Startuprad.io's Entity Intelligence

83North is a venture capital firm operating from London and Tel Aviv, formerly Greylock IL, and an investor in Celonis.

9am.works, run by Berlin-based 9am GmbH, is a freelancer platform positioning itself as an operating system for independent work: an AI profile, a freelancer CRM, a job aggregator and an academy, plus company-side tools for contracting and centrally paying freelancers. Founded 2021 by Marc Clemens.

AQON PURE is a German cleantech company making salt-free water softening systems for homes, aiming to prevent limescale without the chloride discharge of traditional salt-based softeners. Grown out of a family water-treatment business, it scaled bootstrapped via a direct-to-consumer and certified-installer model into Spain and Poland, earning FT1000 and Top-100 innovative-SME recognition.

Strüngmann family-office special-purpose investment holding vehicle used to hold the founding stake in BioNTech SE; deployed the approximately 150 million euro 2008 seed capital that Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann provided to BioNTech and remained the single largest external BioNTech shareholder through the 2019 NASDAQ IPO and the 2021 market-capitalisation peak.

AUTO1 Group SE is a Berlin-headquartered digital automotive platform founded in 2012 by Christian Bertermann and Hakan Koç that buys, sells and finances used cars across Europe through the brands wirkaufendeinauto.de, AUTO1.com and Autohero. The company has been listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 4 February 2021 and is a member of the MDAX mid-cap index. It reported revenue of EUR 8.2 billion and 842,000 cars sold in 2025.

Cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon that has offered on-demand, pay-as-you-go infrastructure and platform services since 2006, now running 124 Availability Zones in 39 geographic Regions, which in January 2026 launched the AWS European Sovereign Cloud with its first Region in Brandenburg, Germany, and which has cooperated with Startuprad.io.

Global venture capital firm founded in 1983, with bases in Palo Alto and London, and a recurring backer of European defence technology company Helsing.

Greenwich, Connecticut-based growth-equity firm founded in 2015; among the new investors in Celonis's $400 million Series D extension in 2022.

Boston-based global private-equity firm; co-lead investor in Quantum Systems' approximately $1.2 billion Series D round in July 2026.

Munich-headquartered robotics company founded in 2018 by Peter Meusel and Zhaopeng Chen out of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), combining force-torque-sensitive robot arms with computer vision. Became Germany's first robotics unicorn via a USD 220 million SoftBank-led Series C in 2021 and has since expanded by acquisition.

Aglae is the technology investment arm of the Arnault family, headquartered in Paris, that invests in growth-stage technology companies globally on a long-horizon basis.

European aerospace and defence company and operating manufacturer; acted as a strategic corporate co-investor in Quantum Systems' approximately $1.2 billion Series D round in July 2026.

Aleph Alpha GmbH is a Heidelberg-headquartered artificial-intelligence company founded in 2019 by Jonas Andrulis and Samuel Weinbach that, after exiting frontier foundation-model competition in 2024, builds PhariaAI, a sovereign enterprise AI operating system for European enterprises and public institutions.

German technology entrepreneur, co-founder and co-CEO of Celonis, the process-mining and process-intelligence software company he helped launch in 2011 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich.

Allianz X is the digital investment unit of Allianz and a co-lead investor in mobile bank N26.

Berlin-headquartered German venture-capital fund-of-funds manager, founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur Stephan Heller with co-founding partners Oliver Oster, Marius Weber and Marcus Boerner, that positions itself as a founder-driven VC-for-VCs vehicle. AlphaQ commits primary capital to a diversified portfolio of early-stage venture-capital funds mainly in Europe (with selective exposure to Israel and the United States), targets a total assets ambition of EUR 1 billion (initial target volume EUR 500 million) and has publicly reported allocations to funds including Northzone, Partech, Speedinvest, Headline, Nucleus Capital and White Star Capital, among others.

Amazing Blocks is a blockchain company, reported as based in Liechtenstein, that legally tokenizes assets — equity, debt, patents and trademarks — via Liechtenstein SPVs under the country's Token Act. Founded in August 2020, it was profiled by Startuprad.io alongside the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center's Crypto Assets Conference.

German tech executive and entrepreneur who has served as Chief Executive Officer of Munich-headquartered identity-verification platform IDnow GmbH since 2018, holds an MBA from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, and was previously CEO of Fyber N.V. and CEO of Telefonica Deutschland's fixed-net business. Publicly reported early-stage investor and board partner at Point Nine Capital.

