remember
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  like a few years ago 1.2 billion valuation
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  would have made headline numbers across all of Europe and now
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  there's a startup racing. Yeah, and now you have 1.2.
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  Yeah, now it's the. It's was raised. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean you
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  looked at the valuation of Helsing anyway, right? So
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  yeah, tell me about the trajectory. Yeah, let us put the
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  trajectory a little bit in context. In September 2024,
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  5.5 billion. June 2025,
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  12 billion with Daniel Ek of Spotify back in the
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  round. We actually wrote about this back then in May 2026,
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  8 billion. That's what they're tripling in under two
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  years. And this is a company that makes kamikaze drones
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  and battlefield AI software. Yeah,
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  very desperately looking for kamikaze joke here, but I don't know one.
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  So. Yeah, and also, yeah, we hear it in the
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  news quite often how much more of a role
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  drones are playing in warfare. Their flagship product
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  is called the HX2 drone. It's
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  12 kg, it has 100 kg kilometer range. It's
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  AI guided as they say. It operates in GPS denied
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  environments. The Bundeswehr framework
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  that they have. The framework contract is worth up to 1.46 billion
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  euros. And also Dragon and Lightspeed on
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  their cap table really signals that US growth equity is now
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  more and more committed to European sovereign defense companies.
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  Yes, 18 billion makes Helsing actually Germany's
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  most valuable startup. Taking the crown from Cylinder,
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  this is the largest single dach round in 2026 again meaning
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  Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and likely the largest
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  defense tech round so far. We have been saying for
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  three, for three episodes indeed that defense procurement
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  is creating venture at scale outcomes. And that's actually
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  proof. Yeah, and there's a, there's also like a
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  deeper structural point to this. So as I said, Helsing
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  Will did all this while remaining majority European
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  owned. So we see here that it is a sovereign
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  defense company having sovereign ownership.
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  And so the fact that they attracted US
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  growth capital here without surrendering control to some entity in
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  the US might be a model for other
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  European defense startups or at least model that they will try to
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  replicate. The company, Prior Labs,
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  was founded fewer than 15 months ago. Before the acquisition,
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  the company built the Tabular foundation model
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  tfms. The TAP PFM model series was
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  published in Nature. And the team includes researchers
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  from Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and
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  Jane street, founded by Frank Hutte,
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  Noah Holman and Suraj, Gambia.
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  Sorry for butchering the last name. Yeah. And
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  now on May 4, SAP announced that it will acquire
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  the company based in Fryborg and it
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  will commit over 1 billion euros over four years to build what
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  SAP is calling a globally
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  leading frontier AI lab in Europe.
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  So yeah, as you said, the, as you hinted
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  at with the details of the deal, the structure
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  here is pretty significant. Prior Labs continues as an independent entity
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  still having offices in Freiburg, Berlin and New York.
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  SAP is not going to absorb the team into the
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  existing R and D of SAP, but
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  building a new frontier AI lab around structured and tabular data,
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  which is the type of Data that runs SAP's enterprise
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  customer base. SAP always having been one of the
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  secret superheroes and probably, yeah,
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  like the biggest IT success story
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  in Germany for decades now.
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  And interestingly, an 18 month old startup commanding a
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  billion plus investment commitment, that's an extraord
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  that's actually extraordinary by any standard. And it signals
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  something broader. European corporate acquirers are now
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  willing to pay frontier prices for sovereign AI
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  capabilities. SAP is making its biggest
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  AI bet and it's making it actually in Germany.
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  Yeah, and what we are looking at now is the question whether this will trigger
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  a wave. So I mean it's not hard to predict as if
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  SAP is spending a billion euros on AI sovereignty,
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  that maybe other companies like Siemens, like Bosch, like BMW,
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  are also wondering whether they should do the same.
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  And yeah, so there might be more
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  big large corporate AI acquisitions
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  within the next couple of months or one or two
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  years. Moving on, as we
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  record this, the launch window for ESA Aerospace's second
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  orbital attempt is literally open. So because
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  it's May 18, the launch window is May 18 to May
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  24 from Andoya Spaceport space port in
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  Norway. Their Spectrum rocket is carrying five
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  cube sets and one experiment via the ESA Boost
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  program, the European Space Agency and headed for a
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  sun synchronous orbit.
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  The back story. Yeah, sorry.
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  Space, space is always good. Yeah, the
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  backstory matters here. The first flight in March
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  2025 failed roughly 30
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  seconds after liftoff. March 22 and
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  here and here we really have to say it's a very
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  interesting thing about space we really like. If you look at it from the outside
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  you would always think oh my God, what a. What a failure. But actually
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  in space these like tiny, tiny incremental
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  improvements and having a 30 second lift off, then having
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  like a 2 minute 30 second lift off, this is what they consider
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  a success. This is why there are so many tries.
