Appanion identified 275 German startups in which artificial intelligence (AI) is the core element. The companies have been in existence for 4.1 years on average and around two thirds of them are based in the big German cities of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg or Cologne. The startups received funding of EUR 1.2 billion in 2018. By comparison: in the same year, around EUR 8.3 billion flowed into US AI startups.

The largest benefactor of German AI startups is the High-Tech Gründerfonds, which supported 21 firms. In second place is the American investor Techstars , which invested in six German startups, in third place is the German company 42CAP with five investments. The largest proportion of the funding, namely 31% of it, went to firms working in the financial services sector. But the largest group of AI startups – 45 of the 275 young companies – focuses on applications for production. Among the use cases of the startups, support for decision-making stands out, followed by chatbots and intelligent routing, together with contextual searches and data generation.

Only recently the non-profit initiative AppliedAI from Munich sounded the alarm bells because German startups are receiving less financial support than those in other countries.