German physician-entrepreneur (b. 1950); co-founder of Hexal AG (sold to Novartis in 2005 for approximately 5.65 billion euros) and, with his twin brother Thomas Strüngmann, anchor investor behind BioNTech SE from 2008 onwards via the AT Impf holding vehicle.

Bavarian-born German engineer, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (1982) and Arista Networks (2004), first outside investor in Google (August 1998), and one of Silicon Valley's most active hardware and infrastructure angel investors.

German entrepreneur; co-founder and CEO of Flix SE, the Munich-based mobility unicorn behind FlixBus and FlixTrain.

Portuguese-German systems biologist and chronobiology researcher; Professor of Systems Medicine at MSH Medical School Hamburg and scientific founder of TimeTeller GmbH, a body-clock diagnostics spin-off.

German politician and former member of the German Bundestag (2017-2025) for the Stuttgart II constituency, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. From January 2022 to 2025 Anna Christmann served as the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action's Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Start-ups, alongside her role as the Federal Government Coordinator for German Aerospace Policy. In the commissioner role she worked on Germany's first comprehensive federal Startup Strategy, adopted by the federal cabinet in July 2022, which she discussed in a 2023 Startuprad.io interview.

Ante Spittler is co-founder and CEO of Moss, a Berlin-based FinTech providing finance automation for European SMEs. A former investor turned operator, he leads a company that has raised approximately $180 million to date.

Anyblock Analytics (Anyblock Analytics GmbH) was a Mainz, Germany-based blockchain data and analytics company acquired by U.S. infrastructure firm Blockdaemon in November 2021; it now operates as part of Blockdaemon rather than as an independent company.

Ardian is a Paris-headquartered global private-markets investment firm, led by CEO Dominique Senequier, managing or advising on roughly $180–200 billion in assets across private equity, real assets and private credit, with a Frankfurt office serving the German market since 2001.

ArtNight (Realtainment GmbH) is a Berlin-founded creative-experiences company, led by founder and CEO Aimie-Sarah Carstensen since 2016, that runs guided in-person painting and craft events across Germany, Austria and Switzerland through a network of partner artists.

Munich-based German artificial-intelligence startup founded in 2018 by Pavol Sikula (Chief Executive Officer) and Matthias Ruppel (Chief Technology Officer) that built a text-based digital assistant for consultants, executives and business-services professionals, delivering research, translation, data analysis and presentation tasks over email and Microsoft Teams from a GDPR-compliant Germany-hosted platform. Acquired by Berlin-based PowerPoint-productivity vendor think-cell in September 2023; prior investors publicly reported include Fostec Ventures (pre-seed lead), and angels including the founders of Zenloop, Flaconi, Flink and Kartenmacherei.

Asvin (asvin GmbH) is a Stuttgart, Germany-based cybersecurity company founded in 2018 that builds cyber threat intelligence and risk-management tools for IoT, operational technology and software supply chains, serving industrial and automotive customers across the DACH region.

London-headquartered European venture-capital firm founded in 2006 by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, investing at Series A through pre-IPO in European technology companies. Publisher of the annual State of European Tech report and, in September 2024, closed its largest ever fundraise of USD 1.24 billion across Atomico Venture VI (USD 485 million) and Atomico Growth VI (USD 754 million). Notable portfolio companies include Klarna, Supercell, Stripe, Pipedrive, DeepL and Aiven.

Impact-investment platform reported to be associated with the Goldbeck family office (Bielefeld area, Germany); investor in Aachen second-life battery-storage company Voltfang's June 2025 EUR 15 million Series B round.

Stuttgart-headquartered German mobile trading application for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, launched in January 2019 by the Boerse Stuttgart Group as one of the first regulated retail crypto-trading products operated by an established European stock exchange. Operated inside the Boerse Stuttgart Digital / EUWAX AG stack with custody by Blocknox GmbH; supervised under German BaFin frameworks and subject to the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

Baillie Gifford is an independent Scottish asset management partnership founded in 1908 by Augustus Baillie and Carlyle Gifford, headquartered in Edinburgh, that manages long-term active equity strategies for institutional and private clients globally.

Bain Capital is a US alternative asset management firm founded in 1984 as a spin-off from the consulting firm Bain & Company, headquartered in Boston, that invests across private equity, credit, public equity, venture capital, real estate, life sciences and other alternative strategies.

Balderton Capital is a London-based venture capital firm founded in 2000, among Europe's largest early- and growth-stage technology investors.