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  Yeah, typical startup approach, right? Incremental,
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  incremental improvements. Yeah. A March
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  2026 attempt was corrupt twice. One because
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  of a boat in the danger zone and one because of a pressure tank
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  leak. We talked about it. I think. Esa is seeking
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  250 million euros at a 2 billion euro valuation.
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  Total raised exceeds 654
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  million. And if spectrum reaches orbit
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  it will also validate
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  European commercial space
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  flight or yeah, like the. In general
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  the. The standing of European Europe as
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  an alternative to the US
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  and it almost certainly closes the
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  250 million euro round of the company. If it fails
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  again, the becomes how much longer their investors will wait for
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  until the like this, like very capital intensive deep
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  tech will generate some revenue.
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  And ESA is not the only space signal.
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  Atmospace Cargo based in lichtenau, Germany
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  raised 24.7 million euros in a series A led by
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  by Nord and Expansion venture capital. They are
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  building Phoenix to orbital
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  vehicle with an inflatable atmospheric
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  decelerator recovery operations is in
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  the AZ source. And since we're also always
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  giving some German geography
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  classes here for free. This is
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  the state, the city of Liechtenau
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  in what I think should be Bavaria. And
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  the asshores are islands. Not in Germany, they're actually
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  in the Atlantic Ocean. When we are already at geography.
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  Yeah. Oh, actually it's in Baden Wurtenberg, so in the southwest,
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  because there is also a Lichtenau only 10km away from where
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  I grew up. But this is Hessian Lichten now this is
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  the Baden Wurtenberg in Lichtenau. Okay, very interesting. Well anyway, this
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  is what we see here though is this is now the
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  third consecutive episode in which we
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  talk about multiple Dach region space Signals.
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  Last month we talked about ESA and Pavespace, now we're talking about ESA
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  and Atmos. We are seeing more and more that Europe is building
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  an end to end space logistics chain. We have like launches with ESA in orbit,
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  transfer with Pavespace and now return with Atmos.
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  And yeah, we're just seeing that there's a whole ecosystem that
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  is really maturing just beyond those
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  companies that just have a very single like a very specific
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  offering. Also launching Atmos
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  works for government and defense customers to do use
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  pattern continues space and defense
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  converging on the same cap table.
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  Yeah, true. And again like very interesting over the years how we
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  see companies on the startup scene moving away
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  from IT stuff from apps towards really this
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  like heavy real life uses of like defense
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  or space. And yeah being two
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  industries that are even connected very much. Moving
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  on, Bitpanda Vienna based
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  7 million plus users no longer
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  positioning itself as crypto only but rather as a broad
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  investment platform with a B2B rebrand to now called
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  Bitpanda Enterprise.
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  We have Goldman Sachs, Citi and Deutsche bank
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  advising Bitpanda on Frankfurt IPO
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  and on not only an IPO there but an
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  IPO at a $5 billion
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  plus valuation. The timing
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  is actually strategic. The MICA markets and crypto
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  assets compliance deadline is June 30th. If
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  Bitpanda files before that, it becomes the first
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  major beaker compliant crypto IPO in Europe.
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  They choose Frankfurt over London
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  explicitly citing liquidity concerns. Sounds
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  familiar. Yeah, yeah, well I would say it does
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  because last month we had 1 comma 5
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  the environmental tech
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  startup shelving its NASDAQ listing
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  so signaling also that New York probably is not the place for them.
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  And this month we see that bitpunda picks Frankfurt over London.
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  So yeah, we also see here that things are shifting
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  and we see that the IPO
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  geography and landscape is a bit different
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  and that yeah, New York probably still might be
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  everybody's dream but there are viable paths
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  in other trading places as well
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  says the person in New York City.
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  And then there's quantum IQM
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  quantum computers finished German secured 50
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  million from Plaquerock. They're preparing for SPAC
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  merger with Raaq at a
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  1.8 billion pre money valuation
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  operations across Munich and Finland. BlackRock
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  entering European quantum computing. That's also an
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  interesting signal. Yeah, it is a Signal also because BlackRock does
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  not like speculate just at this
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  big scale. So if they are in European quantum
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  quantum then blackrock here is seeing some kind
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  of procurement pathway. The spec route is unconventional for
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  European quantum company but the Pre money valuation
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  here suggests really serious conviction from
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  the backers. Moving on,
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  spread AI the company in Berlin having had
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  a $30 million Series B IQT. The US intelligence
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  communities venture arm think CIA
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  is on the cap table alongside Salesforce,
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  DTCP Growth and HV Capital.
