"Startup Autobahn" celebrates its fifth birthday

30 companies from the automotive industry are looking for promising start-ups via the network. Mercedes-Benz alone has scouted 5000. This year sees the eighth location of the "Startup Autobahn" in Seoul.

From Stuttgart to the whole world: the "Startup Autobahn" takes stock on its fifth birthday. "When we founded Startup Autobahn in 2016, we wanted to be exactly where we are today five years later: Behind us lies an impressive record of implemented innovations, ahead of us new projects, new partners and groundbreaking new ideas," says Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Management at Daimler.

The track record of the innovation platform for mobility start-ups: 250 events, 350 projects, 30 partners from various branches of the automotive and automotive supply industry, including several DAX companies. Mercedes-Benz alone has scouted 5,000 start-ups via the platform. One of the most successful is Lana Labs from Berlin, whose AI software is already being used in the production and logistics of the E-Class and S-Class.

The "Startup Autobahn" has now established six locations in addition to its home base in Stuttgart: Sunnyvale and Tuscaloosa in the USA, East London in South Africa, Bangalore in India, Beijing and Singapore. An eighth location in Seoul will be added this year. The platform mediates between large corporations and mobility start-ups. Mercedes-Benz itself is not involved, but only becomes a customer of the start-ups. "We are venture clients," says Philipp Gneiting, Head of External Innovations at Mercedes-Benz. "We give start-ups the chance to immediately find the right contacts in large corporations and quickly gain a foothold."