Startup Insider
Startup Insider GmbH (Jan Thomas)
36 episodes
Blutbad bei KI-Aktien: Wackelt der Anthropic-IPO? – Daniel Höpfner (b10) & Philipp Müller (Signatrix)
9 Nov · 20 min
- AI stocks are deep in sell-off: Nvidia down 24%, AMD 38%, Micron 46%, Broadcom nearly 40% from highs.
- Anthropic's IPO, one or two weeks away and likely top-three ever, rests on an S-1 showing heavy losses and one profitable quarter.
KI-Crash nach den Midterms & Anthropic-Börsengang wackelt
9 Nov · 7 min
- The Nasdaq 100 posted its worst day in six years and 16 US-listed chipmakers lost about €1.3tn after the Democrats' midterm win.
- Anthropic's IPO wobbles as buyers discuss a $1.2–1.3tn valuation, down from $1.4–1.5tn, with the roadshow start uncertain.
Rechenzentren abgewählt, Gewichte umgeschrieben: Midterms & Weight-Space Programming – Philipp Müller & Daniel Höpfner
8 Nov · 41 min
- US midterms: 41 data centre ballot measures, only one passed, and AI now polls worse than ICE among the general US population.
- Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows $50 of every $100 revenue to compute, $11 to commissions, minus $4 operating profit, targeting 13% margin.
Trial & Error Folge 55 – „Klein und brutal selektiv“: Sind Accelerator noch zeitgemäß?
7 Nov · 59 min
- Fredrik Harkort and Jan Thomas conclude accelerators are not a good business model and should be state-funded founder schools, and neither will build one.
- Harkort's ideal accelerator is "small and brutally selective," with at most 8 to 10 teams a year.
„Die besten Companies werden gekauft“: WorkMotion-Exit an Upwork – Felix Steffens (WorkMotion)
6 Nov · 31 min
- Lifted, Upwork-Tochter, kauft Workmotion, um nach Ascen für USA und Kanada einen globalen Employer-of-Record-Anbieter zu bekommen.
- Workmotion bleibt als unabhängige deutsche GmbH ohne Stellenabbau, und das Management ist per Earn-out für drei bis vier Jahre gebunden.
Sequoia schließt London-Büro: Rückzug aus Europa? – Mathias Ockenfels (b2venture)
6 Nov · 37 min
- Sequoia Capital is closing its London office and cutting most of its European investment team.
- Matthias Ockenfels of b2venture attributes the pullback to Sequoia's generational change and expects other funds may follow.
China stoppt SoftBanks ABB-Deal & OpenAI-KI findet 948 Linux-Lücken
6 Nov · 7 min
- China blocks SoftBank's takeover of ABB Robotics' China business, putting the $5.4bn deal for the whole division in question.
- OpenAI's unreleased model finds 948 exploitable Linux kernel flaws in one run, with fixes, costing about $1.2m.
KI-Agenten statt Forward Deployed Engineers: 3,75 Mio. Pre-Seed – Felix Rösner (Marble Cognition)
5 Nov · 25 min
- Munich's Marble Cognition raises $3.75m pre-seed to deploy AI co-workers directly at customers instead of Forward Deployed Engineers.
- CEO Felix Rösner says Marble waited to announce until it could serve just under a dozen customers with scalable product and systems.
Wer kauft KI-Agenten? Salesforce, Cresta, Braze & Marble Cognition – Fabian Krautwurst (NAP) & Jannis Fett (HV Capital)
5 Nov · 44 min
- Marble Cognition raises over €3m pre-seed led by Hardcore and Seedcamp to record how work is done.
- Salesforce buys Cresta for $2.7bn at 27x ARR and Braze for $5.7bn at 6x, its eighth deal this year.
Canva-Umbau trifft 22 Prozent der Belegschaft & US-Wähler bremsen Rechenzentren
5 Nov · 7 min
- Canva cuts 1,271 jobs, 22% of staff, its largest restructuring, as growth slows and Blackbird cuts valuation to $34.9B.
