Founders and start-ups were able to score more heavily in financial terms in 2018. Overall, start-ups in Germany were able to collect the record amount of almost 4.6 billion euros last year. That is 7 percent more than in the previous year. The number of investments reached a new high and grew from 507 to 615, according to the startup barometer published by the auditing and consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY) on Thursday.
Berlin again defended the title as Germany’s founding metropolis. According to the startup barometer, young companies in the capital received a total of 2.64 billion euros in 247 financing rounds last year. The investment volume fell by 11 percent. The reason given by the auditors is a smaller number of mega-transactions on the Spree. In 2017 alone, the Berlin food delivery service Delivery Hero received a total of 808 million euros from investors in two transactions.
Bavaria, Hamburg and NRW
2018 start-up companies, especially from three countries, posted significant financial growth in 2018. In Bavaria with the center of Munich, the investment volume increased by 97 percent to 802 million euros, in Hamburg by 138 percent to 548 and in North Rhine-Westphalia by 154 percent to 243 million. In total, there were six major transactions last year with a volume of more than € 100 million, which is at the 2017 level.
Most of the venture capital flowed again with 1.64 billion euros in e-commerce companies, but with a minus of 12 percent in the total for the online commerce sector. By contrast, the Software & Analytics segment posted a massive increase. Among them, the consultants summarize highly technical business models from the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, startups around cloud computing and big data analyzes. The investment sum more than doubled from 295 million to 670 million euros.