German technology entrepreneur, co-founder and co-CEO of Celonis, focused on the company's operations, finance, and Europe and Asia regions, which he helped launch in 2011 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich.

Ben Kohz is a Germany-based professional whose public profile is centred on co-head of product, fintiba gmbh, in the field of financial technology — banking and administrative services for international students in germany.

Berlin Brands Group is a Berlin direct-to-consumer e-commerce holding founded in 2005 as Chal-Tec by Peter Chaljawski, known for Klarstein, auna and blumfeldt. It became a unicorn in 2021, and HPS Investment Partners took sole control in a change of control cleared in March 2024.

Billie is a Berlin-based B2B fintech providing embedded buy-now-pay-later and invoice-financing infrastructure for online marketplaces and business merchants across Europe. Founded in 2016, it has raised over US$100 million from investors including Dawn Capital and, per later reports, Klarna.

Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by spot trading volume, founded in July 2017 by Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and Yi He. As of 2025 it reports more than 300 million registered users and roughly 38 percent of global spot market share (both company-reported). CZ stepped down as CEO in November 2023 as part of a US settlement. In the DACH region Binance never held a full BaFin licence: it withdrew its 2023 BaFin application and, per Startuprad.io reporting on June 2026 news, subsequently exited spot trading across the European Economic Area under MiCA enforcement.

BioNTech SE is a Mainz-headquartered biopharmaceutical company founded in 2008 as a spin-out of the Mainz University Medical Center, listed on Nasdaq since October 2019, that develops mRNA-based and immunotherapeutic medicines with a current focus on oncology.

Bitbond is a Berlin-based fintech founded in 2013 by Radoslav Albrecht, known for issuing Germany's first BaFin-approved blockchain security token in 2019 and now focused on enterprise tokenization technology for institutional issuers of digital securities.

Bitpanda GmbH is a Vienna-headquartered Austrian retail investment platform founded in 2014 by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek and Christian Trummer that gives European retail customers app-based access to cryptocurrencies, fractional shares, exchange-traded funds and precious metals. It supplies the same regulated trading, custody and settlement infrastructure to banks and financial institutions through Bitpanda Technology Solutions. In March 2021 Bitpanda became the first Austrian company to be valued above one billion US dollars, and in January 2025 it became the first large European crypto platform to hold a licence under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation.

Black Forest Labs is a German generative-artificial-intelligence company founded in 2024 by former members of the Stability AI research team, including Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann and Dominik Lorenz, that develops the FLUX family of text-to-image models and the Kontext image-editing model.

BlackRock is a US asset management firm founded in 1988, headquartered in New York, that is the largest asset manager in the world by assets under management and provides investment management, risk management and financial advisory services to institutional and retail clients globally.

New York-based alternative-asset manager and one of the world's largest investment firms; co-lead investor in Quantum Systems' approximately $1.2 billion Series D round in July 2026.

Privately held US financial technology, data, media and information services company headquartered in New York City, founded in 1981 by Michael Bloomberg (with co-founders Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan and Charles Zegar); operator of the Bloomberg Terminal, the wire and multimedia news service Bloomberg News, and the Bloomberg Businessweek publication; distinct as a corporate entity from Michael Bloomberg the individual.

Bond is a San Francisco-based growth-equity firm founded in 2018 by Mary Meeker, investing in late-stage technology companies.

Boxcryptor was a German end-to-end cloud-storage encryption product built by Augsburg-based Secomba GmbH. It was acquired by Dropbox in November 2022 and subsequently wound down as a standalone product in early 2023.

United States-based (San Diego, California) New York Times bestselling business-book author, keynote speaker and startup and enterprise-innovation advisor, best known as the co-author of the Lean Entrepreneur (with Patrick Vlaskovits, 2013) and the author of Disruption Proof. Brant Cooper is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Moves the Needle, a firm that applies lean, human-centred design and agile methodologies to help large enterprises adopt startup-style innovation practices. He is publicly recognised as one of the originators of the Lean Startup movement.

BaFin (Bundesanstalt fuer Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) is the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, established on 1 May 2002 with headquarters in Bonn and a second office in Frankfurt am Main, and is the integrated national supervisor for banking, insurance, securities and asset management in Germany.