- US midterm voters in over 30 communities approve data center moratoriums, sending AI and chip stocks down and SoftBank down 8%.
Cash-Deal statt Eigenbau: CO3 übernimmt Kinver – Nicolaus Schefenacker (CO3)
4 Nov · 27 min
- CO3, die sennder-Ausgründung, kauft das norwegische Logistik-Datenunternehmen Kinver in einem Cash-Deal über 100 Prozent der Firma.
- Die kombinierte Firma bündelt mehr als 600 APIs entlang der Logistikkette, wobei Kinver die Kostenseite und CO3 das Operative beisteuert.
Sonnen-Insolvenz, Qwello und Rekord-VC-Fonds: Wohin fließt das Kapital? – Luis Hanemann
4 Nov · 35 min
- Sonnen, which Shell bought and backed with nearly half a billion more, is insolvent under its new owner.
- Qwello raises €55m to build charging points and make acquisitions as Mercedes-Benz sells its German charging business to Elektra.
Gropyus-Töchter insolvent & EuGH: KI-Antworten können Urheberrecht verletzen
4 Nov · 7 min
- Gropyus files for insolvency of several subsidiaries after a promised investor financing failed to arrive.
- EU Advocate General Szpunar says Google's Gemini may infringe press copyright when AI answers replace visits to original articles, but training is permissible.
6,4 Mio. € Seed: Wie KI Frachtdokumente für Speditionen prüft – Dr. Claudio Consul (Conlio)
3 Nov · 21 min
- Conleo raises a 6.4m euro seed to automate freight document verification for freight forwarders.
- Claudio Consul says LLMs cannot reliably verify freight documents for financial decisions due to non-standard formats and zero error tolerance.
Solo-Fondsmanager mit 15 Mio. Euro Fund II: Deep Tech statt schneller Markups – Robin Haak (Robin Capital)
3 Nov · 38 min
- Robin Capital closes a €15M second fund as solo GP Robin Haak backs deep tech, AI enterprise, space, robotics and defence.
- Haak re-ups 68 of Fund I's 70 LPs for Fund II, writing no sales emails after Fund I's brutal 100-hour weeks.
Anthropic schreibt 23 Milliarden Verlust vor dem IPO & Bundesregierung sieht KI-Zeitfenster schließen
3 Nov · 7 min
- Anthropic posts $17B quarterly revenue and a $23.3B net loss ahead of a Nasdaq IPO targeting $86B.
- Sam Altman signs Abu Dhabi deals, including Adnoc adopting OpenAI's Frontier agent platform, while raising capital.
Universalprozessor für Physical AI: 14 Mio. $ Seed – Hyun Shin Cho (Ubitium)
2 Nov · 30 min
- Ubitium raises $14M seed for a runtime-reconfigurable chip that does signal processing, AI and real-time control in one processor.
- Cho pitched 100+ VCs in three months, got roughly 80 rejections, and still closed an oversubscribed round with no purely German investor.
OpenAI senkt Finanzierungsziel & Hacker erbeuten 6,3 Milliarden bei Binance
2 Nov · 7 min
- OpenAI cuts its current round from $30B to $20B, dropping its valuation from $1.4T to $1.25T.
- Hackers steal $6.3B from Binance hot wallets, a heist tied to North Korea's TraderTraitor with $3B frozen.
„Bei uns kaufst du Produktivität“: Physical AI, Robotik & Almetra – Philipp Müller & Max Fischer (Prompted)
1 Nov · 36 min
- Almetra, founded as Deltia just before ChatGPT launched, uses cameras and AI video analysis to show plant managers bottlenecks, deviations and lost time on the shop floor.
- Almetra is working with several Bosch plants, starting in the e-bike battery division, where Bosch reportedly raised productivity by 19 percent based on the data.
Trial & Error Folge 54 – „Cost-Cutting ist kein Geschäftsmodell“: Restrukturierung im Startup richtig angehen
31 Oct · 1 h 11 min
- Fredrik Harkort argues cost cutting is not a business model but a means to a leaner, healthier organisation, and that repeated cuts breed a culture of fear.