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  They are creating an engineering intelligence platform for product
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  life cycle data. They have a dual use AI
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  infrastructure being recognized by both defense and enterprise bias.
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  So also an interesting company here.
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  Yeah, collecting money. 30 million
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  is USB is some some serious signal. So
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  spread AI. Yes, we should add that this segment is
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  the lightning round where Chris started and
• 18:15
  PrimoGen in Leipzig 4.1 million years
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  seed for the biotech XO Life in
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  Munich 4 million for digital health AI
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  Con X AI in Munich 5 million
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  years Series A for construction AI
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  Reptum in Salzburg, Austria seven
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  figure round for industrial additive manufacturing
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  and the Munich and prodadacht Deep tech pipeline keeps
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  producing. Yeah, I was just going to say we only
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  have two lightning bolts, but it's not because you mentioned
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  several others. Several other companies here.
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  Yeah. So yeah, once
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  again we think Helsing has a big. Has a big
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  future ahead. We think SAP
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  might start some kind of trend
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  showing how established companies might buy
• 19:16
  AI companies or companies in the AI field more and more.
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  And yeah, we think Frankfurt also has a bright future
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  ahead as a tech listing
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  stock exchange. The connecting thread
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  across all three episodes we've done this year is the
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  same Dask. Startups with sovereign customers
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  think defense, physical products think also space
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  and procurement contracts are winning this cycle. The capital
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  flows, the budget line. It always has.
• 19:50
  Yes. And yeah, this is it for
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  the startup news, more or less. But before we close, I have a little
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  personal note. I mean we were hinting at it last episode and at the beginning
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  of this one. This is for now, my last episode as co host
• 20:05
  of of the news. I started
• 20:09
  with. No, sorry, Joe started startup radio
• 20:13
  in 24. I joined for the first
• 20:16
  time in May 2015, meaning 11
• 20:20
  years, which is a bit crazy.
• 20:24
  So like if, if someone would have had
• 20:28
  a child when I was on this podcast for the first time,
• 20:31
  this child probably might now move on from elementary school
• 20:35
  to middle school or something and get into the difficult years.
• 20:40
  Yes, exactly. So yeah, we have covered hundreds
• 20:43
  of rounds. Some unicorns in the beginning now
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  dozens in the last shows. And we watched the
• 20:51
  ecosystem in Germany, Austria and Switzerland grow from like a little
• 20:54
  footnote in European, let alone
• 20:57
  worldwide winter worldwide venture capital. Very hard
• 21:01
  thing to say in with a German accent to something
• 21:05
  that now is really commanding global attention.
• 21:09
  It has always been fun here in our podcast
• 21:13
  corner. And yeah, I
• 21:17
  don't know what to say. Well Chris, I could say it has
• 21:21
  been a privilege. Yeah, yeah, privilege. And honor
• 21:24
  has been all mine. I will leave the show in your
• 21:29
  good hands. Knowledge, knowledgeable hands. So you will continue the
• 21:33
  news for now as a solo host. The form format is going to stay the
• 21:36
  same. Our standards will stay the same, the thesis is going to stay the
• 21:40
  same and I think I might keep on listening and have a
• 21:44
  little side note every once in a while and maybe I will
• 21:48
  show up. And yeah, as we said, this is not because of
• 21:51
  some behind the scenes bickering. This has to do with me
• 21:55
  taking over a new job and having to focus on
• 21:59
  duties over there. And you'll stay on as
• 22:02
  advisor behind the scenes for the schedule going
• 22:06
  forward. Our next news episode covers the the remaining
• 22:09
  period through late June and goes live on July 2.
• 22:14
  We move to bi weekly publication for July and August and
• 22:18
  in September we return with a summer wrap up, likely two
• 22:22
  pieces including our H1
• 22:25
  2026 review. Yeah. So yeah,
• 22:29
  everybody take this as a hint being the right
• 22:33
  cadence for for your
• 22:36
  for the upcoming months because summer usually is a bit quieter in
• 22:40
  European ventures and so use the bi weekly
• 22:43
  format to just go deeply on fewer signals. And
• 22:47
  as always, this is when the best analysis happens, when you're not overly
• 22:51
  frantic. Chris, last
• 22:55
  word is yours. Okay, I will use
• 22:59
  the last words for something about our
• 23:02
  topics. I would say Europe
• 23:06
  does not meet permission to build frontier companies.
• 23:10
  It just needs to stop asking. Chris,
• 23:14
  my friend in Far Far Away New York, thank you for spending more than
• 23:17
  a decade with me covering the German Dach and European startup
• 23:21
  scene. We'll miss you very much and hope you come back. At least behind the
• 23:25
  scenes you'll stay with StartupRate IO for some time to come.
• 23:29
  Goodbye Goodbye.