Business Angels Deutschland e.V. (BAND) is the federal association of business angels and business angel networks in Germany, based in Essen. It represents early-stage angel investors towards policymakers and the public, runs training and expert formats such as the BANDakademie, and organises the Deutscher Business Angels Tag (German Business Angel Day), which it describes as the most important annual event of the German business angel scene. BAND reports around 3,500 direct and indirect members and more than 40 business angel networks and clubs.

BUX is an Amsterdam-based retail investing and trading app, founded in 2013 by Nick Bortot, whose product family has expanded to include zero-commission investing and a separately branded derivatives product, Stryk.

COMPREDICT is a Darmstadt deep-tech company that builds AI-based Virtual Sensors for vehicles, turning signals a car already produces into measurements that would otherwise need extra hardware. Founded in 2016 as a TU Darmstadt spin-off, it supplies carmakers and Tier 1 suppliers.

CONTENTshift is an annual accelerator programme for startups in the content, book and publishing industry, launched in 2016 as an initiative of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels and today run from Stuttgart by the association's Baden-Württemberg regional branch.

CYNORA was a German deep-tech OLED emitter developer headquartered in Bruchsal near Karlsruhe. A spinoff associated with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), it developed thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) OLED emitter materials — notably cyBlueBooster and cyUltimateGreen — targeting more efficient blue and green OLED displays. Samsung Display acquired CYNORA's intellectual property in a transaction announced in June 2022 for a reported ~USD 300 million; the company's roughly 120 employees were terminated at the transaction.

Cansativa is a medical-cannabis wholesaler, importer and distributor based in Moerfelden-Walldorf near Frankfurt Airport, founded in 2017 by Benedikt and Jakob Sons. It supplies German pharmacies and holds the distribution mandate for the BfArM cannabis agency's domestically grown cannabis.

Cantourage Group SE is a Berlin-based, Frankfurt-listed (Scale, ticker HIGH) medical cannabis company that connects international cultivators with the European pharmacy market, led by CEO Philip Schetter.

Canyon Partners is a US alternative investment management firm co-founded in 1990 by Josh Friedman and Mitchell Julis and headquartered in Los Angeles, specialising in credit and event-driven strategies including distressed debt, structured finance and growth equity.

Capchase is a New York-headquartered fintech, founded in 2020 by a Spanish founding team, that lets B2B sellers offer buyers flexible payment terms while being paid upfront. It appears on TUM's list of unicorns founded by TUM alumni (August 2026), although no valuation of $1 billion or more has been reliably reported.

Global management and technology consultancy for the financial services and energy industries, founded in Belgium in 1998 by Rob Heyvaert as The Capital Markets Company and headquartered in London. Owned by FIS from 2010 and majority-owned by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice from 2017, it was acquired by Wipro for USD 1.45 billion in a deal completed on 29 April 2021 and is led by Chief Executive Officer Anne-Marie (Annie) Rowland. Capco serves banking and payments, capital markets, insurance, wealth and asset management and energy clients. Capco has cooperated with Startuprad.io.

Carsten Kraus is a German serial founder and AI and data-science entrepreneur, best known for founding the data-quality company Omikron, the e-commerce search company FACT-Finder, and the video-AI startup Casablanca.ai.

Casablanca.ai is a Pforzheim deep-tech company whose AI software restores natural eye contact in video calls without extra hardware, founded in 2020 by Carsten Kraus with Markus Vollmer and Ivan Alles. Casablanca.AI GmbH filed for insolvency at Amtsgericht Pforzheim in October 2025.

Cellares is a South San Francisco company that builds automated factories, based on its Cell Shuttle platform, to manufacture cell therapies at industrial scale. Co-founded in 2019 by TUM alumnus Fabian Gerlinghaus, it has not disclosed a valuation; only a database estimate puts it at about $1 billion.

German-American enterprise software company specializing in process mining and process intelligence, founded in 2011 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich, with dual headquarters in Munich and New York and a peak private valuation of roughly $13 billion in 2022.

Cherry Ventures is a Berlin-headquartered venture-capital firm focused on European early-stage technology investments, with a portfolio spanning FinTech, marketplaces, health, and enterprise software.

Christian Bertermann is a German entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of AUTO1 Group SE, the Berlin-based digital automotive marketplace behind wirkaufendeinauto.de, AUTO1.com and Autohero, which he took public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2021.

Germany-based leadership and organisational-culture author, coach and keynote speaker, founder of the Management Boost advisory practice and author of the book Magnetische Unternehmenskultur (Magnetic Company Culture). Christian Conrad's public work focuses on how small and medium enterprises and scaling startups can measurably improve engagement and retention through a repeatable culture-execution framework built on employee Net Promoter Score movement, the Four Disciplines of Execution and a visible cultural-KPI scoreboard. He brings prior executive experience from consumer-goods multinationals including Unilever and Kellogg's.