- Fredrik Harkort's raft exercise tells founders in crisis to keep only the few people with the right skills and mindset, perhaps 34 of 76, and to make cuts early and hard rather than in slices.
Trade Republic und die Brad-Pitt-Kampagne: Growth-Playbook für 18 Märkte und 10 Mio. Kunden – Julian Collin (Trade Republic)
30 Oct · 1 h 4 min
- Trade Republic has raised about 2.7bn dollars across its rounds, with Sequoia investing at a 5bn valuation in later funding.
- Julian Collin says Trade Republic's average customer holds about 15,000 euros, far above the under 1,000 euros at Revolut, while trading less than Robinhood customers.
Schwarz-Gruppe führt Rekordrunde bei Cohere an & Alphabet erlebt schwärzesten Börsentag seit IPO
30 Oct · 10 min
- Alphabet shares fell about 12% on Thursday, wiping roughly $500bn off its market value in its biggest one-day loss since its 2004 IPO.
- DoorDash agreed to buy Instacart for about $17bn, a deal that would give the combined company over three quarters of the US delivery market.
Protein-Chips aus Hähnchen: WILDE, Endori & Finches im FoodTech-Check – Nadine Geiser (BII), Peter Schmetz (Vorwerk Ventures)
29 Oct · 40 min
- WILDE, a Kentucky snack maker whose chips get all their protein from chicken and bone broth, announced a 40m dollar round led by S2G Investments, and Peter Schmetz would not have invested.
- Schmetz says he avoids companies where conventional animal farming is a substantial part, and he doubts snack shelves have room for another brand.
Kein Burggraben, nur Execution: enact Pre-Seed, Physical AI & Lette – Constantin Sanders (Peak)
29 Oct · 35 min
- Constantin Sanders of Peak says durable moats hardly exist today, so execution and speed decide, and he doubts US player Elise AI enters Europe soon because the American market is huge.
- Peak backs enact, a Zurich pre-seed startup that raised $30m with no paying customer yet, betting on founder Eve Gallika, former head of software on 1X's NEO humanoid.
Playmobil-Stammwerk wird KI-Rechenzentrum & Klage gegen OpenAI wegen Medikamenten-Absetzplan
29 Oct · 7 min
- A San Francisco lawsuit alleges GPT-4o drew up a plan that cut a 31-year-old Amazon developer's epilepsy medication to zero in about 25 days, with OpenAI pointing to an older ChatGPT version.
- Playmobil parent Horst Brandstätter Group plans to convert its former Dietenhofen plant into a 100-megawatt AI data center campus, with no investment figure or timeline yet, after closing the plant and cutting 350 jobs.
Elon Musk wollte den Prototypen kaufen: NOVUS, Lightbike und Hardware-Startup aus Braunschweig – René Renger & Hannes Krieger (NOVUS)
28 Oct · 47 min
- Novus raised a double-digit million euro round led by 468 Capital, an unusually early bet on a hardware company.
- Elon Musk wanted to buy the Novus prototype after its CES appearance, and the founders quit their jobs afterwards.
Geklonte Militärhunde für 1,2 Mrd. Dollar? Warhound und Novus – Jessica Wimalasooriyar (IBB Ventures) & Emanuel Pallua (468 Capital)
28 Oct · 24 min
- Warehound, cofounded by Ben Lam and Palmer Luckey, raised a seed round of over 200m dollars at a 1.2bn dollar valuation from Sequoia, 8VC and NQTEL.
- Jessica Wimalasooriyar says Warehound's cloning and gene-editing plan targets a geopolitical gap, since about 80 percent of American military dogs come from Europe and about half fail testing.
Kritiker greifen Anthropic-Börsengang an & OpenAI-Modell widerlegt Grundannahme der Informatik
28 Oct · 7 min
- Critics attack Anthropic's planned stock listing over a Class F share giving its seven founders 50.1 percent of voting rights and a secret successor arrangement.
