Berlin Gets Almost Half The German Startup Capital

Every year since 2015, the auditing and consulting company Ernst & Young has published its Startup Barometer filled with figures concerning startup financing in Germany. See our resume of EY’s findings for 2021 here. The new stats for 2022 show clearly that Berlin is Germany’s most favored city when it comes to venture capital, with six of the ten largest financing rounds taking place in the capital. The highest sum, €399M, went to the Berlin insuretech company wefox (we reported). Almost half of all investment funding, €4.9B, went to Berlin-based startups in 390 financing rounds, or 39 percent of all German deals in total. In a troubled year, “investors are paying more attention to profitability than to long-term growth promises,” says EY’s Dr. Thomas Prüver, hinting that founders would do well to concentrate on short-term revenue growth. Two sectors are still particularly well represented in Berlin: e-commerce and fintech. Overall, it was software and analytics companies that raised the most venture capital in 2022. According to Prüver, “The number of mid-sized deals has increased. This shows that it is still absolutely possible for young companies to obtain large sums of money with which to finance growth.” In 2022, more than €1.5 billion was invested in startups with a sustainability focus – that’s 15 percent of the total funding volume.