Co-founder and CEO of Trade Republic, the Berlin-based mobile neobroker and bank, one of the most highly valued fintech companies in the German-speaking region.

Christian Noske is a Germany-based venture capital investor, a founding partner of Uplift Ventures' EUR100 million European deep-tech fund launched in 2026, and formerly a Partner at NGP Capital.

Christian Rebernik is an Austrian technology executive, the former Chief Technology Officer of N26, and co-founder and CEO of Tomorrow University of Applied Sciences, an online higher-education venture.

Co-founder of CLARK, the Frankfurt-based digital insurance broker (insurtech); the company's CEO from 2015 to 2024 and now Chairman of its Supervisory Board.

CLARK Germany GmbH is a Frankfurt am Main-headquartered German insurtech company founded in 2015 that operates a digital insurance manager and licensed insurance brokerage. Through the Clark app, retail customers consolidate, compare and manage their insurance policies in one place, with Clark acting as the broker of record. The integration of the finanzen Group, agreed with Allianz X in November 2021, made Clark one of the largest insurtech groups in Europe.

Coatue Management is a New York technology investment firm founded in 1999 by Philippe Laffont that co-led N26's 2021 Series E round.

Codoflow is a German SaaS platform for collaborative data-architecture management, operated by Codoflow GmbH in Aschheim near Munich and represented by founder and managing director Stefan Opitz. It targets small and mid-sized enterprises and consultancies rather than large-enterprise architecture teams.

Germany-based artificial-intelligence and market-intelligence software company founded in 2010 by Pascal Lauria that operates publicly as Cogia AG following a 2021 listing on the Düsseldorf stock exchange. Cogia's stated strategic priority is to consolidate a fragmented European market for text- and data-analytics tooling by using public equity as acquisition currency. Cogia AG is the listed vehicle into which the original operating company Cogia Intelligence GmbH was merged.

Creandum is a European venture capital firm founded in 2003, headquartered in Stockholm with additional offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco, that invests in early-stage European technology companies.

D11Z.Ventures is a Heilbronn, Germany-based investment vehicle in the Schwarz Group/Heilbronn technology-investment ecosystem, active in AI and digital-innovation-focused venture and growth investing.

DEEP Ecosystems is a Berlin-based network organisation and knowledge platform for startup-ecosystem builders worldwide, publishing research, running events, and connecting the practitioners who develop the ecosystems around startup hubs.

DKB (Deutsche Kreditbank AG) is a Berlin-headquartered German direct bank and part of the BayernLB Group, recurring in DACH fintech coverage as a partner bank for startups such as Upvest and Raisin.

General Partner and Co-Head of Portage Capital Solutions, the late-stage fintech strategy of investment firm Portage; leads growth-, structured-equity and special-situations investments in financial technology and financial services.

Israel-based LinkedIn strategist, trainer, speaker and author, best known for his book Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success and for teaching professionals, founders and B2B sales teams how to use LinkedIn as a business-development platform. Advises international clients across Europe, including DACH founders and B2B teams, and has appeared as a guest on Startuprad.io and adjacent DACH founder-focused podcasts on the topic of LinkedIn for early-stage companies.

Daniel Amann is an Austrian digital-health entrepreneur and co-founder of edupression (SOFY GmbH), a Klosterneuburg-based, CE-certified prescription digital-therapeutics programme for depression and burnout developed with the Medical University of Vienna, and a Startuprad.io founder-interview guest.

German entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Choco, the Berlin-based B2B food-supply-chain software company whose AI-powered ordering platform reached unicorn status in 2022.

German computer scientist and entrepreneur; co-founder and Chief Information Officer of Flix, the Munich-headquartered European mobility company operating FlixBus and FlixTrain.

Paris-based European venture-capital firm; investor in Aachen second-life battery-storage company Voltfang's June 2025 EUR 15 million Series B round.

French industrial software company founded in 1981 as a spin-off of the Dassault group and headquartered in Vélizy-Villacoublay near Paris, which develops 3D design, simulation, manufacturing and product-lifecycle software around its 3DEXPERIENCE platform (brands include CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, SIMULIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, BIOVIA and MEDIDATA). Listed on Euronext Paris (DSY) and a CAC 40 component, it reports more than 390,000 customers and about 25,000 employees, and runs the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab startup accelerator. Dassault Systèmes has cooperated with Startuprad.io through its startup programme.

German entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Sennder, the Berlin-based digital road-freight forwarder that became one of Europe's largest full-truck-load logistics platforms and reached unicorn status in 2021.

David Schneider is a Germany-based professional whose public profile is centred on co-founder and management board member, zalando se, in the field of e-commerce — fashion, beauty and lifestyle in europe.

Cologne-based language-AI company, evolved out of the bilingual dictionary Linguee and launched as DeepL Translator in August 2017. Led by Jaroslaw Kutylowski, it has pivoted into enterprise software with DeepL Pro, Write, Voice and Agent, and announced a USD 300 million round at a USD 2 billion valuation in May 2024.

London-headquartered artificial-intelligence research laboratory, founded in September 2010 by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman as DeepMind Technologies Limited and acquired by Google in January 2014 for a reported £400 million-plus. Now operates as Google DeepMind, the merged AI research arm of Alphabet formed in April 2023 by combining DeepMind and Google Brain. Landmark research programmes include AlphaGo, AlphaZero, AlphaFold and the Gemini family of foundation models.

Delivery Hero SE is a Berlin-headquartered online food-delivery and quick-commerce group, founded in 2011 by Niklas Östberg, Kolja Hebenstreit, Markus Fuhrmann and Lukasz Gadowski, that operates consumer brands including foodpanda, Glovo, talabat, PedidosYa and Baemin across roughly 70 markets. Its shares have been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker DHER since 2017.

Global network of audit, consulting, tax, legal and advisory firms coordinated by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL), a UK private company limited by guarantee, tracing its origins to William Welch Deloitte in 1845; one of the Big Four, it reported aggregate revenue of USD 74.5 billion for the fiscal year to 31 May 2026 with nearly 500,000 people in more than 150 countries and territories, and has cooperated with Startuprad.io.

Dennis Schmoltzi is a German entrepreneur, co-founder and chief executive of Emma – The Sleep Company (originally Bettzeit GmbH), the Frankfurt-based direct-to-consumer sleep brand he started in 2013, and a Startuprad.io founder-interview guest.

German biophysicist and co-founder of QIAGEN, the molecular diagnostics and sample-preparation company that began in 1984 as a spin-off from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and in 1996 became the first German company to list on Nasdaq. Detlev Riesner held the Chair of Biophysics at Heinrich Heine University from 1980 until his retirement in the mid-2000s, researched viroids and prions, and served on QIAGEN's Supervisory Board from 1996, as its Chairman from 1999 to 2014. He appears on Startuprad.io in a two-part interview on QIAGEN's path from a university lab to Nasdaq.

Deutsche Bahn AG (DB) is the Berlin-headquartered German national railway company, 100% owned by the Federal Republic of Germany, organised as a joint-stock company (Aktiengesellschaft) under private law, and the operator of the country's principal long-distance passenger rail services (ICE and IC/EC), a large regional-rail franchise portfolio, and a heavy-rail freight and infrastructure business; it is the incumbent long-distance rail operator against which the open-access competitor FlixTrain (the rail subsidiary of Flix SE) has competed since 2018.

Frankfurt am Main-headquartered German global universal bank, founded in Berlin in 1870 and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker DBK) with an additional listing on the New York Stock Exchange; organised across Corporate Bank, Investment Bank, Private Bank and Asset Management divisions (including DWS), and one of the most active corporate banking counterparties to the German Mittelstand and to the DACH startup and technology ecosystem.

Annual survey-based research report on the German startup ecosystem, published continuously since 2013 by the Bundesverband Deutsche Startups (Startup-Verband) in Berlin in partnership with the professional services firm PwC (with KPMG as a historical partner); one of the two canonical statistical baselines — alongside the KfW Gründungsmonitor — for tracking German startup demographics, funding, employment and sentiment.

Diamond Foundry is a US producer of single-crystal lab-grown diamonds that is developing diamond wafers to cool semiconductor chips. Co-founded in 2012 by TUM alumnus Martin Roscheisen, it was valued at $1.8 billion in a Fidelity-led $200 million round in April 2021.

Dianovi is a Darmstadt healthcare software company, founded in 2023 as a TU Darmstadt spin-off under the earlier name MySympto, that builds AI software for hospital emergency departments covering documentation quality assurance, case management and clinical decision support.