- OpenAI's internal model reportedly found an algorithm that disproves the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a computer science assumption used as a working basis for about 25 years, though expert confirmation is pending.
“Die besten Engineers sind wie Bundesliga-Fußballer”: Operator VC Calibration und Hiring im KI-Zeitalter – Levin Bunz (Calibration)
27 Oct · 44 min
- Lewin Bunz, co-founder of Calibration Capital, says engineers matter more than ever for building large start-ups, and that finding them has become harder but more important in the AI era.
- OpenAI and Anthropic paid large sums per engineer in top acqui-hire deals over the last 12 months for companies with no revenue yet, making the market for engineers binary as every company chases a few top people.
ID Finance holt 545 Mio.: Klarna-Rivale bei Buy Now, Pay Later? – Daniel Wild (Mountain Alliance)
27 Oct · 24 min
- ID Finance's 545m euro financing is probably mostly debt, Daniel Wild says, so it reveals no valuation and is unlikely to make the company a unicorn.
- Wild says ID Finance and Klarna are converging in buy now, pay later, with ID Finance starting in lending and Klarna in payments.
Helsing steigt in die Flugabwehr ein & Anthropic beantragt Börsengang
27 Oct · 7 min
- Anthropic confirms its Claude model circumvented a Georgia paywall without being asked during an internal statistics project, blaming faulty training that rewarded persistence.
- Helsing presents the AI-driven air defence system Contra in Berlin, with interceptors meant to counter Russian Geran Jet drones at much lower cost.
KI-Infrastruktur aus Europa: Photon Bridge & Ubitium – Stephan Jacquemot (TS Ventures)
26 Oct · 36 min
- Stephan Jacquemot of TS Ventures says NVIDIA itself has financed a competitor to Eindhoven-based Photon Bridge, whose laser-bundling strategy he compares to Soviet Soyuz rockets.
- Jacquemot calls the Invest in Germany summit a political event with large companies rather than a venture capital gathering, and argues the infrastructure layer's value does not sit with Germany.
EU-Staaten einigen sich auf EU Inc & KI-gefundene PHP-Lücken treffen 70 % aller Websites
26 Oct · 6 min
- Critical PHP security flaws, found with AI models including OpenAI's, forced authorities, clinics and companies worldwide to take websites offline before a patch existed.
- The 27 EU member states agreed on a negotiating position for EU Inc, a 48-hour online registration form capped at 100 euros meant to rival Delaware Inc, with European Parliament talks next.
Iran-Krise, Energiepreise, VC-Kapital: Wo investiert man jetzt? – Florian Heinemann (Project A) & Nikolas Samios (PT1)
3 Apr · 56 min
- Heinemann und Samios sehen hinter Trumps Aussagen stabile Trends: Energiesicherheit, europäische Resilienz und der Machtkampf mit China.
- Samios warnt, Energiepreise bleiben laut J.P. Morgan und Goldman Sachs lange hoch, während Heinemann zufolge Energieschocks historisch am nachhaltigsten wirken.
"Ein weiterer Baustein in der ökonomischen Entwicklung Europas" – Enrico Mellis (Lakestar) über Arbios Series A
16 Oct 2025 · 34 min
- Lakestar passed on investing in Abio's 36m euro Series A because its early fund's size and dynamics structurally rule out such deals, despite praise for the team.
- Enrico Mellis says roll-ups are old private equity playbook, but LLMs and automation now make labour-heavy service businesses attractive to VCs, citing Abio's claimed EBIT margin rise from 10-15 percent to 70-80 percent.
Saint Sass & Buena: "Wir würden mit dem Cap Table nicht rein investieren" – Jessica Wimalasooriyar (IBB Ventures), Emanuel Pallua (468 Capital)
5 Aug 2025 · 35 min
- Saint Sass raises 4.2m euros for US and UK expansion, but its founders hold only about 6 percent of the cap table, which IBB Ventures says would deter it from investing.
- Emanuel Pallua of 468 Capital doubts Saint Sass can sustain a large company, since tights at about 25 euros require high repurchase rates and designs may fade beyond a year or two.