More than €8.2 billion equity funding and more than €3.25 billion debt funding for German tech start-ups and scale-ups in 2023

by Dr. Winfried Weigel

Davos, 31 December 2023

€8.2 billion (-30% yoy) were raised in 467 equity funding rounds (-22.5% yoy) for tech start-ups and scales ups in Germany 2023, plus €3.25 billion (-40% yoy) in 22 conventional debt financing rounds (-31% yoy) for tech scale-ups.

In total, we counted 668 equity rounds including 40 grants plus 38 debt financing rounds, including three venture debt deals and one convertible loan.

Of that 668 funding rounds, we registered 231 seed rounds with a total of € 700mn in funding, plus a further 145 seed rounds without revealed deal values. The largest round was an €23.5 mn investment into Hygh, an enterprise solution for campaign management in traditional advertising, followed by an €14.4mn investment into payment facilitator Payrails and an €12.5mn investment into clinical genomics company Seamless Therapeutics.

€1.6 billion were raised in 122 A-rounds, a further 29 A-rounds did not disclosed investment amounts. The two largest A-rounds identified were the €109mn investment into SCM / GRC software provider IntegrityNext and the €87mn investment into B2B e-commerce enabler Weview.

€2 billion were invested into 43 B-rounds, thereof 3 rounds above €100 mn, plus a further 12 B-rounds w/o revealed deal values. The two largest tech scale-up equity fundings were the €500mn B-round into AI infrastructure developer Aleph Alpha and the €472 B-round into solar rental market place provider 1KOMMA5.

A further €1.55 billion was raised in 22 C-rounds of which only one company did not report the funding amount: an investment by Christiano Ronaldo into fashion tech company Chrono24. The three largest C-rounds with €235mn, €167mn and €160.5mn were made into YFood by Nestle, small payload launch vehicle manufacturer Isar Aerospace Technologies by Bayern Kapital et.al.and last mile grocery delivery operator Flink by Rewe.

€1.2 billion were invested into 9 D-rounds. 4 D-rounds did not reveal deal values. The three largest D-rounds include €420mn for cloud computing company Northern Data, €230mn for the solar online market place provider Enpal and €166mn for EV charging operator Jolt Energy.

5 E-rounds with an aggregated investment volume of €610mn included €273mn for radio pharmaceuticals developer ITM RadioPharma and €114mn for supercapacitor manufacturer Skeleton by Siemens and Marubeni.

We noticed 3 F-rounds including €225.5mn for smart exercise equipment and application provider EGYM and €89mn for GetYourGuide. Road transport tech provider Blacklane closed a F-round with leasing operator Sixt for an undisclosded amount.

€60 million were raise in three venture debt financings and €3.25 billion was raised in 22 conventional debt financings for tech scale-ups plus another 12 debt funding rounds w/o revealed deal values.

Except for the value of F-rounds that even doubled year-on-year (yoy), however, on a small basis, all funding round categories showed a substantial reduction in value and number of deals. The aggregated value of A-rounds showed a decrease of almost 42%, and the total value of D-rounds a decrease of more than 55%. Relatively stable were number and total value of seed rounds and value of grants.

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Dr. Winfried Weigel? ????????????????[email protected]?? ?????????????????+41 76 443 2001